One of its defects as a nation to-day is its lack of representative institutions to which Frenchmen have been long accustomed and which command some instinctive loyalty.

Stimulated by French and English example, the other European states finally understood that some form or degree of popular representation was essential to national cohesion; and little by little they have been grafting representative institutions upon their traditional political structures.
Thus the need of political and social cohesion was converted into a principle of constructive national reform.

A nation is more or less of a nation according as its members are more or less capable of effective association; and the great object of a genuinely national domestic policy is that of making such association candid, loyal, and fruitful.
Loyal and fruitful association is far from demanding mere uniformity of purpose and conviction on the part of those associated.

On the contrary it gains enormously from a wide variety of individual differences,--but with the essential condition that such differences do not become factious in spirit and hostile to the utmost freedom of intercourse.

But the only way of mitigating factiousness and misunderstanding is by means of some machinery of mutual consultation, which may help to remedy grievances and whose decision shall determine the political action taken in the name of the whole community.