THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY AND ITS NATIONAL PRINCIPLE
The foregoing review of the relation which has come to subsist in Europe
between nationality and democracy should help us to understand the
peculiar bond which unites the American democratic and national
principles. The net result of that review was encouraging but not
decisive. As a consequence of their development as nations, the European
peoples have been unable to get along without a certain infusion of
democracy; but it was for the most part essential to their national
interest that such an infusion should be strictly limited. In Europe the
two ideals have never been allowed a frank and unconstrained relation
one to the other other. They have been unable to live apart; but their
marriage has usually been one of convenience, which was very far from
implying complete mutual dependence and confidence. No doubt the
collective interests of the German or British people suffer because such
a lack of dependence and confidence exists; but their collective
interests would suffer more from a sudden or violent attempt to destroy
the barriers. The nature and the history of the different democratic and
national movements in the several European countries at once tie them
together and keep them apart.
The peoples of Europe can only escape gradually from the large infusion
of arbitrary and irrational material in their national composition. Monarchical and aristocratic traditions and a certain measure of political and social privilege have remained an essential part of their national lives; and no less essential was an element of defiance in their attitude toward their European neighbors. Hence, when the principle of national Sovereignty was proclaimed as a substitute for the principal of royal Sovereignty, that principle really did not mean the sudden bestowal upon the people of unlimited Sovereign power. "The true people," said Bismarck, in 1847, then a country squire, "is an invisible multitude of spirits. It is the living nation—the nation organized for its historical mission—the nation of yesterday and of to-morrow." A nation, that is, is a people in so far as they are united by traditions and purposes; and national Sovereignty implies an attachment to national history and traditions which permits only the very gradual alteration of these traditions in the direction of increasing democracy. The mistake which France made at the time of the French Revolution was precisely that of interpreting the phrase "souvreneté nationale" as equivalent to immediate, complete, and (in respect to the past) irresponsible popular sovereignty.
The European nations are, consequently, not in a position to make their
national ideals frankly and loyally democratic. Their national integrity
depends upon fidelity to traditional ideas and forms quite as much as it
does upon the gradual modification of those ideas and forms in a
democratic direction. The orderly unfolding of their national lives
calls for a series of compromises which carry the fundamental democratic
implication of the national principle as far as it can under the
circumstances be safely carried; and in no other way does a people
exhibit its political common sense so clearly as in its ability to be
contemporary and progressive without breaking away from its historical
anchorage. A comparatively definite national mission and purpose clearly
emerge at some particular phase of the indefinite process of internal
and external readjustment; but such a mission and such purposes
necessarily possess a limited significance and a special character. Restricted as they are by the facts of national history, they lack the ultimate moral significance of the democratic ideal, which permits the transformation of patriotic fidelity into devotion to the highest and most comprehensive interests of humanity and civilization.