The Hungarian Rebellion

Brownson's Quarterly Review, January, 1851

ART.11 1. The Village Notary; a Romance of Hungarian Life. Translated from the Hungarian of BARON EOTVUS, by OTTO MENCKSTERN. London : Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans. 1850. 12mo. 3 volumes.

2. Memoirs of an Hungarian Lady.   By THERESA  PULSZKY.
With an  Historical Introduction, by FRANCIS PULSZKY.
Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard.    1850.    8vo.    pp.375.

3. The Hungarian Revolution.   By JOHANN PRAGAY.   New
York : George P. Putnam.    1850.    8vo.    pp. 176.

4. Parallels between the Hungarian and British Constitutions
By J. TOULMIN SMITH, Esq., of Lincoln's Inn.  Barrister at Law.    From the Second  English   edition. Boston : Ticknor, Reed, & Fields.    1850.  8vo.    pp. 64.
 
5. The  Christian  Examiner, for May, 1850.    Art.  V11I. Boston :  Crosby & Nichols.

THE future historian of American popular delusions will find none more worthy of his consideration than that which obtains with regard to the liberty of the press. Our theory is, that the American press is free, the freest in the world, and in the letter of our laws there is nothing to the contrary ; but in sober reality there is no press in the world less free or more fettered, for it has not only a master, but a master who is the worst and the meanest of tyrants. The mob is the censor of the American press.

Nor is this mob precisely of native origin and growth. We are pained and ashamed to say, that our masters are not our countrymen, but the scum of foreign demagogues cast upon our shores by the revolutionary tides of Europe since .1831. These miserable demagogues, keen-sighted as to the means of mischief, saw at once what a powerful weapon the American press would be in their hands when the time for violence should come. They have labored slowly, stealthily, surely, to obtain the control of it, and now make no secret of the fact that it is their slave. These are the foreigners against whom our fathers warned us, and theirs the foreign influences we were admonished to resist;not, as fanatical or bigoted Protestants have foolishly imagined, the poor Irish Catholic emigrant, who comes here to escape oppression, to enrich us by his industry, and to bless us by his faith and piety. He is always welcome, for in his Irish character he is an important element in the sum of our national greatness, and in his Catholic character he cannot fail to exert a salutary influence in elevating and preserving our civilization, and in maintaining our republican institutions, by asserting the reality of religion and the supremacy of law,  two things indispensable to our political salvation, and not to be expected from Protestantism under any or all of its forms. No; the foreigners we have to dread are not the poor, industrious Catholics, who land on our shores, whether from Ireland or Germany; but those young and old infidels, who, having failed to complete the ruin of their respective countries by the conspiracies they have hatched, the rebellions they have fomented, the revolutions they have attempted, have flocked hither, partly to escape the halter, and partly to demoralize our republic, that it may demoralize the world.

Whoever wishes a full demonstration of the extent of the power that these fugitives from justice and enemies of mankind wield amongst us, needs only to mark the course pursued by the American press with regard to the Red Republican revolutions of Europe in 1848. The mark of their iron boot was easily seen on the neck of almost every writer in the land. No publisher dared offer a book against these nefarious revolutionary movements; scarcely one editor dared hint that they were not wholly commendable, and the community were led to believe that they were glorious uprisings of the people in behalf of the inalienable rights of man. It is true, personal violence was seldom resorted to, for the time had not come to follow the example of the ruffians at Rome, who murdered Ximines, editor of the Labaro, because lie recommended a moderate and manly policy,  an example followed more than once in other places,  and, moreover, the master does not usually beat or kill his unresisting and obedient slave. These foreign mobocrats amongst us had other means of commanding compliance with their will, and of ruining any one who might show a disposition to oppose them, less offensive to  American sentiment, and less hazardous, than plunging, in cold blood, a dagger into his heart.

The United States are and ought to be a republic. That is a question never left to their choice. It was settled for them by a higher power than their own. Erect a monarchy to-day, it will be a ruin to-morrow ; call together an army to support it, and your army will fall into the pit dug by unseen hands lor Sennacherib. . Here we are bound by the law of God to be republicans, for here republicanism is the legitimate order. But there are two kinds of republics, as there are two kinds of monarchies. The absolute domination of the Czar differs infinitely less from the constitutional sway of Victoria, than the stars and stripes from the bloody democratic (lag of Europe. The principles from which (he American republicans and the European democrats start, the ends the two parties respectively propose to be attained, and the means they respectively employ, lie in totally different, and for ever irreconcilable orders.    American republicanism is legal in its origin, loyal and conservative in its character; European democracy is mere wild anarchy. An American republican can be a good citizen ; a European democrat, if consistent, must be a vile demagogue. The former can save his soul; if the latter get into heaven, Satan need not despair.

The press being under the control of a mob created by foreign demagogues, the ordinary sources of information are corrupted, and it becomes almost impossible for the mass of our citizens to get any correct intelligence of European political movements. There is not a more unmitigated tyrant in the world than your Simon Pure Red Republican, hoarse with yelling " Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!" He will neither give you correct information, nor suffer you to get it. If the press he controls were content with simple advocacy of anarchy, the mischief would be far less. But no, he and his slaves must not only preach and teach the gospel of disorganization, but must be constantly on the alert that no word be uttered in contradiction, or if uttered, that it shall be discredited. It was almost impossible for the most impartially disposed of our citizens to get any correct information on European affairs while the struggle was going on. Care was taken that all news intended for our market should get a ruddy baptism, and if some one ventured to collect information from independent sources, a thousand tongues were ready to declare it a tory, a legitimist, a conservative, an Austrian, or a Russian lie, and the luckless wight, in most cases, was worried till he was fain to submit for the sake of peace, if not of life.

The notions which have been current among us with regard to the Hungarian rebellion is a case in point. People have classed the Magyar cause with that of the French, the German, and 1he Italian democrats, and supposed that " Young France," " Young Ireland," " Young Italy," " Young Germany," and " Young Hungary" were all members of the same family. In all the European countries in which revolutions were effected, or attempted, the parties were supposed to be the same,  on one side the awakened democracies, on the other fallen and flying sovereigns. It will be strange news to the mass of the American people, to be told that the Hungarian movement had nothing in common with democracy, save in so far as, if it had succeeded in breaking the power of Austria, and dissolving the Austrian Empire, it would have prepared the way for the triumph throughout all Western and Central Europe of Red Republicanism, because it would have left standing no power competent to stay the revolutionary tide; and that, in itself considered, it was thoroughly aristocratic, and at bottom nothing but a war of the untitled Magyar nobility to maintain their "historical right" to domineer over the unfortunate peasants of Hungary. Yet such is the simple, naked fact, notwithstanding the abuse heaped upon a contemporary* for daring to intimate it,and notwithstanding Mr. Cass's stultification of himself in his anti-Austrian and unstatesmanlike speech in the Senate last winter, in which he made a ridiculous attempt to enlist the nation on the side of Hungary. That such is the fact, we trust to be able to prove before we close.

The works we have placed at the head of this article are all written to sustain the Hungarian rebellion, and three, of them come from Magyar sources. The Village Notary is a romance, but it contains more truth than either the essay by Toulmin Smith, or that in The Christian Examiner, and may be recommended to those who wish to obtain a more exact notion of the state of things in Hungary than they can get from the perusal of political narratives and disquisitions. The author is an Hungarian noble, but his tutor was a radical of the French school, and Eotvos became the leader of the small, and utterly uninflucntial, party of republicans.    Pulszky says of him:

"He wrote a novel, in which he put together a variety of small sketches and studies from nature, and formed them into one grand picture, for the express purpose of caricaturing the political doings in our counties. Hut, fortunately for the public, Baron Eotvos was a better poet than a politician, and his political pamphlet ripened, very much against his will, into one of the most interesting works of fiction that Hungarian literature can boast of. His book was eagerly read and enthusiastically admired ; it was devoid of all political
action." (The North American Review, July 1849)

The Memoirs of an Hungarian Lady form a very interesting volume. The lady is Theresa Pulszky. She is a Viennese, and after her marriage with Pulszky, who is an Hungarian, she resided in Magyarland. Her husband was a patriot, and his share in the rebellion was large enough to have insured him the prison or the scaffold, if he had remained in Hungary. Mrs. Pulszky saw every thing in Hungary with his eyes, of course. An historical introduction, covering about a hundred pages, is prefixed to the narrative. It is a clear and rapid sketch of Magyardorn from the invasion of Arpad to the beginning of the late rebellion, and the author, no doubt, endeavoured to write as fair a transcript of the Hungarian annals as he possibly could.

The Hungarian Revolution is a book got up for sale. It gives a sketch of the unfortunate war, and a brief account of the principal actors in the drama.

The Parallels between the Hungarian and British Constitutions is a very remarkable pamphlet. Its object is partly indicated by its name, and the author attempts to arouse the sympathies of Englishmen in behalf of the Magyars, because of a very striking similarity between the Hungarian and English constitutions. He maintains that the Hungarian struggle is substantially the same with that of England, when she renounced her allegiance to the last of the Stuarts, and, moreover, thinks that the Hungarian constitution, inasmuch as it provides for local institutions of a democratic nature in the counties and towns, is far superior to the British. The author and his friends had as little success in creating an excitement in England as similar parties have had in America. The newspapers there, as here, were thoroughly Magyarized, but a motion of sympathy in the House of Commons fell under the table, and received a contemptuous permission to lie there.

The article in the Examiner is an attempt, and the only respectable one hitherto made, to answer the case put by the North American Review. The writer, a lady, makes the most of her materials, and, by a skilful selection and arrangement of facts, she will doubtless convince some of her readers that " the worse is the better reason." Yet she can be fully answered without any other resort than to the facts stated by herself in the course of her article.

We suppose that the friends of Hungary will not complain of us for accepting the authors cited above as our guides, particularly as they are all written by persons who are intensely prejudiced in favor of the Magyar rebellion. We have read them carefully, and we are of opinion that even a stronger ease than that of the North American Revieiv can be made out by facts unwillingly or unconsciously admitted by these authors. We shall accept their facts, and avail ourselves of no others, to sustain us in our dissent from their conclusions. The policy pursued by each is substantially identical. It is in setting in a very strong light every real or fancied affront received from Austria, in imputing to her malicious intentions whenever they are unable to deny the justice and expediency of her acts, and in saying every thing that can be said about Magyar bravery, generosity, and loyalty, and as little as possible about any thing which might impress the reader unfavorably towards the Magyars. In fact, these books amount to an apotheosis of Magyardom, which is prima facie evidence against them as historical records ; for the Magyars are simply men, after all, like the rest of us, and probably are not far above, or far below, the other nations of Europe in point of social and moral virtues. The case of Austria has not as yet fairly been put; for it is a great mistake to suppose that Mr. Bowen's article is an apology for Austria. When she tells her story, it will be very possible that an accurate summing up of accounts as they stand between her and the Magyars will not be quite as favorable to the latter as many good people have imagined, as the considerations we propose to oiler may lead some to suspect.

In the beginning of the ninth century, the Magyars were yet tenants of the wilds of Central Asia. They were a savage tribe of Tartars, and several other swarms from the same Tartar hive had gone before them into Europe. The Huns and the Turks were their brethren in blood. The memory of Attila, the terrible king of the Huns, is cherished yet in Hungary.    Madame Pulszky thus speaks of him:

" At a small distance from Petronell, a high tumulus reminds the traveller of the mighty dominion of the Huns and their king Attila, whom modern writers treat merely as a destructive Asiatic chief, though tradition invests him with the noblest generosity and the most praiseworthy forbearance, as well as with that invincible bravery which the French and Italians ascribe to Charlemagne, and the Welsh to King Arthur."  p. 9.

A pleasant bit of gossip from a Viennese girl! Her husband's country was her country, and his God was her God.

In the year 889, the Magyars entered Europe, and pitched their tents on the banks of the Danube.    Europe found that a nest of stark mad hornets had appeared in her midst. The Magyars were indeed dreadful neighbours to the nations around them. They pushed southward as far as Otranto, eastward to Constantinople, westward until they ravaged Provence, and northward as far as Bremen.

In the mean time, they came into the possession of Hungary in the following manner :

" When Arpad approached the confines of the country, he sent ambassadors to Swatopluk, to ask him for grass from the Hungarian heaths, and for water from the Danube, and in return he ofibr-ed the Czechish king a white steed with a purple bridle. Swatopluk, who had no idea of the Oriental meaning of the demand, readily accepted the horse, and provided Arpad's ambassadors with a plentiful supply of hay and water. Upon this, the Magyars advanced upon the great plain between the Danube and the Theiss. Swatopluk would have opposed them, but they offered him battle, and routed his army. The king of the Czechs was glad to make his escape on the very horse which he had accepted in exchange for his kingdom."

The cruelties practised by the Magyars everywhere, and the indomitable courage which commonly insured them victory, made them so terrible to the Christians, that a new petition was added to the Litany:  "From the cruel Magyars, Good Lord, deliver us!" In fact, the well-being of Europe, at that time, demanded their utter extinction, or their conversion to Christianity. They coniinued to harass their neighbours for half a century, when Henry the First chastised them severely, and shortly after they were subdued by Otho the First. The permanent establishment of Christianity in Magyarland dates from the year 1000, when St. Stephen was crowned king of Hungary. He sent ambassadors to Rome to acquaint the Pope with the conversion of the nation. Sylvester ilie Second sent him a golden crown, the holy crown of St. Stephen, which the Magyars always regarded as a sacred relic. Moreover, the Pope honored him with a patriarchal cross, and with the title of Apostolic King. The successors of Stephen often used these concessions of Sylvester to the great detriment of the Hungarian Church ; in fact, they sometimes appeared to regard the possession of the cross as an investiture of the spiritual rights of an Hungarian patriarch.

Up to this period the Magyars possessed all the virtues and all the vices of a barbarian soldiery.    The conversion of the nation made its civilization possible, and, in the progress of time, certain; but the savage manners of the Magyars seemed to present almost insurmountable obstacles to the holy work.    St. Stephen preached the Gospel, and offered his people a living example of Christian life.    He encountered an opposition no less stubborn to all his plans for political reform, but he lived long enough to see his institutions established upon a firm basis.    Before his time, the nation was governed by chiefs of the race of Arpad, who were regarded by the haughty magnates, not as kings, but as leaders.   At. his accession, Stephen was called primus inter pares.    He assumed the title and the authority of a king.    He made a collection of the fundamental laws and customs of the nation, and published them under the title of The Hungarian Constitution, which, with a few alterations, was in force until the 4th of March, 1849, when it was abolished by the Emperor Francis Joseph.   This constitution, given more than eight hundred years ago, is the venerable  instrument which the Magyars of 1849 vainly essayed to defend by the division of their bravest blood.    It establishes royalty upon a feudal basis, it guaranties the rights and privileges of the titled and untitled nobles, and leaves the immense majority of the people to a slavery so hopeless, that the revolutions of eight centuries only sufficed to make its abolition seem but the more impossible, and it is only now that there begins to be a prospect of its disappearance.

All the Magyar apologists have labored to obscure the relations which have hitherto subsisted between the nobles and the peasants, and the burden of their insinuations is, that the humane Magyars were always thwarted in their endeavours to ameliorate the condition of the peasantry by the mthless despotism of Austria! One can hardly believe that impudence can be carried to such a height, yet it is. It will be well, then, to glance at the ameliorations which have been at any time effected or proposed in the condition of the serfs, and to see whence they have proceeded. We shall find, at least, that Austria has done somewhat more than is commonly supposed.

Hungary was peopled by a tribe of the Sclavonic race. The Sclavonians, or Sclaves, arc of Indo-Germanic origin, and their migrations into Europe began about five hundred years before the Christian era, and ceased in the seventh century after Christ. They were then, as they are now, a most important race in point of numbers. They were divided into a number of independent tribes, inhabiting Russia, Poland, Silesia, Galicia, Pomerania, Sclavonia, Hungary, Croatia, Servia, &c. Christianity did not effect much among them until the ninth century. Their most glorious epoch was in 650, when Samo united nearly all the. tribes in one grand Pan-Sclavonic empire, as brief and as brilliant as the empire of Napoleon, and its shadow, even at this day, visits the Selave in his dreams, and reminds him that his long-suffering race held a high position before the Magyar came,  before the houses of Hapsburg, of Ho-henzollern, and of Romanoff were dreamed of. The Sclaves in Europe number some seventy millions, and all speak in dialects of the same tongue. During the period which intervened between Charlemagne and Otho the First, they were nearly everywhere reduced to a servitude so great and so miserable, that the name of their race, which is said by their philologists to signify glory, has passed into modern languages to denote a person who cannot hope for liberty, and is our word slave. They have remained in the same degraded state in Hungary unto this day. In some other provinces they attained partial independence, and in others still they formed powerful states. Sclavonia, Bohemia, and Poland arc cases in point. Russia is the most signal example, now the only Sclavonic nation which is independent, and by this title, as well as by almost common consent, she stands at the head of the race. Europe may yet become Cossack, for the gaze of Russia is steadily fixed upon a new Pan-Sclavonic empire, and, if the dream is realized, this great race will command the world.

Swatopluk lost his kingdom for a horse, as we have seen. He fled, leaving his people to the mercies of the pitiless Magyars. The Slovacs resisted the invaders, but unsuccessfully. The original inhabitants who were serfs under their old masters remained serfs. All the Slovacs who were taken in arms were either killed or reduced to servitude. A great number of the Slovac nobles and freemen, who escaped this doom, fled to other provinces. A few remained, and voluntarily submitted to Arpad. In most cases, these were allowed to remain free, but they were contemned, as belonging to an inferior race. The Sclaves in Hungary were very numerous, for, besides the aborigines who remained in bondage, or were reduced to servitude, the Magyars annually brought prisoners captured in their predatory excursions, and these, with scarcely an exception, were bound to the soil. The Magyar in those days, whether leader or soldier, was a freeman.   Pulszky says,

" The Magyars were free and equal in political rights, with the exception of the chiefs, who formed a high aristocracy among them. They were warriors when young, and herdsmen when old, and amidst the numbers of captive bondsmen and native serfs, they formed a national aristocracy."  p. 30.

The Magyars were a nation of soldiers ; hence it is easy to see that they needed a numerous body of slaves to perform menial ollices, and to till the ground which was seized by Arpad immediately alter the conquest of the country, and divided among his followers.

Every Magyar was a freeman until the days of St. Stephen. The overwhelming majority of the natives were slaves. A few who submitted were allowed to remain free, but their freedom brought them privileges nearly equal to those of the free black in Carolina. The distinction of race became in a few years a settled thing ; so much so, that an attempt, on the part of St. Stephen, to open a wide door to their gradual emancipation did not meet with the success he anticipated. lie made a law providing that a slave who embraced Christianity should obtain his freedom, and a freeman who persisted in his paganism should be enslaved. It is natural that a law of this sort, condemning the proud Magyar to servitude, and elevating the wretched serf to freedom, should meet with strong opposition, and it did.

" Thonuzoba, chief of the Bissens, set the pagan Magyars an example, which taught them at once to escape from servitude and Christianity. He proceeded to Abad, on the banks of the Thcisa, and dressed in full armour, and sitting on his horse, he caused himself to be buried alive, as an expiatory sacrifice to the godsi For he preferred death with his fathers to eternal life with Christ." Pulszky, p. 31.

Some of the obstinate pagans led. A few were resolved to remain in Hungary, and yet cling to their errors. Where the authority of Stephen was acknowledged, these were enslaved, but it is not to be supposed that they remained slaves.    The king not unfrequently employed force to subject the stubborn unbelievers, and, as far as the Magyars were concerned, his law may have accomplished nearly as much as he expected.    Pulszky says:

" To the honor of the Magyars, we find that in almost every instance the example and the doctrines of their prince sufliced to open their minds to Christianity."  p. 16.

No doubt of it. Such energetic preaching, combined with the terrible penalty threatened in case of recusancy, could scarcely fail in converting the Magyar, who covets social freedom, and abhors compulsory labor with an intensity that scarcely ever had a parallel in any land. The law of St. Stephen left the Magyars free, as it found them, witli a very few and evanescent exceptions. But it worked no wonders for the natives who were in bondage. It is true that some of them were emancipated as soon as they declared themselves Christians. A few of these contrived to preserve their liberty, and to transmit it to their descendants, and hence there are some men in Hungary of Sclavonic blood, who enjoy a certain degree of consideration in society. But in the eyes of a true Magyar, no length of time can efface the stain that is caused by descent from a Sclave. Great talent will enable a man of the proscribed class to find favor with the poor Magyar population, or the tin titled nobiliiy of Hungary; but the magnate will scarcely endure his presence. Kossuth is an instance in point. He is a naturalized Slovac. Fortuitous circumstances, and a firm resolution to assert the privileges of the Magyar race against his brethren in blood, won for him the confidence of the untitled nobility. But the magnates of the kingdom stood aloof, with few exceptions, and their lukewarmness or hostility did much to ruin his cause. And it is more than probable that they refused to join his party, not because they were favorably disposed towards Croatia, but because the Magyar cause was intrusted to a man who was not of the dominant race.

Several circumstances go to prove that nearly all the Sclaves remained in bondage, notwithstanding the liberal law of St. Stephen. The freemen were never taxed, and the public burdens were borne by those who were not free. This fact is significant, inasmuch as it indicates pretty clearly the relative proportions of the slaves and the freemen.    Fifty years after the death of St. Stephen, we find the slaves as numerous as ever, and, as few Magyars sank into servitude, and few or none were taken in war, it is clear that no great alteration had taken place in their condition. In fact, the difficulties which obstructed emancipation were very great. The chief hindrance arose from the indomitable pride of the Magyar, who could not stoop to the level of a man tainted with base Sclavonic blood. Then who was to remunerate the master for the loss of his serf? This last was a very weighty consideration, and it is perfectly natural that it would ail'ord a continual pretext for the evasion of the law, as in fact it did. The gleam of sunshine for the Bdave, which came into the land with Christianity, soon disappeared. The. great majority of the class that were naturalized or emancipated under Stephen sank again into bondage by the time the third generation was born.    Pulszky corroborates all this.    He says,

" Besides the three large classes of freemen, we find in this period a fourth class of citizens, the emancipated bondsmen, and the naturalized aliens, who were not called upon to do military service, who had no political rights, and who paid taxes to the king, but who were not subject to any one besides him. This class produced, in the course of time, the citizens of towns and the mass of the people, those that are not freemen, who are subject to their lords, who work for them, and who pay their taxes to them."  p. 32.

This is one of Pulszky's significant admissions. It indicates precisely what liberty was worth to the Selave who was emancipated by the law of St. Stephen. The constitutional right of a Magyar is to do military service, to pay no taxes, and to enjoy full political rights, especially the right of suffrage. The emancipated bondsman was not to be a soldier, he was to pay taxes, and he was not to enjoy any political rights. Why, then, even in his best days, he was a slave. All that he gained was the privilege of becoming the king's slave. And when the royal power began to decline, as it speedily did, the Magyar regained his slave, and, in the language of Pulszky, the whole class " produced in time the mass of the people, who are slaves, who work for their lords, pay taxes, and are subject to them." The Magyars are a nation of soldiers, and after they had carefully debarred the freed man from the privilege of voting, and compelled him to pay taxes, they could not devise a better method of drawing an impassable line between them and him than by refusing him admission into the ranks.

So it turns out, that, as a body, the Magyars were always freemen, and, as a body, the natives were always slaves. We are speaking of Hungary proper, not of Croatia, or of Transylvania. The Magyar could be condemned to slavery for some great crime, but the race was a race of freemen. A Sclavonian could be emancipated, and his descendants might be distinguished, but the race was enslaved. In Hungary proper, a Magyar slave or a Sclavonian freeman was an exception to the rule.

We have pointed out with some care the condition of the people at the period immediately following the promulgation of the Constitution by St. Stephen, because in all essential particulars Iheir condition in 1840 was not much better than it was in 1040. Several improvements have been suggested, and some have been made in their favor, but the system has come down to our times very little changed for the better.

A closer view of the Hungarian Constitution will show yet more clearly what the mass of the people have had to endure from Magyar domination. The Constitution provides for a feudal state of society in its most objectionable form. The freemen were divided into three classes. The first comprised the magnates, the high nobility, and the bishops; the second, the lesser nobility and the proprietors ; and the third, the soldiers. It was a maxim of Magyar law, that the common freeman has as much liberty as the greatest magnate, and that his proprietary rights are as sacred. The king was the owner of all the land, and the actual possessors held of him, under the usual condition of military service. In case of forfeiture, or of a family becoming extinct, the land reverted to the king. These three classes formed the Diet, or parliament of Hungary. The consent of this assembly was required to make the royal decrees laws. The parliament of Hungary is now composed of two houses, and some of the reformers of 3849 suddenly recollected that the upper house had no constitutional existence, whence they argued that it, ought to be abolished. This was a retaliatory measure, designed to punish the resistance of the magnates to the measures of Kossuth, and their contempt for his Sclavonic blood. It is true that the parliament formerly consisted of one house, or rather of one assembly. The members were all soldiers, and they met in an open field, armed, to the teeth.    The great nobles were nearest to the person of the king, and, of course, they nearly monopolized his ear. Every measure that passed was in reality theirs or his. The lower nobility and the people were present simply to hurra! When the Magyars became civilized, they built houses for themselves and for the parliament. The practice of meeting in the open field was gradually abandoned, and, as the distinction between the magnates and the people became more strongly marked, the greater nobles began to deliberate, at iirst apart, and then in a separate hall. The Magyar people have still a constitutional right to be present at the meetings of the Diet, but it is physically impossible to get them all into one house.

This Diet sometimes had stormy sessions, denoting the ferocity of the Magyar character in those days. Queen Helen appears at the Diet of 1132, and asks for vengeance upon the persons who had deprived her husband of his eyes.

" Fanaticized by the queen's speech, the magnates rose, and, drawing their swords, killed sixty-eight friends and advisers of King Koloman, because they suspected them of being privy to the mutilation of Bela. At another meeting of the magnates Helen stood forth and asked them whether they were of opinion that Boris was the legitimate son of Koloman. Those who replied in the affirmative, or who gave an evasive answer, were executed on the spot." Pulsky, p. U7.

The Sclaves, the mass of the people in Hungary, were represented at this Diet precisely as the slaves of our Southern States are represented at Washington. The laws concerning the public burdens have been already noticed. No freeman could be taxed. This axiom was always regarded as absolutely immutable. A curious instance of the tenacity with which the Magyars cling to their old privileges was afforded a few years ago. A fine suspension bridge was thrown across the Danube, at Pesth. Count Szecheny, a magnate who had for some years interested himself in the cause of reform, urged the Diet to pass a law compelling every freeman who crossed the bridge to pay a small toll. The measure was vigorously opposed, not because it was inexpedient, but because it was unconstitutional, and no direct tax had ever been laid upon a freeman since the foundation of the kingdom. The Count carried his measure by a bare majority, for the untitled nobles were averse to the plan,    it has always been thus.    The villain population have had to pay every tithe, tax, and burden that has been ever voted in parliament.

The land was held by freemen, of course, and no slave, under any circumstances, could own a single rood. So far as the administration of justice was concerned, he was subject to class legislation of the most oppressive character. Justice was supposed to emanate from the king, but the military governors had a constant jurisdiction in civil and in criminal cases, which generally weighed heavily upon the slave. A thief, if he were free, made restitution in money ; if he were a slave, he lost his nose, or one of his eyes, and there was an end of the matter. This is a specimen of the distinctions that were enforced in all other cases where justice was to be administered. Another Magyar institution which weighed heavily upon the slaves was the Slatarium. It was a species of court-martial granted to counties when the district was troubled by burglars, robbers, or house-burners. Seven judges were necessary, and if an accused person were found guilty, he was hung on the spot. It was necessary that the criminal should be caught in the act, or in the pursuit that followed, and a unanimous sentence was also requisite. This court was the terror of the slaves, for, although the judges were held responsible for each execution, yet when did the voice of a serf reach the court of the palatine ?

Perhaps no Magyar law made the state of the peasant more utterly wretched than that which gave the lord power to imprison or punish his serf without appeal. This jurisdiction was authorized from the days of St. Stephen to our own times, and it is easy to conceive what a terrible engine it must have been in the hands of an iniquitous master.

" The second tower, at the extreme end of the park, decorated less picturesquely than the first, had a very different destination. It had been the jail, where used to be confined the prisoners of those feudal lords, whose manorial courts were endowed even with cri?n-inal jurisdiction. We did not prize this privilege, and therefore, as soon as we possessed it, surrendered it into the hands of the county authorities, who could detain the culprits in the extensive establishment on the principle of solitary confinement, which the county nobility had erected. To us, it was a great comfort to be able to dispense with the painful duty of sending the transgressors of the law into our dismal dungeon." Pulszky, p. 110.

This was written, not in 1049, but in 1849.   This is one of the "historical rights" which the court of Vienna vainly urged the Magyars to forego.

A thousand other lesser institutions served to distinguish the Magyar from the Sclavonian. The freeman could not be subjected to a whipping, neither could he be chained. He was free from illegal or vexatious arrest, and the punishment to which he could be sentenced was proportioned to his dignity, unless when he was clearly convicted of a great crime. He elected his own magistrates, he enjoyed liberty of speech, and he could even prevent a forcible entry into his house by the officers of justice, with a simple protest, which he was bound to sustain in court within a reasonable time. The slave enjoyed none of these privileges. His very dress served to distinguish him from his master, for the Magyars have always been very solicitous concerning their national costume, and when they were bitterly incensed against the court of Vienna, the Emperor was always sure to regain their applause by causing his court to appear before them arrayed in the picturesque Magyar costume. Language was also an impassable barrier between Magyar and peasant. The Magyars neglected their own language for many years, and in the sixteenth century very many magnates could not read or write in the Magyar tongue. Since the close of that age, it has been cultivated with great success. But the Magyar would never condescend to speak in the Sclavonian language, if he could avoid it, and hence the Latin has been for many centuries a living tongue in Hungary.

The foregoing sketch presents some of the principal features of the famous Hungarian Constitution, and of the customs whicli grew up from successive interpretations of that instrument. It is this Constitution for which the Magyars fought in 18-19. It was in.force until the 4th of March of that year. The greatest grievance of the Magyars always seemed to be, that Austria was determined to abolish it, if possible. Considering its intensely aristocratic provisions, it is easy to see that our sympathies, as Americans, ought in this matter to be given to Austria, for she was enlisted in behalf of human liberty. But the Magyars have hitherto regarded it as a sacred instrument.

" We are therefore justified by the experience of centuries in our hopes that the Constitution of St. Stephen will outlive the botch-work of the German theorists, who in 1848 attempted to overthrow the institutions of the great king by means of a paper charter."  Pulszky, p. 19.

It is clear, then, that the Sclaves, who formed two thirds of the population, supported the government, while they were denied all political, civil, and social rights, as far as these could be denied. An attempt has been made in several quarters, not only to deny these facts, but to deny that the freemen, as a body, were Magyars, and that the slaves, as a body, were of the Sclavonic or original race. We have shown that it is so, by the testimony of our Magyar authorities. However, we will give another authority, out of the many at hand.    Eotvos thus discourses :

" The term nobleman, in the general Hungarian acceptation, means neither more nor less than a. freeman; and the peasants, as the unprivileged class of the population, may be said to be in a slate of villainage. The privileges of the Hungarian Constitution, namely, liberty of speech, freedom from unwarranted arrest, the privilege of not being subjected to corporal punishment, the right to elect their own magistrates, and a variety of similar immunities, are, in all the charters, described in terms which for a long lime caused them to be confined to the descendants of the ancient conquerors of (he country, or to those persons who obtained the freedom of Hungary by a grant of royal letters patent. The rest of the community, the Jews, Razen, Gypsies, llussnioks, and other tribes, are mentioned as guests, or strangers, who have no political rights. Whether bound to the soil, like the peasants, or migratory, like the Gypsies, they were alike unprotected by law, and at the mercy of all the whims, neglects, and cruelties of a legislature which bears traces at once of the fierceness of their Turkish neighbours, and the pedantic vindictiveness of the Hapsburjfs. It was to break down the yoke which for so many centuries weighed upon the unfortunate villains and aliens of Hungary, that the reform party exerted itself against the Hungarian conservatives and the court of Vienna." The Village Notary, Vol. I. Note 7.

The last flourish may pass for what it is worth. Mrs. Pulszky testifies clearly that the Sclavonic tribes, as a race, were doomed to political death. Speaking of the downfall of the Viennese government, and of the great hopes in which the Sclavonians indulged on account of their numerical superiority, she says:

"They relied upon their numerical strength, neglecting to ob
serve that the majority of their number were in civilization, wealth,
and political consequence inferior to the other races, and on this
account could not yet attain political ascendency It is one result of the long prostration which, at least in Austria and Hungary, this manifold race has suffered, that it has no national aristocracy. In consequence, the Sclavonians became the most passionate democrats."  pp. 149, 150.

The famous manifesto of Ferdinand, in which he sides with the Magyars, and denounces Jellachich as a traitor, also testifies to the fact, that the Sclavonic tribes inhabiting Hungary proper were bound to the soil.

" We were doomed to be mistaken," says the Emperor, " with you Croatians and Sclavonians, who owe to your union with Hungary the constitutional freedom which alone amongst all Sclavonic nations you have been enabled to preserve for centuries."

We would not dwell upon this fact, were it not for the exertions of the Magyarized writers in England and this country to make it appear that the political and social distinctions in Hungary are founded upon classes, and not upon races. This assertion is negatived by all history, but we have chosen to prove its falsity from the mouths of Magyar apologists. It will be soon that they furnish abundant proof that the Magyars in Hungary proper were freemen, and the men of Sclavonic blood were in bondage, and that this state of things, Avith a few exceptions, has endured since the entrance of the Magyars under Arpad.

In 1222, the unfilled Magyars extorted from King Andreas the charter of the Golden Bull, which is to the Hungarian Constitution what Magna Charta is to the British. It secures to the poor nobles all the rights and privileges which serve to distinguish them from the peasants, especially full exemption from taxation, and freedom from arbitrary arrest. At the same time, this Bull protected them from the 'attempts which were from time to time made by the magnates to overawe them, and trample upon their privileges. The " villain population" were left in their old condition, and the new laws made escape from it more difficult than ever.

It would seem that, while the Sclaves were separated from the Magyars by almost impassable barriers arising from political and civil distinctions, they managed, in many eases, to improve their own material condition. The Magyars in the time of Stephen were in a very barbarous condition. Seventy years after the promulgation of the Constitution, King Bela experienced the utmost difficulty in inducing them to amend their savage manners.
" Bela displayed a restless activity in his attempts to improve the state of the country, and to introduce the essentials of a higher civilization. He urged the Magyars to resign the vagrant tent, and to fix themselves in permanent homos. He appointed fairs in various market towns, and he coined a certain quantity of money, and thus created a circulating medium, in the place of the old barter trade."  Pulszky, p. 22.

Towards the end of the twelfth century, the Magyars began to abandon their nomadic life, and to turn their attention to the cultivation of the internal resources of the country. From the year 1189, when Bela the Third married a daughter of Prance, the epoch of civilized Hungary begins. The accession of a prince of the house of Anjou to the Hungarian throne did much towards humanizing Magyardom. The great number of young Magyars who resorted to Paris, and the tide of French influence that poured into the land, soon changed the manners of the children of Arpad, and fitted them to appear with credit to themselves on the European stage. In fact, the nation attained the zenith of its glory under Louis the First, who reigned forty years. The savage feudalism of the Magyars was in some degree modified, and the Sclaves were not, at this time, much below the servile standard in France. For the first time, the feudal system, as amended by Louis the Great, became a positive law of the land by its solemn recognition on the part of the Diet. The Sclaves gained no political rights whatever; social distinctions between them and the Magyars and Mngyarized foreigners were sternly maintained, but they were treated with greater humanity, and slowly, very slowly, the laws regulating their labor, and the nature of the tie that bound them to the soil, were amended. They were, in some favored localities, compelled to labor for their lords from two to four days in the week, and a portion of land, generally from twenty 1o forty acres each, was ceded to them, not as owners, of course, but as tenants. The laws provided that the Sclave should not be violently deprived of his little holding. On those days which were not claimed by his lord, he could cultivate the farm ceded to him for his use. From it he had to support his family, to give one ninth of his harvests to his lord, and to pay all the public tithes, taxes, and other burdens. He had ceased to be a slave, in the more rigid aeceptation of the term, and he had become a serf,  adscriplus glebce, in the language of the law, bound to the soil of his lord. Sigismund, Emperor of Germany, king of Bohemia and of Hungary, meditated several reforms, and, among others, he devised a plan whereby at least one twentieth of the serfs might have regained their liberty. He granted several privileges to the towns, which, in the fifteenth century, were beginning to be of some importance. There were peasants bound to the soil, and yet wealthy enough to purchase their freedom, if permitted. Sigismund provided that, if such serfs would consent to go to the towns, free migration should be allowed, after all claims of the lord had been satisfied. One would suppose that an oiler of this sort was a full emancipation of the serf, but it was no such thing. Town life was not so agreeable in Hungary as it is in enlightened countries. The Magyars eschewed it. The inhabitants of the towns were commonly Germans and Italians, who were in the charters styled hospites, guests. The liospites were of very little importance in Magyar eyes; they enjoyed municipal rights, but they were not represented in the Diet, and they had little or no share in the privileges secured by the common law to the elect race. The Magyars regarded them as somewhat above the Sclaves, and far below themselves. Yet an admission into these municipalities was a step in advance for the serf, and a few managed to take it. Magyar opposition, however, rendered this and other measures of the king nearly fruitless. Their wrath was very great when he decreed the enrolment of one in every thirty-three peasants holding cessions of land. This was a feari'ul innovation, for every soldier was a freeman, according to the Constitution of St. Stephen, and only Magyars were soldiers. The king could do little or nothing in the face of prejudices which had been rooted for ages. " If he had no money to lavish," says Pulszky (p. 55), " he distributed patents of nobility, not bound to any special property, which therefore by no means answered the notions of the Magyars."

Another attempt was made to put arms into peasant hands, and the result was what might have been expected. It is always dangerous to put arms into the hand of a slave, unless his liberty is given with the weapon. The Magyars never desired their slaves to fight, because they might make the very natural mistake of confounding their masters with the public enemy. Moreover, the Magyar, who was always the most brilliant, if not the best, soldier in Europe,
 
looked upon the profession as a noble one. But the slaves were armed in 1512, and once assembled, for the first time during six hundred years, in arms, they were not disposed to lay them clown without striking a blow for their long-lost liberties. The occasion was a crusade against the Turks. A great army was wanted, and the Magyars did not care to go. Accordingly, a royal decree permitted the serfs to enlist, when countless crowds (locked to the standard of the Chancellor Bakatsh. Instead of marching against the Turks, they marched against their oppressors. The Magyars had exerted themselves against this arming of the peasants, rightly judging that a general massacre would ensue, but their opposition had been fruitless. Dozsa, a man whose blood was supposed to have a (Sclavonic taint, was the leader of the fearful army.

" He told the people that the nobility was to be annihilated, and royalty abolished. Equal rights and equal duties were to be given and imposed upon every body. Hungary was large enough to keep all her children in plenty and case. Such theories were highly palatable to the peasants, and, acting up to them, they assassinated the landed proprietors, sacked the cities, and burned the castles of the magnates. This was fearful, but still more fearful was the revenge of the nobility, who attacked and routed the peasant forces at Szegedin. Dozsa was placed upon a throne of red-hot iron, and crowned with a crown of the same metal; his captains were tortured and executed. And the Diet, which assembled after the insurrection, punished the peasantry by condemning them to servitude, binding them to the glebe, and depriving them of all political rights."  Pulszky, p. 63.

The last sentence is a grain of Magyar dust, thrown at our eyes. If there were any of the poorer Magyars engaged in the rising, and if they were suffered to live, the sentence might apply to them. Summary vengeance was meted to the conquered peasantry.

The action of the Diet is more truly described by Eotvos (Vol. ITI. Note 3): » The Diet declared that the peasants had forfeited all their rights. They were degraded to the state of serfs, ad pcrpeluam ruslicitatem^ they could never purchase their emancipation, and rise to the estate of citizens." This law was enforced throughout the land. Some humane lords permitted their peasants to return to the old system of working for the castle a certain number of days in the week, and cultivating a piece of land for their own maintenance, and for the payment of the public burdens, but the laws forbade any thing of this sort to be done.

An opportunity occurred in 1715, under Charles the Sixth, for the Magyars to con Ion n to the laws of civilized Europe, in which feudalism had long disappeared. Several important constitutional reforms were proposed and carried in the Diet. A standing army was for the first time raised, and as the tax for its support was a new one, the Emperor desired the Magyars to pay it, They refused to do so, as it would be an atrocious violation of the Constitution to tax any free Magyar.

" They protested that, as they were the proprietors of the land, and as every burden on the peasant was a burden on his landlord, it followed that all that the peasants paid was in reality paid by them, and that to tax peasant and landlord meant to tax the landlord twice."Eotvos, Vol. 111. Note 3.

This reasoning was considered the perfection of logic in the Magyar assembly, and the poor peasant was accordingly taxed twice, or rather thrice. He had to pay his ninth to his lord, his tolls, taxes, and tithes to government, and the new war taxes besides.

We may here call attention to a remarkable fact. All the measures ever devised to oppress or enslave the people proceeded from Magyar sources. They had conquered the country, they had reserved the rights of freemen to themselves, and, with a few and generally fleeting exceptions, they reduced the entire Sclavonic population of Hungary proper to a state of servitude. Besides being deprived of every shadow of political right, the peasant was incapable of owning land, he was held to pay all taxes raised in the kingdom, and he was scarcely allowed to pray for common justice, while a thousand privileges he was for ever incapable of enjoying served to remind him that he belonged to a degraded race. The only Magyar authority from whence relief was ever promised was that of St. Stephen, and we have seen how the good intentions of the king were frustrated by the force of circumstances. Louis the First and Sigismund made some wise decrees in favor of the peasants, but Magyar pride rendered them of no effect. Louis was a prince of the house of Anjou, and Sigismund of Luxembourg was also Emperor of Germany; hence both had wider views than were current in Magyardom.    The Emperor Charles of Austria vainly attempted to induce the Magyars to pay the war taxes, as we have seen. At length the Empress Maria Theresa forced a reform into Hungary, in despite of Magyar opposition. In fact, she violated the Hungarian Constitution.

" Further, when, in 1764, the Diet refused to introduce a hill for the regulation of the relation of the peasant to the land-owner, which should distinctly define his rights and duties, she introduced by an absolute decree her Urbarium into Hungary, which, in spite of great defects, was yet very liberal for that period, and contained many elements of progress."  Pulszky, p. 88.

Austria simply wished to have the rights and duties of the serf distinctly settled, and the Magyars were determined that they should remain as they always had been, in constitutional confusion. Such a law would be excessively inconvenient, for the peasant would appeal to it too often, and so thwart the will of his lord. And yet the new measure did not abridge the rights of the lord ; it. found the peasant in bondage, and it left him there. It only provided against a few of the worst features of the oppressive system. The peasant had to pay his ninth, and his taxes. He had, it is 1rue, a piece of land to cultivate, and certain privileges in wood and turf cutting; but he was always liable to be oppressed in each of these particulars, and in ordinary cases without redress. The piece of land ceded to him might be exchanged for another, at the lord's caprice. The chief merit of the Urbarium was, that it clearly defined the rights and duties of the peasant in tax-paying, in wood and turf cutting, in the management and tenure of his little cession, and in a few other similar particulars. It simply protected the peasant from outrageous exactions, and yet, in the language of Pulszky, it was very liberal for that period. Foreign influence had proposed and partly introduced ameliorative measures into the system of Hungarian servitude, and here was a fourth, and the most efficient of all, emanating from the Austrian court, and enforced by an absolute decree, notwithstanding the negative vote of the Magyar Diet. The haughty sons of Arpad were so offended at the audacity of Austria in forcing liberty upon Hungary, that in the Diet of 1790, as Eotvos tells us, " they memorialized the crown about the manner in which the law had been introduced."

Yet the Diet gave the law a provisional ratification under the condition of a future revision. In fact, it would not have been safe to provoke the peasants and Austria by rejecting the decree. Nothing more was done by the Diet until the year 1836.

Joseph the Second, the son of Maria Theresa, attempted to abolish the whole Magyar system, and in their rage the Magyars refused, as they still do, to style him King of Hungary.    Pulszky says of him :

" He was a perfect specimen of a German philosopher, respect
ing no historical rights, boldly overturning the ancient order of
things In vain he proclaimed toleration, in vain he stud
ied to govern according to the law of reason; his ordinances were
not respected, because he had shaken tbe public rights to their
foundation."

At the Diet of 1790, a part of the imperial policy was seriously discussed,  that which related to the subject we are treating. But it was only discussed, for the Magyars were impracticable; they could agree upon nothing. The Emperor Francis called the attention of the next Diet to the subject, but it was again postponed, probably on account of the increasing troubles fomented by the French Revolution. The wars that ensued left Austria no time to think of any thing but her own interests. In 1832, the subject was once more urged by the Emperor upon the Diet. The language of his Majesty was so plain, that Magyar apologists have no other way of disposing of it than by impeaching his intentions, as if every reform in this quarter had not emanated from the court of Vienna.

" The Austrian cabinet, too prudent to enter into open contest with a movement which was evidently becoming national, affected to adopt tbe views of the liberal party, hoping, by an apparent and partial acquiescence, to allay the excitement of tbe public mind, and to restrain and direct a movement which it could not suppress. Tbe royal propositions embodied some of the principal measures of reform projected by tbe liberals."Examiner, p. 476.

This Diet revised the Urbarium of Maria Theresa, and the articles show to what a fearful extent the slaves had been oppressed for nine hundred years. The judicial power was taken from the lord. This power in substance implied the right of the lord to erect himself into a court, and sit in judgment upon his slave. The Magyar law allowed no appeal of the serf from his master, but this Diet abolished the iniquitous statute, and also empowered the slave to institute a suit against a noble. The right of free migration was enacted for the fourth time. The taxes had become very burdensome, and a few antiquated ones were abolished; the number of days the serf was bound to work for his lord was reduced, the quantity of land he could hold in cession was increased, and a law was passed making it possible for him to redeem his tithes and labor, whereby he might become owner of a small portion of the land.

These articles indicate a step taken in advance of Magy-arism. Yet they leave the peasant as they found him, a slave. Most of them were substantially contained in the Urbarium which the court of Vienna forced upon the Magyars, and all of them were sustained by the imperial recommendation earnestly made at the opening of the Diet. How Austria can be deprived of the credit of introducing measures which she persisted in enforcing in the first instance by an absolute decree, in despite of the strenuous opposition of the Magyars, and which she afterwards repeatedly urged upon the Diet, is a problem which we leave to our Magy-arized writers. The same Diet voted that nobles should no longer be exempted from arrest, and that they should pay toll when crossing the new suspension bridge at Pesth. All these measures encountered the most earnest opposition, says the Examiner, " from the old Magyar patriots, who regarded the institutions of their country with a superstitious affection, and in whose eyes it was a sacrilege to lay a finger upon one stone of the venerable edifice."

At the Diet of 1843, the Emperor again reminded the Magyars that it was necessary to prosecute the work of reform. The previous measures which had been carried, making a peasant capable of being a freeman, and of owning land, were in danger of becoming a dead letter, unless something further was done. The laws exempting freemen from taxation were also to be reconsidered. The Diet acted upon the recommendations of the court of Vienna so far as to decree that the peasant should be capable, not only of becoming a freeman, but of buying the property of a noble, and of holding office,  after his emancipation, of course. But how was he to obtain his freedom? The Diet would not hearken to any proposition contemplating the emancipation of the entire peasantry. There was no obvious method of remunerating the lord for the loss of his peasant.
 
Worse than this, the peasants in Hungary proper outnumbered the Magyars, and if they were all freemen, they would outvote and domineer over their former tyrants. So the only peasant who could possibly profit by the new law was he who was rich enough to purchase his freedom. As for holding office, or being received as an equal into Magyar society, he was capable of it, and so is a black citizen of Massachusetts capable of holding a high office in the State.

The sincerity of the Magyars in all these measures for the emancipation of the peasants may be accurately estimated from what passed in the same Diet when the proposition to equalize the taxes was under consideration. It is clear, that, while the peasants bore all the public burdens and the freemen were exempted from them, there could be no such thing as liberty or equality before the law, or fraternity hi society. Strenuous attempts were made to induce the Magyars to submit themselves to a law equalizing the taxes and other burdens imposed by the state. The court of Vienna was backed by Szecheny in the upper house, and by 1he radicals in the lower assembly. But their eloquence was thrown away. " The royal propositions," says the Examiner (pp. 480, 487), " called the attention of the Diet to some of the principal measures of reform demanded by the liberal party The liberal party
could not, however, yet succeed in obtaining the passage of a law for the equal distribution of the taxes." The Diet of 1843 found the peasant a slave, and it left him a slave.

We come now to the famous Diet of 1848, the last Magyar assembly that was, or perhaps ever will be, held. It opened on the 5th of .July, lour months after the revolution in Paris, and three after the insurrection at Vienna. The main business of the Diet was to suppress the disturbances caused by the Sclavcs, who were everywhere rising, and to extort as much as possible from the Emperor iu his helpless state. But it was absolutely necessary to do so'mething in relation to the peasant reform. A radical party had grown silently in the very bosom of Magyardom. It was headed by Baron TCotvos and Szernere. In the Diet the party embraced more than one twelfth of the members; but it found little favor with the magnates, and still less with the untitlcd nobility, who were at this time headed by Kossuth. u It was composed," says Pulszky, " chiefly of young men of letters, who, lull of spirit and ability, were but too prone to discover the weak and faulty parts of the county government Their leaders, though spirited and witty, failed in bringing their ideas home to the minds of their readers. The national instincts of the Magyars were opposed to such notions."

This party was untiring in its efforts to bring about a thorough reform in Hungary. It is probable that the liberal measures passed in preceding Diets, agreeably to the royal recommendations, would have been lost without their support. Many of them had a perfect understanding with the democrats of Paris and Vienna, and hence they knew, as early as 1846, that a general rebellion was in contemplation. The programme of 1847, published by some of the Hungarian opposition, and setting forth the reforms to be demanded at the Diet of 1848, met their concurrence as a pro tempore measure. They were probably sincere in wishing that the peasants should be admitted to the rights of Hungarian citizenship. Accordingly, when Kossuth decreed the emancipation of the peasants, he received their support. They had failed in a motion for a republic, but they were willing to vote for any measure that tended in that direction.

This measure of Kossuth has been extolled far more than it deserves. It is true that he decreed the emancipation of the slaves, but the measure could not fail to be illusory. It was necessary to promise the peasants something, to keep them friendly, or at least quiet, during the coming struggle. It may be that Kossuth meant, by a bold stroke, to anticipate the court of Vienna, which made the same decree on the 4th of March, 1849. The young Krnperor ascended the throne on the 3d of December, and it was immediately whispered that he would do what he did in three months for the Sclaves. At the end of the same month, Kossuth's party had not carried their measure in all its necessary details. They were yet discussing the question how the lord should be remunerated for the loss of his slave, and Kossuth could think of no better way than by robbing the Church of her lands. This last consideration we oiler simply as a conjecture, but it is certain that the menacing position of the Sclaves rendered some act in their behalf imperiously necessary, and Kossuth promised them what he must have known he could not perform, and his promise was received by them for just what it was worth. The reasons why he could not perform it are evident. The party represented by him was the mass of the Magyar nation, the untitled nobility. This has been denied, but uselessly. Nothing is more certain than that the magnates, with scarcely au exception, kept aloof from him and from his party.

" Szechenyi's followers were members of the high aristocracy, who resided in the metropolis, and scarcely ever busied themselves about the county election;::."Pulszky, in Eotvos, p. v. " Kossuth's party was supreme, both in strength and in numbers. The middle classes and the gentry belonged to it."Ibid. The middle; classes here, mentioned were the poor Magyar population, the untitled nobility. Now this party would have been utterly swamped, destroyed, by the measure of unfettered emancipation, as it was proposed by Kossuth. For the Sclaves outnumbered the Magyars in Hungary, and they would outvote them, of course; the sceptre would pass from the master to the slave of nine hundred years standing, to the slave embittered by the unredressed wrongs of so many ages, and who hated his master as truly as his master hated, feared, and despised him. Considering the relations between Magyar and Selave as they have subsisted for so many centuries, it is easy to see what would be the consequence if the latter once obtained the ascendency which Kossuth promised him. Magyardom would be utterly swamped. It would be annihilated in the Diet, and in all the county and town elections. Could any Magyar propose such a suicidal measure ? Moreover, the Magyar untitled nobility comprised thousands who were utterly beneath many peasants in point of personal property and attainments. And yet the meanest Magyar was immeasurably above the Selave most distinguished for virtue, talent, and personal wealth, on account of the rights and privileges secured to his race. The following observation of Puls/ky will not only afford additional proof of the fact, that, as a general rule, the only freemen of Hungary were Magyars, but it will give an exact description of the party represented by Kossuth¦

"The nobles were, in fact, all those who possessed the full and uncurtailcd privileges of citizenship, and this in right of birth, not of property, comprehending, not only many little cultivators who tilled with their own hands the plot of land they themselves possessed, or rented from wealthier owners, but even many who supported themselves by the very useful, though not very aristocratic, pursuils of butchers, bootmakers, tailors, and grooms. These nobles, setting aside other personal privileges which they enjoyed, were the county electors. The whole number of voters lias been estimated at six or seven hundred thousand persons in a population offourteen millions."p. 117.

The magnates of Hungary had little to fear from peasant emancipation if they received pecuniary remuneration, but what a loss would accrue to these untitled nobles who were distinguished from the Sclavcs only by their Magyar rights! " The common soldiers," says Pulszky (p. 305), " the alone unequalled heroes of the day, were sons of tin; people, upon whom Kossuth's influence ever remained unquestioned." Kossuth's measure, then, was opposed by the magnates because he could not make good their loss, and the untitled nobility would not hear of any thing more than a promise, of it, because it would utterly ruin them, as Magyars, if carried into effect.

But there is abundance of other proof, that the measure was simply promised to gain time. We have seen that the Magyars were, from the earliest times, opposed even to an amelioration of the peasant condition. The emancipation of the peasants would have amounted, not to a reform, but to the utter destruction of the Hungarian Constitution. This is evident, because it is an instrument expressly designed to secure the eternal ascendency of the Magyar race. And the other plans and declarations of Kossuth show that he was determined to maintain this constitution at all hazards. Austrian infringements upon it constituted one of the pretexts for the war. " The German democrats were estranged from the Magyars, because these were not willing to destroy nobility.".Pulszky, p. 150. " Hungary, which refused to give up its nationality, and to destroy aristocracy, was considered as a dangerous enemy by the Sclavonic and Bohemian parties."Ibid., p. 199. The Hungary of which the authoress speaks in these places was the Hungary represented at the Diet of 1848-49¦; it was the untitled nobility, headed by Kossuth. " Nobody believed that the English aristocracy would allow the only sound aristocracy of the Continent to be destroyed by Austria."  Ibid., p. 288. We give one more extract from the declaration of independence.

" The form of the government to be-adopted for the future will be fixed by the Diet. But until this point shall be decided on the basis of the ancient and received principles which have heen recognized for ages, their possessions and dependencies shall be conducted by Louis Kossuth."

We have seen that this Kossuth party had no leaning whatever towards republicanism, in fact, the Magyars offered to recognize the young'Emperor as king, if he would swear to maintain the Hungarian Constitution. The Emperor answered with the Constitution of the 4th of March, and from that moment all hope of accommodation ended. The new Constitution declared the peasants free. Now Kossuth had promised the same thing, but he knew that the Emperor would do it. Francis Joseph proposed to remunerate the proprietors, not by robbing the Church, but by selling the crown lands in Hungary. The untitled nobility, headed by Kossuth, saw that the peasant emancipation would ruin Magyardom for ever, and then, that is, after the Emperor had decreed it, and sent an army to enforce that and other measures, the Diet declared Magyardom independent of Austria!

Two things are evident from this recital of a few among the many facts given by our Magyar authors. One is, that the Magyars have always opposed every plan for the amelioration of the condition of the slaves, and that Austria deserves the credit of doing nearly all that has been done in this Held. She has entreated and recommended the Magyars to be just to the peasants. She has gone to the length of forcing them, sorely against their will, to give them a beggarly instalment of justice. Finally, on the 4th of March, 1849, she abrogated the whole Constitution, which was inseparably connected with the iniquitous system. So that Austria has all along been the real champion of freedom in Hungary. So far as the relations between the races are concerned, the only liberty she has opposed is the liberty of one race to hold another in a subjection compared to which our Southern slavery is freedom. The other conclusion is, that, when Americans believed the Magyars to be at all disposed to lavor a republic, they never were more shockingly deceived. In England they understood the matter far better. The only great mistake made there was in believing that the distinctions of the Hungarian Constitution, to uphold which Kossuth plunged the country into a disastrous war, were distinctions founded upon classes only, and not upon races, as we have shown they are. This huge lie; was told in England to make the people believe that the two Constitutions were exactly alike, for all the distinctions recognized in England by the Constitution are predicated of classes. For the rest, the people of England thoroughly understood that the Magyar movement was essentially aristocratic, and their sympathies for it were challenged on this account. In France, too, the aristocratic character of the whole a flair was well understood. Lainartine, in his book on the republic, says: " I do not pretend 1 hat a quarrel of a part of the Hungarian people, the Magyar race, against another part, the Selavic race, and that struggle of Hungary, thus divided with iiself and against Austria, was the least in the world a French, or even a democratic caiise. I know perfectly Avell that it was nothing of the sort. It was a civil war among the Hungarians themselves, growing out of quarrels historical in their origin, and out of jealousies of race."

Persons who have read the Hungarian declaration of independence have doubtless observed that the Magyars in every part of it darkly insinuate the real cause that drove them to make that declaration, and nowhere expressly mention it. That cause was the great act of the Emperor, whereby, on the 4th of March, he struck the chains from the limbs of ten million subjects of the Sclavonic race inhabiting Hungary, Croatia, and Transylvania,  chains which they had worn for nine centuries, ¦ and decreed that the four million Magyars should only lie freemen, and that the Sclaves should be as free as their old oppressors. The Magyar grandees cared little about it, so that they were repaid for their loss, for they would then occupy a place with reference to the late peasants and the late untitled nobles which an English nobleman occupies with reference 1o the mass of the people. Nay, it is very probable that the haughty magnates were pleased with the change. Their behaviour during the war, their steady opposition to Kossuth, seem to prove it, and the reason may have been, that the magnate would no longer be elbowed by his own Magyar noble groom at the election, or be reminded that the poor Magyar claimed, with himself, and quite as strenuously, the privileges of blood, and was as decided an aristocrat as the grandee. It was to avoid unpleasant reminders of this sort that the magnate rarely appeared at county meetings, and it is quite likely that he was little disturbed to see the whole body of poor nobles lost in the great Sclavonic tide of slaves emancipated by Austria. To this emancipation, which was the death-warrant of untitled Magyardom, the world is indebted for the grandiloquent and not very veracious Hungarian declaration of independence. Bearing in mind what has hitherto been said, we are prepared to comprehend the meaning of passages in that document like these:  "It was only necessary that Austria should not envy the Magyars the moderate share of constitutional liberty which they timidly maintained with rare fidelity to their sovereigns." " The house of Austria has publicly used every effort to deprive the country of its legitimate independence and Constitution, designing to reduce it to a level with the other provinces long since deprived of freedom." " Hungary only asked that its Constitution might be guaranteed, and its abuses rectified." " The young Emperor declared his intention of depriving the nation of that independence which it had maintained for a thousand years."

Expressions like these occur in every paragraph, and their meaning is obvious. The Magyars mingle with this complaint another grievance of the first magnitude. Austria had not only emancipated the peasants of Hungary, but she had finally delivered Croatia and Transylvania from the tyranny of Magyardom. The Magyars claimed both these provinces as theirs.

It has been we'll observed, that if the cause of the Magyars against Austria was worth any thing, that of the Croatians against the Magyars was unimpeachable. The real quarrel of the Magyars with the Emperor was, not that he had deprived them of their freedom, which is a ridiculous accusation, since Ihe new republican Constitution of Austria secures to them a freedom really greater than they enjoyed before, but that he had annulled their privilege of holding millions in entire or partial bondage. The quarrel of the Croatians with the Magyars was, that these had oppressed Croatia to an extent that had exhausted the patience of the nation, and that it had accordingly drawn the sword to assert its independence. The Magyars asked to be exalted above the Croatians,.The Croatians asked to be equal to the Magyars. Hence the civil war in Hungary between the two races.    At first, the court of Vienna seemed disposed to favor the  Magyars, but sober, second thought enlisted her on the side of the oppressed Croatians.

Croatia was settled by a Sclavonic tribe as early as the year 652, more than two centuries before the descent of the Magyars into Europe. Hungary was already peopled by the Czechs and Serbs, when Arpad overran the country, and reduced the greater part of the natives to servitude. Croatia bounded Hungary on the south, and it afforded an asylum to many fugitives from the neighbouring tract of the conquered country. It is probable that the natives of Soutliern Hungary, as well as the Croats, belonged to the Illyrian branch of the Sclavonic family; and the Croats, partly from sympathy, partly from fear, began to regard the Magyars as the common enemy, and the two nations have since entertained for one another any thing but friendly feelings. It has been remarked often, that Croatia is the Ireland of Hungary. It is certain that the cause of Croatia against the Magyars is substantially that of the Irish Catholics against England. The Henry the Second of Croatia was Ladislas, the sixth Christian king of Magyar-land. He subdued the Croatians about the year 1090, nearly two hundred years after the irruption of the Magyars into Hungary. Under his successor, Koloman, the Croats attempted to free their country from the foreign yoke. "They believed," says Pulszky (p. 27), "that the new king was utterly ignorant of the trade of arms. He suppressed the insurrection, and completed the incorporation of Croatia." The last expression is a figure of speech. Andreas, the younger son of Bela the Third, seized Croatia and Dalmatia, and held them until the death of his brother Emrich enabled him to ascend the Hungarian throne. Under Andreas the Third, the last monarch of the house of Arpad, the Croats, who had never ceased to trouble the frontier, rose against the Magyars, and for a time they were virtually independent, it appears that they were pretty thoroughly subdued under Louis the Great, who was crowned in 1342. "When his daughter, Maria, was crowned queen, the Croatians again flew to arms, and the queen, hoping that her beauty and innocence would plead strongly in her favor, attended by a small army of Magyars, ventured into Croatia. But the Croats received her very much as Duffy proposes to receive Victoria. " The Croats   proved   inaccessible   to   romantic   sentimentality.
The Ban Horvathy attacked the Hungarian guards at Diakovar, and defeated them ; Gara and Forgaes were, in spite of their heroic resistance, dragged from their horses, and beheaded under the very eyes of the queen, and of her mother, who were plundered of their jewels, and imprisoned in the Dalmatian castle of Novigrod."  Pulszky, p. 53. Sigismund of Luxembourg was elected king, and, by a treaty with the Ban Horvathy, the queen was liberated. Her mother had been previously executed by the vindictive Croats. Croatia maintained its independence for some years, notwithstanding Sigismund had entrapped upwards of twenty chiefs at Buda, by solemn promises of amnesty, and had them executed on the spot. Until the fall of the Hungarian branch of the house of Anjou, which happened when Louis the Second was defeated and slain by the Turks at Mohacs, in .1526, Croatia remained in an unsettled state. When Ferdinand of Austria was elected by the Magyars king of Hungary, the Croats, who never lost an opportunity of troubling their hereditary enemies, and, moreover, were by no means anxious to have a German rule over them, declared in favor of Zapolya, the rival of Ferdinand. Towards the middle of the sixteenth century, a new source of dissension arose between the Magyars and the Croats. The principles of the so-called Reformation found favor among the Magyars, while Croatia steadily resisted all attempts to graft the new doctrines upon her soil. The Catholic Magyars speedily lost their ascendency in the .Diet, and did not recover it until 1G47. During this time Hungary was in a deplorable state, and the Protestant party, as if to involve every thing in inextricable confusion, did not hesitate repeatedly to invoke the assistance of the Turks. Croatia also suffered much, in common with Hungary, from the incessant inroads of the Turks, who, at one time, possessed more than one third of the entire kingdom. After the expulsion of the Mahometans from the Empire, Croatia was forced to be content with a union, such as it was, with Hungary ; but the national discontent, which had been kept alive eight hundred years, declared itself emphatically in 1.848, when the Croats Hew to arms at the call of Jellachich, and began the series of offensive measures against the Magyars, which, in 1849, resulted in the independence of Croatia.

The Fiinperor Ferdinand, in  his first manifesto to the Croatians and Sclavonians, truly says that they alone among the Sclavonic nations have been enabled to pro-serve a certain degree of constitutional freedom for centuries. This was because the Croats, who were always good soldiers, never lost an opportunity of annoying the Magyars, and these were compelled to recognize the Croats as, in a certain sense, a distinct nation. They seldom granted any thing to Croatia, unless when the strong hand forced them to do it. There were serfs in Croatia and in the other Sclavonic provinces, as well as in Hungary ; but in Magyarland the freemen and the serf were of different races, and this circumstance made a wide difference between the lot of the serf in Hungary, and his lot in Croatia. Where the lord ai.d the slave are of the same race, the peasant often can and does rise above the condition in which he was born. The tie of blood always exerts a mitigating influence upon the feudal relations founded merely upon class distinctions. Croatia had a sort of diet of her own, and a Ban, or governor, who was generally of Sclavonic blood. There was also a local supreme court of justice, called the Banal Table, and another tribunal for the hearing of civil causes. But the local assembly of the Croats had less power than was lodged in the Irish Parliament. The Magyars allowed them to enjoy some of the forms of constitutional government, which were rendered almost null by the inborn pride of the ascendant race. The Examiner (p. 494) says that " the citizens of Croatia were in many places debarred from the exercise of their political rights. They were attacked and driven from the place of elections by the members of the Illyrian faction, furnished with arms from the public arsenals. In vain they appealed to the king." The citizens of whom she speaks were Magyars, or Magyarized Sclaves. The Illyrian faction comprehended the great majority of the inhabitants of Croatia and Sclavonia, who were of Sclavonic blood. The Magyars were not disposed to favor Croatia, because she had ever been a thorn in their sides. Then their own slaves in Hungary were of the same race as the Croats, and hence their pride forbade them to acknowledge these as equals. The game of Saxon and Celt was played in Croatia as well as in Ireland.

Language was another bone of contention. The Magyars scorned to speak  in  the Sclavonic tongue, and the Sclaves hated the Magyar language too much to learn it. Yet it was one of the loudest complaints of the Croats, that the Magyars were resolved to introduce their language everywhere in Croatia, not only in the courts of justice, but in every public institution wheve it was at all practicable. It is pretty certain that these complaints were well founded. England endeavoured in a similar way to naturalize the English language in Ireland, and she has partially succeeded. Moreover, the Croats averred that the Magyars had from the beginning pursued a system towards Croatia, calculated to annul the best local and national rights of the people, and to Magyarize the country. The Magyars inhabiting Croatia too loudly and offensively asserted their privileges of blood. Then the Magyar central Diet exercised controlling influence over all the concerns of Croatia, and, of course, discountenanced every effort of the Croats in a national direction, and aimed to introduce into the land Magyar institutions, as far as practicable. The Parliament of England has steadily pursued a similar course with reference to Ireland, and with what success every Irishman can tell. This central Diet of Hungary was composed of two houses. The deputies of the lower house numbered from four to five hundred. Croatia, as a province of Hungary, was allowed to send deputies to the Diet. How many ? Perhaps twenty ? " Croatia," says the Examiner, " sent three deputies to the Diet, one of whom sat in the upper, and two in the lower house." It is easy to conceive what would be the treatment of the two Sclaves in an assembly of nearly five hundred Magyars. The Magyars in the whole kingdom numbered four millions, and they were represented by the five hundred deputies. Croatia, with a population of nearly two millions, sent three men to represent her. In effect, the four or five Sclave deputies who received a scornful permission to sit in the Diet with five hundred Magyars, represented a Selave population of nine millions. Daniel O'Connell, in the Imperial Parliament, called his brethren a race of hereditary bondsmen, and yet Ireland was far better treated at Westminster than Croatia in the Diet. The Croat deputies had always insisted upon speaking in Latin in the Diet. But in 1836, says Pulszky (p. 100), "the law [the Magyars] decided that henceforth the Magyar should be the language of the Diet, granting an exception to the Croatian deputies only, who continued to speak in Latin. In 1844 it was decreed that in the Diet the Croatian members should likewise use the Magyar tongue, but should be allowed five years more to learn it."

So the Croats rebelled in 1848. Jellachich crossed the Drave, and carried the war into Magyarland. Croatia is now an independent province of the Empire. Our democrats, who have so stupidly supposed that the Magyar cause was the cause of republican principles, will do well to study the Magyar declaration of independence, in which the Croats are denounced in almost every paragraph as rebels, and with a bitterness that scarcely has a parallel in the most envenomed proclamations of wrathful kings. Yet, reasoning from democratic principles, the Selaves of Croatia had a u sacred right of revolution" to be exercised according to their sovereign will. Yet, setting aside this argument ad hominem, nothing is more certain than that Croatia had always been very badly treated by Magyar-dom. Whoever recognizes the justice of the Irish cause cannot avoid acknowledging that the Croatian cause was as good.

An attentive consideration of the facts we have thus far adduced will make it evident that the Magyar cause, on which so much sympathy has been wasted in this country, was not only anti-republican, but radically a bad cause. The whole trouble in Hungary arose from the fact that the Sclave population almost simultaneously revolted against the Magyars, who had oppressed them for so many ages. It was simply a civil war,  a war of races upon Hungarian ground. The Austrian government was neutral. " The transactions of Croatia with Hungary," says Pulszky (p. 165), " could legally be settled between them without any interference from Austria." " From Vienna, likewise," {Ibid., p. 169,) " volunteers came to Hungary. Since Jellachich had crossed the Drave, enlistments for the Magyars had publicly taken place in Vienna, with the knowledge of the Minister of the Interior. Baron Dobblhoff looked on the Croatian invasion as a matter in which he was wholly neutral. Pie permitted the enlistment for the Magyars, and simultaneously an enrolment for Jellachich." In fact, Jellachich professed to fight in the name of Ferdinand, Emperor of Austria, and the Magyars denounced him in the name of the same Ferdinand, King of Hungary.    This neutrality of Austria could not long be maintained, of course, because, although the seat of war was not in the hereditary dominions of the Emperor, yet it was actually threatening to ravage a part of his empire. Jellachich did not cross the Drave until the 9th of September, 1848. The Emperor had forbidden him to hold the southern Sclave congress at Agram, and had on the 10th of July issued his famous manifesto, in which he openly sides with the Magyars, and denounces Jellachich as a traitor. By the end of September, it was pretty evident that the court of Vienna had determined to leave the Magyars to their fate, and encourage Jellachich. Yet the Magyars continued to denounce the Croats in the name of Ferdinand, King of Hungary. When the young Emperor, Francis Joseph, ascended the throne, on the 2d of December, the Magyars hoped that he might assist them in crushing the rebellion of the Croats, and the Diet signified that Magyardom would recognize the new monarch, if he would consent to be crowned with the crown of St. Stephen, and acknowledge the legal rights of Hungary, that is, the ascendency of the Magyars over the other races. It was not until the 4th of March, 1849, when Francis Joseph gave his remarkably republican constitution to the Empire, which deprived the Magyars of their " historical privileges," leaving them in a state of perfect equality with the Sclaves, that they declared Hungary independent of the Empire.

Here our limits compel us to pause for the present; but our readers may expect the conclusion of the sketch, and a full defence of the Austrian government, in our next number.
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