The solidarity of the individuals composing the population of a territory or country under one political head is a truth; but "the solidarity of peoples," irrespective of the government or political authority of their respective countries, so eloquently preached a few years since by the Hungarian Kossuth, is not only a falsehood, but a falsehood destructive of all government and of all political organization.Kossuth's doctrine supposes the people, or the populations of all countries, are, irrespective of their governments, bound together in solido, each for all and all for each, and therefore not only free, but bound, wherever they find a population struggling nominally for liberty against its government, to rush with arms in their hands to its assistance--a doctrine clearly incompatible with any recognition of political authority or territorial rights.Peoples or nations commune with each other only through the national authorities, and when the state proclaims neutrality or non-intervention, all its subjects are bound to be neutral, and to abstain from all intervention on either side.There may be, and indeed there is, a solidarity, more or less distinctly recognized, of Christian nations, but of the populations with and through their governments, not without them.Still more strict is the solidarity of all the individuals of one and the same nation.These are all bound together, all for each and each for all.The individual is born into society and under the government, and without the authority of the government, which represents all and each, he cannot release himself from his obligations.The state is then by no means a voluntary association.Every one born or adopted into it is bound to it, and cannot without its permission withdraw from it, unless, as just said, it is manifest that he can have under it no protection for his natural rights as a man, more especially for his rights of conscience.This is Vattel's doctrine, and the dictate of common sense.
The constitution drawn up, ordained, and established by a nation for itself is a law--the organic or fundamental law, if you will, but a law, and is and must be the act of the sovereign power.
That sovereign power must exist before it can act, and it cannot exist, if vested in the people or nation, without a constitution, or without some sort of political organization of the people or nation.There must, then, be for every state or nation a constitution anterior to the constitution which the nation gives itself, and from which the one it gives itself derives all its vitality and legal force.
Logic and historical facts are here, as elsewhere, coincident, for creation and providence are simply the expression of the Supreme Logic, the Logos, by whom all things are made.Nations have originated in various ways, but history records no instance of a nation existing as an inorganic mass organizing itself into a political community.Every nation, at its first appearance above the horizon, is found to have an organization of some sort.
This is evident from the only ways in which history shows us nations originating.These ways are: .The union of families in the tribe..The union of tribes in the nation..The migration of families, tribes, or nations in search of new settlements.
.Colonization, military, agricultural, commercial, industrial, religious, or penal..War and conquest..The revolt, separation, and independence of provinces..The intermingling of the conquerors and conquered, and by amalgamation forming a new people.These are all the ways known to history, and in none of these ways does a people, absolutely destitute of all organization, constitute itself a state, and institute and carry on civil government.
The family, the tribe, the colony are, if incomplete, yet incipient states, or inchoate nations, with an organization, individuality, and a centre of social life of their own.The families and tribes that migrate in search of new settlements carry with them their family and tribal organizations, and retain it for a long time.The Celtic tribes retained it in Gaul till broken up by the Roman conquest, under Caesar Augustus; in Ireland, till the middle of the seventeenth century; and in Scotland, till the middle of the eighteenth.It subsists still in the hordes of Tartary, the Arabs of the Desert, and the Berbers or Kabyles of Africa.
Colonies, of whatever description, have been founded, if not by, at least under, the authority of the mother country, whose political constitution, laws, manners, and customs they carry with them.They receive from the parent state a political organization, which, though subordinate, yet constitutes them embryonic states, with a unity, individuality, and centre of public life in themselves, and which, when they are detached and recognized as independent, render them complete states.War and conquest effect great national changes, but do not, strictly speaking, create new states.They simply extend and consolidate the power of the conquering state.
