class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="{12}"/>of Liberal principle of the same kind, though not of the same degree, as to exclude Dissenters or Catholics from Parliament, and if men were content to exclude women only from the legal profession, they would be arrogating to themselves a superior value no less clearly than when they refuse to them the right to control their own government.

The same general habit of mind is applied to foreign policy. The acknowledgment of the equal worth of individuals within the nation becomes the acknowledgment of the equal worth of nations among themselves. "Nationalism has stood for liberty, not only in the sense that it has resisted tyrannous encroachment, but also in the sense that it has maintained the right of a community to work out its own salvation in its own way. A nation has an individuality, and the doctrine that individuality is an element in well-being is rightly applied to it. The world advances by the free, vigorous growth of divergent types, and is stunted when all the fresh bursting shoots are planed off close to the heavy, solid stem."^[4] The interference of one with another, attempts to prescribe the limits or the cause of development, are as obnoxious in international as in intra-national relations. It was in fact in connection with this idea of nationality that the words "Liberal" and "Liberalism" came into use. The first English Liberals were those statesmen who followed Canning in his championship of Greece and the South American Republics, and some of them were very far from being Liberals within the borders of their own State.^[5]

This extension of Liberalism from individuals to nations is easy as a mental process, but very far from easy as a matter of practical politics. Nationality is not difficult to define in general terms. It is sometimes infinitely difficult to decide in a particular case whether the general definition applies. John Stuart Mill has perhaps given as much precision to the Liberal conception of nationality as it can bear. "A portion of mankind may be said

to constitute a nation if they are united among themselves by common sympathies which do not exist between them and others. This feeling of nationality may have been generated by various causes. Sometimes it is the effect of identity of race and descent. Community of language and community of religion greatly contribute to it. Geographical limits are one of the causes. But the strongest of all is identity of political antecedents, the possession of a national history and consequent community of recollections, collective pride and humiliation, pleasure and regret, connected with the same incidents in the past."^[6] Nationality is not a thing of sharp outline, any more than any other political conception, and community of interest, the management of common concerns over a long period of time, has triumphed over differences so potent as those of race and creed. Such has been the fortune of Switzerland, of Canada, and of white South Africa, and it is the hope of Liberalism that such will also be the fortune of Ireland. Without attempting to draw hard lines between communities, the Liberal sees in them distinctions of worth and capacity such as he sees in individuals, and he would give the same freedom of self-development to a nation as to a human being.

The idea that nations are to be bound by moral rules as much as individuals is only another application of the general rule that one man is to be treated as equally entitled with every other to the development of his own faculties. The same rule is extended to nations as to single persons. No one people has the right to interfere with the free development of another, until it is clearly and unmistakably proved that that free development will be generally injurious. Once this principle is accepted, it becomes impossible, as in the case of single persons, for one nation to decline to recognize moral rules in its dealings with others. Morality is nothing but the subjection of individual wills to the common will, as expressed in defined rules. Immorality is only the arrogance of the individual will, refusing to submit itself to general rules, while it endeavours to enforce general rules upon

others. The Liberal State is that which recognizes the universal application of its own principles of conduct, declines to thrust its own ideas upon unwilling associates, and works in harmony with other races instead of in opposition to them.

It is not suggested here that it is any part of the Liberal doctrine to seek peace at any price, or to turn the other cheek to the smiter. A vital condition of the existence of morality is that moral persons shall be ready at all times to defend it. To suffer wanton aggression is as fatal to a nation as to an individual. It is a mere encouragement to the general infringement of rights which means the dissolution of international morality. Liberal patriotism exists, though it is of a different kind from that patriotism which is so conspicuous a feature of our modern Imperialism. Imperialist patriotism is often a vulgar assertion of selfish power. Liberal patriotism is a means of diminishing national selfishness. Just as the Liberal believes that the best life within the nation is produced by the growth of free individuality, so he believes that the best life in the race at large is produced by the growth of free nationality. "If there is one condition precedent to effective internationalism or to the establishment of any reliable relations between States, it is the existence of strong, secure, well-developed, and responsible nations. Internationalism can never be subserved by the suppression or forcible absorption of nations; for these practices react disastrously upon the springs of internationalism, on the one hand setting nations on their armed defence and stifling the amicable approaches between them, on the other debilitating the larger nations through excessive corpulence and indigestion. The hope of a coming internationalism enjoins above all else the maintenance and natural growth of independent nationalities, for without such there could be no gradual evolution of internationalism, but only a series of unsuccessful attempts at a chaotic and unstable cosmopolitanism. As individualism is essential to any sane form of national socialism, so nationalism is essential to internationalism."^[7]

By far the most difficult of all the tasks which Liberalism has to perform is in its conduct of foreign policy. Even in domestic affairs it is often not easy to calculate the effects of particular proposals, how far they can be pressed towards the ideal, in what temper they will be received by the people, with what smoothness they will operate when they have been expressed in an Act of Parliament. It is a matter of accommodating ourselves to somewhat intractable material, and of managing, persuading, and guiding human beings whose motives we cannot directly control. But the facts are at least fairly within reach. The Liberal statesman has as much opportunity as anybody can have of knowing the mental habit and disposition of those whom his legislation will affect. He is acquainted with their history. He is guided by previous successes or