CHAPTER XII. THE NATION. 396. The Elements of the Nation.-The Nation is the people as a moral unity, not merely the people as enumerated in the census. It is a moral organic whole, not a confederation of individuals as a heap of sand is an accumulation of individual grains. Thus the Nation is distinct from a mob, a party, a faction or an association of individuals. It is distinct from the offices created in its formal expression of government. It is distinct from its constitution and its treaties. The elements of the Nation are the people and the land. The Nation is the whole people as a moral person, and the field of the Nation's activity is the land. The use of the land is sacred to nationality. The synonym of nationality has been for ages the people and the land. The land of our Nation will extend as far as the sovereign will of the Nation moving in the realization of its moral character shall dictate. Natural boundaries alone can determine its confines. The waves of the sea, the cold of the north and the heat of the south will ultimately divide us from the lands of other nations. 397. The Sovereignty of the Nation.-The Nation alone is sovereign. Its will is expressed from time to time by its chosen representatives acting together in convention. The Nation is older than the written Constitution. As a sovereign it determines for itself its aim and its object in history. It declares its will and embodies its spirit in its institutions. Its sovereign rights are those of self-preserva tion, the power to declare war and to conclude peace, to enter into treaties with other nations, to coin money and to exercise the right of eminent domain. No powers can be greater than these. They identify the Nation as a conscious moral being. As a sovereign the Nation enters into relations with other nations by treaty. A treaty thus made becomes a part of the supreme law of the land. International law is thus made possible by the comity of nations, and individuals may partake of the benefits thus conferred by solemn agreements between the sovereigns.* 398. The Nation and the Constitution.-The Government of the people of the United States is the formal expression of the will of the Nation, as the law of the land fashioned as the method of civil and political procedure. The unwritten constitution is the development of the Nation in history, its customs, its laws, its opinions, its moral sense finding expression in its institutions. The formal, the written Constitution, is changed by the will of the people. Social revolutions, industrial changes, political revolutions cause changes in the written supreme law of the land. At critical times in the Nation's history the written Constitution is naught, and the people by their decision or indecision impart to the written instrument a new meaning or wholly reconstruct the formal Constitution. 399. The Nation and the Citizen.—The existence of the citizen is necessary to the existence of the Nation, and the Nation is necessary to the existence of the citizen. The Nation is not apart from the citizen; he is in and of the Nation. In it and through it he realizes his rights and is protected in them. The individual is a moral person; so *The United States has treaties with the Argentine Republic, Austria-Hungary, Barbary Powers, Bavaria, Brazil, China, Colombia, New Granada, Costa Rica, Honduras, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hanseatic Republic, Hawaii, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Russia, Sardinia, Spain, Norway and Sweden, Switzerland, Tripoli, Turkey, Venezuela and Würtemberg. is the Nation. Each has a law peculiar to its own being. Both have an origin by the will of God, and each moves in the world as a moral power. Society is thus composed of moral elements; "Man is born a citizen." The citizen has his own destiny to work out consistent with the moral order of the world. All he can realize is made possible to him by his own nature, and he is responsible for the exercise of his own powers. When every citizen, conscious of his industrial, his political, his social and his moral responsibilities, lives consistent with the laws of his moral nature, then, and not till then, has the Nation its full strength and the citizen a realization of a complete life. The Nation complements the moral activities of the citizen, and institutes and maintains for his benefit a field for his reasonable activities and his normal development. The Nation is thus bound to educate the citizen harmoniously, offering him opportunities for industrial, political, social and moral training. It has as a constant function the placing within his reach the realization of his loftiest hopes and his moral purposes, and to exalt his manhood and ennoble human life with human sympathy and brotherly affection. The majesty of law, the authority of Government, the solemn declarations of treaties and constitutions, gather like a benediction on the sacredness of the family and the home. 400. The Nation and its Foes. -The foes of the Nation are the forces that would disintegrate it, and with which it wages a perpetual conflict. These are the confederacy and the empire. The confederacy resolves the Nation into selfish, warring, individual elements, destructive of the moral unity of the people. The empire chokes the freedom of the Nation and raises the arbitrary will of an individual into supremacy. The confederacy cannot endure; the empire cannot be free. The confederacy tends toward anarchy; the Nation is the type of peace and order. The empire tends toward an absolute monarchy; the Nation is the type of moral freedom. The confederacy |