The second political belief introduced during the epoch of transition from 1789 to 1815 was the recognition of the idea of nationality in contradistinction to that of the State, which prevailed in the last century. In the eighteenth century the State was typified by the ruling authority. National boundaries and race limits were regarded as of no importance. It was not felt to be an anomaly that the Catholic Netherlands or Belgium should be governed by the House of Austria, or that an Austrian prince should reign in Tuscany and a Spanish prince in Naples. The first partition of Poland was not condemned as an offence against nature, but as an artful scheme devised for the purpose of enlarging the neighbouring states, which had appropriated the districts lying nearest to their own territories. But during the wars of the Revolution and of Napoleon the idea of nationality made itself felt. France, as a nation in arms, proved to be more than a match for the Europe of the old conceptions. And it was not until her own sense of nationality was absorbed in Napoleon’s creation of a new Empire of the West that France was vanquished by coming in contact with the Spanish, the Russian, and the German peoples in the place of her former foes, the sovereigns of Europe. The idea of nationality, like the idea of the sovereignty of the people, seemed to be condemned in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna. The Catholic Netherlands were united with the provinces of Holland; Norway was forcibly separated from Denmark; Italy was once more parcelled out into independent states under foreign princes. But the Congress of Vienna could not eradicate the new idea. It had taken too deep a root. And another striking feature of the European history of the nineteenth century has been the formation of new nations, resting their _raison d’être_ on the feeling of nationality and the identity of race. [Sidenote: The Principle of Personal Liberty.]