Address to Committee of Fifty - Essay Example

If that person is altered by immigrants, he suggests, they will become weaker. Renan takes the opposite view. He thinks it is dangerous to think of a nation as a single race. He looks back at history to find examples of nations or empires which contained many groups of people. The best nations are those that use their difference to become stronger and refuse to implement coercive policies such as insisting that everyone speak the same language. Having a common faith can help this process. Ethnography, however, is not what should define a nation.

Palacky offers a blistering rebuke to the German parliament and the people there who believe in a single ethnic identity for Germany. He argues, somewhat like Renan, that a state which allows people to preserve their own particular ethnicity is best. As a Bohemian, he cannot support the German designs on Austria. He feels like the German experiment in ethnic nationalism is bound to fail.