Another considerable region in which the
dominant element of the population is German, the provinces of
Courland, Esthonia, and Livonia, is condemned by its local situation
to form part of a Slavonian state. In Eastern Germany itself there
is a large Slavonic population: Bohemia is principally Slavonic,
Silesia and other districts partially so. The most united country in
Europe, France, is far from being homogeneous: independently of the
fragments of foreign nationalities at its remote extremities, it
consists, as language and history prove, of two portions, one occupied
almost exclusively by a Gallo-Roman population, while in the other the
Frankish, Burgundian, and other Teutonic races form a considerable
ingredient.
When proper allowance has been made for geographical exigencies,
another more purely moral and social consideration offers itself.
Experience proves that it is possible for one nationality to merge and
be absorbed in another: and when it was originally an inferior and
more backward portion of the human race the absorption is greatly to
its advantage. Nobody can suppose that it is not more beneficial to
a Breton, or a Basque of French Navarre, to be brought into the
current of the ideas and feelings of a highly civilised and cultivated
people- to be a member of the French nationality, admitted on equal
terms to all the privileges of French citizenship, sharing the
advantages of French protection, and the dignity and prestige of
French power- than to sulk on his own rocks, the half-savage relic of
past times, revolving in his own little mental orbit, without
participation or interest in the general movement of the world.
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