first among the “intellectual” classes and to have received 
decisive impetus from the support of the middle classes. In 
England, where physical environment and political and religious 
circumstances were peculiarly favorable, a strong national 
consciousness developed considerably before the eighteenth 
century, and it may be that English nationalism did spring more 
or less spontaneously out of mass feeling and sentiment. Even 
here, the matter is debatable, though it is not within the scope 
of the present work to indicate the pros and cons in any detail.

     Outside of England, however, there can be little question 
that in the first half of the eighteenth century the masses of 
Europe, as well as of Asia and America, whilst possessing some 
consciousness of nationality, thought of themselves chiefly as 
belonging to a province or town or an empire, rather than to a 
national state, and made no serious or effective protest