[Footnote 4:  See J.M.  Robertson, Introduction to English Politics, pp. 251-390; Mr. H.A.L.  Fisher’s pamphlet on The Value of Small States, in which, however, the distinction between states and nations is not made clear; and the article on “Nationalism and Liberalism” in The Round Table, December 1914.]

Sec.5. The National Idea in Italy:  The Ideal Type.—­Let us now turn to Italy, a country which has in the past been as much of a European Tom Tiddler’s ground as Belgium, though for rather different reasons.  Italy is inhabited by a race speaking a common language and observing a common religion, she has historical memories as glorious as those of any other country in the world, and her natural boundaries are almost as well-defined as those of Great Britain; yet it was not until the latter half of the nineteenth century that she managed to become a nation.  The chief reason why she remained a “geographical expression” long after England, France, and Spain had acquired national unity was the fact that she was until comparatively recent times an example of the less containing the greater.  Throughout the Middle Ages she was a suburb, not a country.  Rome was the capital of the world, Italy only its environs.  Moreover, since all roads lead to Rome, and the lord of Rome was the master of Europe, the roads Romeward were worn by the tramp of the armies of all nations.  Thus Italy was constantly subject to invasion, and the state-systems with which the Congress of Vienna resaddled her in 1814 were little more than relics of past military occupations of her soil by foreign armies.  The main problem, therefore, in the making of modern Italy was how to get rid of the heavy burden of the past, how to deal with Rome and all that Rome stood for.

The problem would have been insoluble had not the prestige of Rome declined considerably since the Middle Ages, a prestige which sprang from the fact that she was the capital of two Empires—­the spiritual Empire of the Papacy, and the secular Empire founded by Charles the Great.  The former had suffered from the Reformation and the rise of the great Protestant nations, the latter had been growing feebler and feebler for centuries, until it was abolished as an institution by Napoleon.  Yet Italy in 1814 still lay helpless and divided at the feet of Rome.  The Pope held under his immediate sway a large zigzag-shaped territory running across the centre from sea to sea, and, as spiritual leader of half Europe, he could at any moment summon to his assistance the Catholic chivalry of the world.  “The Roman emperor” no longer existed, but “the Austrian emperor” was another title for the same man, holding much the same territory; and the fact that he had renounced his vague suzerainty over the rest of Europe did not prevent him exercising a very real suzerainty in Italy, not merely over the eastern half of the Lombard Plain which definitely belonged to Austria, but also over