The case of the Swiss
Confederation and its claim to rank as a nation would be like the case
of those _gentes_, if any such there were, which did not spring even
from the expansion of an original family, but which were artificially
formed in imitation of those which did, and which, instead of a real or
traditional forefather, chose for themselves an adopted one.
In the Swiss Confederation, then, we have a case of a nation formed by
an artificial process, but which still is undoubtedly a nation in the
face of other nations. We now come to the other class, in which
nationality and language keep the connection which they have elsewhere,
but in which nations do not even in the roughest way answer to
governments. We have only to go into the Eastern lands of Europe to find
a state of things in which the notion of nationality, as marked out by
language and national feeling, has altogether parted company from the
notion of political government. It must be remembered that this state of
things is not confined to the nations which are or have lately been
under the yoke of the Turk.
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