An attachment,
mark it well, founded not on their own will, but on grounds very complex,
and quite independent of them; an attachment which they did not make, but
found; an attachment which their forefathers had transmitted to them, and
which they must transmit to their children as a national inheritance,--at
once a symbol of and a support to the national unity of the whole people,
running back to the time when, in dim and mythic ages, it emerged into
the light of history as a wandering tribe. This instinct, as a historic
fact, has been strong in all the progressive European nations; especially
strong in the Teutonic; in none more than in the English and the Scotch.
It has helped to put them in the forefront of the nations. It has been a
rallying point for all their highest national instincts. Their Sovereign
was to them the divinely appointed symbol of the unity of their country.
In defending him, they defended it. It did not interfere, that instinct
of loyalty, with their mature manhood, freedom, independence. They knew
that if royalty were indeed God's ordinance, it had its duties as well as
its rights.
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