Many readers will have already come across this famous statement by John Jay on the founding of the US:

“It has often given me pleasure to observe that independent America was not composed of detached and distant territories, but that one connected, fertile, widespreading country was the portion of our western sons of liberty ... A succession of navigable waters forms a kind of chain round its borders, as if to bind it together ...

“With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people - a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs ...”

Jay was a founding father of America who became the first Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. In what he writes above, he is entirely at odds with both the modern left-wing emphasis on multiculturalism and diversity, and the right-wing ideal of a nation founded purely on common political values.

Instead, he finds it important - even to the point of seeing it as religiously providential - that the US was founded with a unity of both people and place. In other words, a nation is justified in its existence when it consists of one connected land forming a home to one connected people.

If we jump forward a century from 1788 to the 1890s, we find that it was Australia’s turn to debate the issue of federation. One of the most important advocates for Australian federation was the poet William Gay. His most famous contribution was the following poem, in which he attacks the customs houses on the colonial borders as representing a divisive greed and selfishness.

From all division let our land be free,
For God has made her one: complete she lies
Within the unbroken circle of the skies,
And round her indivisible the sea
Breaks on her single shore; while only we,
Her foster children, bound with sacred ties
Of one dear blood, one storied enterprise,
Are negligent of her integrity. -
Her seamless garment, at great Mammon’s nod,
With hands unfilial we have basely rent,
With petty variance our souls are spent,
And ancient kinship under foot is trod:
O let us rise, united, penitent,
And be one people, - mighty, serving God!

This poem was quoted by the leading politician of the age, Alfred Deakin, a future Prime Minister, to launch the case for federation in Victoria in 1898.

What strikes me about the poem is how similar it is in basic philosophy to the thoughts of John Jay. Again, what is stressed is the idea that God has given one connected land to one connected people, and that this is the basis of national life, national purpose and national responsibility.

So never let anyone claim that the idea of traditional nationalism has not had a respectable place within the English-speaking political tradition. It is there in John Jay, and it is there in a different country and a different century in the words of William Gay.