mocracy was almost an incredible form of
political association. Some of the mediaeval communes were not without
traces of democracy; but modern nations do not derive from those
turbulent little states. They derive from the larger political divisions
into which Europe drifted during the Dark Ages; and they have grown with
the gradually prospering attempt to bestow on the government of these
European countries the qualities of efficiency and responsibility.

A complete justification of the foregoing statements would require a
critical account of the political development of Western Europe since
400 B.C.; but within the necessary limits of the present discussion, we
shall have to be satisfied with the barest summary of the way in which
the modern national states originated, and of the relation to democracy
which has gradually resulted from their own proper development. A great
deal of misunderstanding exists as to the fundamental nature of a
national as compared to a city or to an imperial state, because the
meaning of the national idea has been obscured by the controversies
which its militant assertion has involved. It has been identified both
with a revolutionary and a racial political principle, whereas its
revolutionary or racial associations are essentially occasional and
accidental. The modern national state is at bottom the most intelligent
and successful attempt which has yet been made to create a comparatively
stable, efficient, and responsible type of political association.

The primary objects sought in political association are internal order,
security from foreign attack, the authoritative and just adjustment of
domestic differences and grievances, and a certain opportunity for
individual development; and these several objects are really reducible
to two, because internal order cannot be preserved among a vigorous
people, in case no sufficient opportunity is provided for individual
development or for the adjustment of differences and grievances. In
order that a state may be relatively secure from foreign attack, it must
possess a certain considerable area, population, and military
efficiency. The fundamental weakness of the commune or city state has
always been its inability to protect itself from the aggressions of
larger or more warlike neighbors, and its correlative inability to
settle its own domestic differences without foreign interference. On the
other hand, when a state became sufficiently large and we