nch tongue, but which, while it remained one, did not become a part
of the French State. That people brought England by force of arms
under the rule of their own sovereigns. The greater part of that
people were afterward conquered by France, and gradually became French
in feeling as well as in language. But a remnant clave to their
connection with the land which their forefathers had conquered, and
that remnant, while keeping the French tongue, never became French in
feeling. This last case, that of the Norman islands, is a specially
instructive one. Normandy and England were politically connected,
while language and geography pointed rather to a union between Normandy
and France. In the case of continental Normandy, where the
geographical tie was strongest, language and geography together could
carry the day, and the continental Norman became a Frenchman. In the
islands, where the geographical tie was less strong, political
traditions and manifest interest carried the day against language and a
weaker geographical tie. The insular Norman did not become a
Frenchman. But neither did he become an Englishman. He alone remained
Norman, keeping his own tongue and his own laws, but attached to the
English crown by a tie at once of tradition and of advantage. Between
States of the relative size of England and the Norman islands, the
relation naturally becomes a relation of dependence on the part of the
smaller members of the union. But it is well to remember that our
forefathers never conquered the forefathers of the men of the Norman
islands, but that their forefathers did once conquer ours.

These instances, and countless others, bear out the position that,
while community of language is the most obvious sign of common
nationality, while it is the main element, or something more than an
element, in the formation of nationality, the rule is open to
exceptions of all kinds, and that the influence of language is at all
times liable to be overruled by other influences. But all the
exceptions confirm the rule, because we specially remark those cases
which contradict the rule, and we do not specially remark those cases
which do not conform to it.

In the cases which we have just spoken of, the growth of the nation as
marked out by language, and the growth of the exceptions to the rule of
language, have both come through the gradual, unconscious working of
historical causes. Union under the same government, or separa