The members of a community may, in this manner, like the inhabitants of a
conquered province, be made to lose the sense of every connection, but that
of kindred or neighbourhood; and have no common affairs to transact, but
those of trade: connections, indeed, or transactions, in which probity and
friendship may still take place; but in which the national spirit, whose
ebbs and flows we are now considering, cannot be exerted.
What we observe, however, on the tendency of enlargement to loosen the
bands of political union, cannot be applied to nations who, being
originally narrow, never greatly extended their limits; nor to those who,
in a rude state, had already the extension of a great kingdom.
In territories of considerable extent, subject to one government, and
possessed of freedom, the national union, in rude ages, is extremely
imperfect. Every district forms a separate party; and the descendants of
different families are opposed to each other, under the denomination of
tribes or of clans: they are seldom brought to act with a steady concert;
their feuds and animosities give more frequently the appearance of so many
nations at war, than of a people united by connections of policy.
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