these nor aught
    Of wild belief engrafted on their views
    By false philosophy had caused the woe,
    But a terrific reservoir of guilt
    And ignorance filled up from age to age. 
    That would no longer hold its loathsome charge,
    But burst and spread in deluge through the land.

Mr. Dicey insists that Wordsworth’s attitude in regard to the horrors of September proves “the statesmanlike calmness and firmness of his judgment.”  Wordsworth was hardly calm, but he remained on the side of France with sufficiently firm enthusiasm to pray for the defeat of his own countrymen in the war of 1793.  He describes, in The Prelude, how he felt at the time in an English country church:—­

    When, in the congregation bending all
    To their great Father, prayers were offered up,
    Or praises for our country’s victories;
    And, ’mid the simple worshippers, perchance
    I only, like an uninvited guest
    Whom no one owned, sate silent, shall I add,
    Fed on the day of vengeance yet to come.

The faith that survived the massacres, however, could not survive Napoleon.  Henceforth Wordsworth began to write against France in the name of Nationalism and Liberty.

He now becomes a political thinker—­a great political thinker, in the judgment of Mr. Dicey.  He sets forth a political philosophy—­the philosophy of Nationalism.  He grasped the first principle of Nationalism firmly, which is, that nations should be self-governed, even if they are governed badly.  He saw that the nation which is oppressed from within is in a far more hopeful condition than the nation which is oppressed from without.  In his Tract he wrote:—­

The difference between inbred oppression and that which is from without [i.e. imposed by foreigners] is essential; inasmuch as the former does not exclude, from the minds of the people, the feeling of being self-governed; does not imply (as the latter does, when patiently submitted to) an abandonment of the first duty imposed by the faculty of reason.

And he went on:—­

If a country have put on chains of its own forging; in the name of virtue, let it be conscious that to itself it is accountable:  let it not have cause to look beyond its own limits for reproof:  and—­in the name of humanity—­if it be self-depressed, let it have its pride and some hope within itself.  The poorest peasant, in an unsubdued land, feels this pride.  I do not appeal to the example of Britain or of Switzerland, for the one is free, and the other lately was free (and, I trust, will ere long be so again):  but talk with the Swede; and you will see the joy he finds in these sensations.  With him animal courage (the substitute for many and the friend of all the manly virtues) has space to move in:  and is at once elevated by his imagination, and softened by his affections:  it is invigorated also; for the