The ancients had but one word for State and City; nor did they use the word Nation as it is latterly used. Derived from the Latin _nascor_ and _natus_, signifying “to be born” and “being born,” it was originally applied to a race or people of common descent and language, but seems to have had no reference to a common government. In the latter sense it is modern. Originally ethnological, it is now political. The French Communists have popularized the kindred word “Solidarity,” denoting a community of interests, which is an element of nationality. There is the solidarity of nations together, and also the solidarity of a people constituting one nation, being those who, according to a familiar phrase, are “all in one bottom.” England early became a Nation; and this word seems to have assumed there a corresponding meaning. Sir Walter Raleigh, courtier of Queen Elizabeth, and victim of James the First, who was a master of our language, in speaking of the people of England, calls them “our Nation.”[3] John Milton was filled with the same sentiment, when, addressing England and Scotland, he says: “Go on, both hand in hand, _O Nations_, never to be disunited! be the praise and the heroic song of all posterity!”[4] In the time of Charles the Second, Sir William Temple furnished a precise definition, which foreshadows the definition of our day. According to this accomplished writer and diplomatist, a Nation was “a great number of families, derived from the same blood, born in the same country, and _living under the same government and civil constitutions_.”[5] Here is the political element. Johnson, in his Dictionary, follows Temple substantially, calling it “a people distinguished from another people, generally by their language, original, _or government_.” Our own Webster, the lexicographer, calls it “the body of inhabitants of a country _united under the same government_”; Worcester, “a people born in the same country and _living under the same government_”; the French Dictionary of the Academy, “the totality of persons born or naturalized in a country and _living under the same government_.”[6] Of these definitions, those of Webster and the French Academy are the best; and of the two, that of Webster the most compact.