Hitherto there has usually been a government to every nation; but the nations are increasing in size and diminishing in number; so that the hands which now hold the _ultima ratio_ by delegation are few, compared with what they have been. I mean this observation to apply only to those extensions of nationality which have been formed on the true principles of society and acquiesced in from a sense of their utility. I mean not to apply it to those unnatural and unwieldy stretches of power, whose overthrow is often and erroneously cited as an argument against the progress of civilization; such as the conquests of Alexander, the Roman generals, Omar, Gengis Khan and others of that brilliant description. These are but meteors of compulsive force, which pass away and discourage, rather than promote, the spirit of national extension of which I speak. This spirit operates constantly and kindly; nor is its progress so slow but that it is easily perceived. Even within the short memorials of modern history we find a heptarchy in England. Ossian informs us that in his time there was a great number of warlike states in Ireland and as many more in Scotland. Without going back to the writings of Julius Cesar to discover the comparative condition of France, we may almost remember when she counted within her limits six or seven different governments, generally at war among themselves and inviting foreign enemies to come and help them destroy each other. Every province in Spain is still called a kingdom; and it is not long since they were really so in fact, with the _ultima ratio_ in the hands of every king. The publicist who in any of those modern heroic ages could have imagined that all the hundred nations who inhabited the western borders of Europe, from the Orknies to Gibraltar, might one day become so far united in manners and interests as to form but three great nations, would certainly have passed for a madman. Had he been a minister of Phararnond or of Fingal he could no more have kept his place than Turgot could keep his after pointing out the means of promoting industry and preventing wars. He would have been told that the inhabitants of each side of the Humber were natural enemies one to the other; that if their chiefs were even disposed to live in peace they could not do it; their subjects would demand war and could not live without it. The same would have been said of the Seine, the Loire and every other dividing line between their petty communities. It would have been insisted on that such rivers were the natural boundaries of states and never could be otherwise.