heir government, as a
number of individuals might meet in a public hall and resolve
themselves into a temperance society or a debating club. This might do
very well if the state were, like the temperance society or debating
club, a simple voluntary association, which men are free to join or not
as they please, and which they are bound to obey no farther and no
longer than suits their convenience. But the state is a power, a
sovereignty; speaks to all within its jurisdiction with an imperative
voice; commands, and may use physical force to compel obedience, when
not voluntarily yielded. Men are born its subjects, and no one can
withdraw from it without its express or tacit permission, unless for
causes that would justify resistance to its authority. The right of
subjects to denationalize or expatriate themselves, except to escape a
tyranny or an oppression which would forfeit the rights of power and
warrant forcible resistance to it, does not exist, any more than the
right of foreigners to become citizens, unless by the consent and
authorization of the sovereign; for the citizen or subject belongs to
the state, and is bound to it.

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