ABSTRACT
The generation born in the Napoleonic wars, and their children after them, achieved much for European civilisation. Civilised states conducted their international relationships upon a set of principles belonging to an earlier and less developed period of civilisation. The public conscience responded more easily to revelations of human suffering, or the injustice of social institutions and conventions. The proletarian serfdom introduced as an unexpected by-product of the new economic forces was condemned by men of imagination within a single generation; those who doubted the efficacy of the remedies had no illusions about the reality of the disease. Nationalism was bound to precede internationalism. The breakdown, in the year of revolution, of the union between liberal and nationalist movements was a historical accident; that is to say, no accident, but a result which could scarcely have been avoided; the strongest opponent of determinism must admit a certain ‘inevitableness’ in history.
