The cases in which the greatest practical obstacles exist to the
blending of nationalities are when the nationalities which have been
bound together are nearly equal in numbers and in the other elements
of power. In such cases, each, confiding in its strength, and
feeling itself capable of maintaining an equal struggle with any of
the others, is unwilling to be merged in it: each cultivates with
party obstinacy its distinctive peculiarities; obsolete customs, and
even declining languages, are revived to deepen the separation; each
deems itself tyrannised over if any authority is exercised within
itself by functionaries of a rival race; and whatever is given to
one of the conflicting nationalities is considered to be taken from
all the rest. When nations, thus divided, are under a despotic
government which is a stranger to all of them, or which, though sprung
from one, yet feeling greater interest in its own power than in any
sympathies of nationality, assigns no privilege to either nation,
and chooses its instruments indifferently from all; in the course of a
few generations, identity of situation often produces harmony of
feeling, and the different races come to feel towards each other as
fellow-countrymen; particularly if they are dispersed over the same
tract of country. But if the era of aspiration to free government
arrives before this fusion has been effected, the opportunity has gone
by for effecting it.
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