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.

Provinces revolt and become independent states or nations, but only
when they have previously existed as such, and have retained the
tradition of their old constitution and independence; or when the
administration has erected them into real though dependent political
communities. A portion of the people of a state not so erected or
organized, that has in no sense had a distinct political existence of
its own, has never separated from the national body and formed a new
and independent nation. It cannot revolt; it may rise up against the
government, and either revolutionize and take possession of the state,
or be put down by the government as an insurrection. The amalgamation
of the conquering and the conquered forms a new people, and modifies
the institutions of both, but does not necessarily form a new nation or
political community. The English of to-day are very different from
both the Normans and the Saxons, or Dano-Saxons, of the time of Richard
Coeur de Lion, but they constitute the same state or political
community. England is still England.

The Roman empire, conquered by the Northern barbarians, has been cut up
into several sepa