THE DESTINY OF THE NATIONS.

            If we look upon nations as so many great individuals playing a drama, we shall perceive at once that each has a distinct and intelligible character; each a peculiar mission to fulfil, and a corresponding career to pursue.

            No two great nations bear much resemblance to each other. They are as unlike as two distinct men, and their principles and motives of action are as different. The Jews had a theological mission, and the whole world has felt the power of it. The Greeks had a philosophical and artistic mission; and to this day the world condescends to be their disciples, and in many respects their humble imitators. The Romans had a political mission, and we see their rules and forms of government incorporated with all civilised nations. These three great nations of antiquity have laid the foundations of modern civilisation. What would the world have been, had one of these nations been wanting? Very different altogether from what it is at present. We can scarcely imagine what would have been the consequence.

            The character of Spain is very different from that of France or England. It is a half-breed, like one of its own mules, between the despotism of the East and the civilisation of the West. It is the only one of the great Christian nations which was for ages possessed and peopled in part by Mahommedans; and, though at last they were driven out of the land, their spirit of tyranny and chivalry remained behind them, and lingers even still, despising the commercial utilitarian habits of the north-west. To Spain was allotted the great dramatic part of discovering the New World in the 15^th and 16^th centuries; and in the fulfilment of that most important mission, the peculiar character of the nation was developed in hard and definite outline. The worshippers of God and Mammon were never, perhaps, in the whole history of the world, elsewhere combined in so picturesque and imposing a manner. The conquerors of Mexico and Peru had no Bibles and tracts, or even preaching missionaries, like the cooler and more rational nations of the North. With a crucifix in one hand, and a sword in the other; with one eye on the gold, and the other on the silver that they found in their path; small in number but powerful in faith, and full of the pleasing hope of riches in this world, or heaven in the next—they pillaged the temples, ransacked the dwellings, tortured and burnt the sovereigns and nobles, set up crosses and images of the Virgin in room of the pagan idols, said masses to the bewildered natives, persuaded them to submit to the rite of baptism, to take the eucharist, cross themselves and bow to the Virgin, and even held out the cross to their victims to kiss whilst they were burning them at the stake for pagans, infidels, and traitors. It is a marvellous history; so very unlike the history of the Anglo-Saxon adventurers, who laid the foundation of the great republic in the cooler and more northern regions of the New World. But, amid all this wantonness, cruelty, and inconsistency, this unnatural union of avarice and devotion, there was mercy to be found. The conquerors mixed their blood with the vanquished. They regarded them, so soon as converted, as men of the same origin and rank with themselves. A common faith was, in their eyes, a common blood; and a new race of men arose from the mixture of the white and red races. But to this day it is an unsettled race; and none of the countries which the Spaniards colonised in the New World have been able to settle themselves under any definite or permanent government, but remain to this hour, like political volcanoes, always burning and always threatening another devastation. The appetite for gold was the ruin of the mother country; and the irrational and violent system of converting the Indians has only laid the foundation of an inferior civilisation, which has never been able to distinguish itself, or exercise even a re-active influence on the civilisation of the old world. It was a work of passion; and passion still prevails over reason in regulating the destiny of Spanish colonies; whilst Spain herself, still doggedly adhering to her old principles, reluctantly submits to her inevitable destiny.

            The history of France is altogether different. The French are a gay and a social people, and therefore peculiarly adapted for taking the lead in an age like the present. Their conquests are at home rather than abroad. They have no colonies. Their great ambition is to lead the world, by leading the civilised nations, and making Paris the capital of civilisation; and they have, to a considerable extent, accomplished this end. But being merely a dependency of Rome in its ecclesiastical capacity, the nation is fettered in one of its legs, and incapable of forming other than a political or philosophical centre for the circumference of civilisation. In fact, there may be said to be no other principle in France but Popery and philosophy. Between these two there is eternal war—a war without hope—for the weakness of the one is the strength of the other. But Popery not having her dwelling place or centre in France, philosophy has taken the lead in her government and her literature, and may be said to form the intellectual mission of the nation. Moreover, the French politicians are remarkable for the logical form which they give, or attempt to give, to all their disputations. They seek for authority in abstract principles, and the common laws of Nature, and endeavour to establish the paramount authority of reason, in opposition to the authority of faith, which is dictated from Rome. In doing so, they prove the power and weakness of reason at the same time—its power to shake the foundations of old society—its weakness to discover a firm foundation for the new. France is wandering in the desert of thought, or at sea without a compass, on a voyage of discovery for a new world, but, like Columbus, only discovering a number of islands. Her systems are an Archipelago of political islands, which are so far from satisfying the mind of the enthusiast, that they only tempt him to go out to sea in search of a continent.

            Look at Germany, and you will see something very different from France and Spain. The name of Germany denotes the land of the universal man, all-man (alle-magne,) and the destiny of Germany is merely a commentary on its name. In Germany you have every species of government—an empire, kingdoms, principalities, dukedoms, municipalities. It is a world in miniature. But it is a world divided. It has not a capital. Each distinct sovereignty has its own capital, its own money and its own laws; and yet there is a common literature belonging to all. Political discussion has been suppressed in Germany, but religious discussion has been tolerated; and as in Germany the sects are numerous, the theology of Germany has received a wider development from the mere fact of the field being open for its almost unrestrained cultivation. The consequence has been, that the Germans have come out, by necessity and opportunity, the most profound thinkers, and the greatest innovators in opinion, and speculations in abstract notions, of any people in Europe. Almost every novelty in opinion seems to originate in Germany. The French themselves borrow copiously from the Germans, only clothing their ideas in more easy and readable language, and giving them wings for circulation throughout the world of civilisation. The German nations once broke down the Roman empire by the inundation of the northern tribes in their rude and uncultivated state. In a later period they poured in a torrent of innovation under the leadership of Luther, which shook the spiritual empire of Rome to its foundation; and at present they are pouring in floods upon floods of philosophy into the South, which are re-issued from Paris as the capital of philosophy, and ascribed to the fickleness and inventive genius of the French nation. Germany is like a spirit without a body, for want of a capital, and that spirit seeks and finds its body in the capital of civilisation.

            How very different from any of these nations is England—the land of general but modified liberty! In Germany there is more theological and philosophical liberty, and the universities are open to all sects, even to a chaos of opinion. In France there is more social liberty. In Spain there is more geographical, or rustic liberty. But in England there is more of all the liberties taken collectively. We have but little rustic liberty in England, for our soil is too valuable, too highly cultivated, for such a blessing. Our poor therefore probably enjoy fewer privileges than those of Spain, where the habits and customs of the olden times are still preserved, and where modern art has done little or nothing, either to enclose the commons, to fence the fields, or to interdict the free passage of the people over the surface of the soil. Our social habits are very strict; our universities are still in the hands of the established clergy, under more severe discipline than now prevails in France or Germany, and perhaps even equal to that of Spain herself. But then our press and our tongues are at liberty to speak upon all subjects, to discuss political and ecclesiastical questions, unrestrained except by the censorship of public opinion. This has given a moderation to the tone of controversy in England which is found in no other European nation; and, at the same time, it has made the English press a better representative of the mind of the people that any other European press whatsoever. The fact is important, as it invests England with a peculiar species of universality—a universality of an intellectual character, and therefore of a higher order than that which belongs to Germany—a universality of a political and ecclesiastical character, and therefore higher than that which belongs to France, which, like the cow with the crumpled horn, is deficient in one of its intellectual developments.

            The language of England, moreover, is singularly illustrative of this. It is chiefly a mixture of the German and the Roman. German is rather alien, or opposed to the languages of the Roman empire, like the Germans themselves, who have been a thorn in its side from time immemorial. French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, are almost exclusively Roman. But English is a compound of all the languages of Western civilisation, and is, therefore, the best representative of that great and increasing interest. Nor is this intellectual symbol of universality without its corresponding political and geographical facts to illustrate and confirm it. The colonisation by England is now the most extensive and the most prosperous of all. The Anglo-Saxon race is to be found in every habitable latitude and longitude of the globe. It is repeopling the old world, and peopling the new. It is spanning the earth, and even threatening to possess it as its destined inheritance.

            To this great people the commercial mission is given, in a special manner; that very mission which is calculated, above all others, to facilitate the intercourse between different nations of the world, to make a way through the deep and through the desert, to climb the mountains, and to cut through the forests.

            England, as the mother and representative of this people, is a little world in herself, distinct in all respects from the Continent. Unlike France and Spain, she has her Church within herself. Unlike Germany, she is united under one capital and policy. Unlike Italy, she is the representative of modern times, and not of mediaeval superstition and exclusiveness. She stands alone amongst the nations, like her island home in the Atlantic Ocean. And, as her character and position, so is her mission, so is her destiny. It is one of great breadth and universality. She holds this commission from Heaven, and none can deprive her of it. It is fixed, from of old, in the geographical shape of the earth, and the political and ecclesiastical distribution of ideas and systems amongst the surrounding nations. The role which she enacts in the great drama of humanity, is appointed by the Great Manager of the Theatre of Society, and it needs but little of the gift of prophecy to discover that, as yet, the greater part of her destiny is before her—that she is but at present buckling on her armor for the great work to which she is appointed. No other nation is, as yet, in advance of her. All the nations of civilisation have been shaken but herself. She stands at present unmoved, like a rock in the ocean, which the lightning will not strike, and the breakers cannot harm.

            Yet she wants unity, and there lies her weakness. How can this be cured? Rome boasts of unity; but it is like that of a poker, too stiff to bend or to play the part of a pair of tongs. It is an impotent unity, even if it were real. But it is not real. The Archbishop of Paris has just condemned the Popish press of Paris, and accused it of all manner of ecclesiastical outrages—accused it even of defending miracles which the Church has not sanctioned. The Univers, an ultra-catholic paper, answers the Archbishop, by publishing the sanction of the Pope himself to the miracles alluded to! If the priests themselves are not united, how can the people be? There is no unity in the world. England is not singular in her want of unity. But still it is a great want; and, until it be supplied, her universality can be productive of little positive benefit to the poor or the world.