f one; and civil war ensued.

The unity of Welsh history is not to be found in the growth of a state
or a political system. But may we regard the history of Wales as a
long and heroic struggle inspired by the idea of nationality? A
caution is necessary here. It is one of the besetting sins of
historians to read the ideas of the present into the past; and to the
general public historical study is dull unless they can do so. It is
very difficult to avoid doing so; it needs a severe training, a long
immersion in the past, and a steady passion for truth above all
things. In no case perhaps is this warning so necessary as in matters
involving the idea of nationality. This is characteristic of the
present age, but it has not been characteristic of any other to
anything like the same extent. We live in an atmosphere of
nationality; we have seen it create the German Empire and the kingdom
of Italy, and the Welsh University; we see it now labouring to break
up the Austrian Empire, and perhaps changing the unchanging East. But
the whole history of Europe shows that it is an idea of slow and
comparatively late growth. The first appearance of nationality as a
conscious principle of political action is found in England--and
possibly in France--at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and in
Wales about the same time; in the other countries of Europe much
later. And it was very rarely till the very end of the eighteenth
century that it became a dominant factor in politics. Of course our
ancestors always hated a foreigner--but they did not love their
fellow-countrymen. The one thing a man hated more than being driven
out of house and home by a foreign invader, was being driven out by
his next-door neighbour; and, as his neighbour was more likely to do
it, and when he did it, to stay, he hated his neighbour most. A
certain degree of order and settled government was necessary before
the national idea could become effective.

In mediaeval Wales it never succeeded in uniting the people; the petty
patriotism of the family stood in the way of the larger patriotism of
the nation; local rivalries and jealousies were always stronger than
the sense of national unity. The attempt of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth to
create a National Council, like the Great Council of England, died
with him. In the final struggle with Edward I., when for a few months
the idea of Welsh unity was nearest realisation in action, the men of
Glamorgan fought on the winning