Austria and Hungary

Brownson's Quarterly Review, April, 1852

Art. III. — Les Saints Lieux. Pelcrinage a Jerusalem, en passant par VAutriche, la Hongrie) la Slavonie, les Provinces Danrdnennes, Constantinople, PArchipel, le Liban, la Sf/rie, Alexandria Matte, la Sicile, el Marseille. Par Mgr. Mislin, Abbe Mitre de Sainte-Marie de Deg en Hongrie, Camcrier Secret de S. S. Pie IX., Chevalier du Saint-Sepulchre, Commandeur de l'Ordre Constantinien de Saint-Georges de Parrne, Membre de plusieurs Academies de la Suisse, de Rome, et de la Tuscane. A Paris: Guyot Freres.    1851.    8vo.    2 tomes.

These are two interesting and in various respects highly instructive volumes. The author is a native of Switzerland, and was formerly tutor to the young Archdukes of Austria, and, we believe, to the present Emperor Francis Joseph. He is a man of learning and talents, of firm faith and sincere and tender piety. He travels as a Catholic and as an ecclesiastic, but as one who well knows the world, as a shrewd observer, and as an able and impartial commentator on what he sees and hears. A more pleasant, instructive, and trustworthy traveller it has rarely been our good fortune to meet, or one whose accounts of the countries through which he has passed are more interesting or more important. We see and learn more of them in his pages than we could by visiting them ourselves, for he always seizes the right point of view, and shows you the precise things a Catholic traveller ought to see and become acquainted with. His account of the Holy Places in the East we must reluctantly leave to a future article, as well as his observations on Constantinople and the Ottoman Empire, in order to confine ourselves to some remarks he offers in passing on the late revolutions in Austria and Hungary.

The Abbe Mislin set out from Vienna on his pilgrimage to the Holy Places on the 24th of June, 1848, after the first Red Republican revolution in that city, and just before the open revolt of Kossuth and the Magyars. His position at the court of Austria gave him a good opportunity of understanding the character and purposes of each, and his candor, independence, and obvious good faith render his statements worthy of all confidence. He loves Austria, indeed, and is strongly attached to the imperial family, but he is no blind idolater of Austrian policy, and though far from sympathizing with the false liberalism of the age, he comments with great freedom on the acts of the imperial government. We cannot better prove what we say, than by letting him speak at some length for himself.

"It was from Vienna in Austria that I set out on my pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Having returned in the early part of 1848 to that capital, where I had resided many years, it was not long before I became a witness to the events which followed the revolution of February and the unexpected fall of Louis Philippe. The proclamation of the republic in France was hailed in Austria with shouts of joy, not merely by the anarchists, but also by men in power. These feared constitutional ideas much more than republicanism, and believed that the overthrow of constitutional thrones would consolidate the absolute monarchies. The anarchists foresaw all the advantages which might be derived from this thunder-clap which was reverberating on the banks of the Seine, and which must shake all the old monarchies of Europe.

" Some attempts at insurrection had been made in several provinces of the Empire, but they had been easily suppressed, in part by the people, and in part by the army, which for the most part at all times remained faithful to its sovereign. Then the Polish, Italian, and Hungarian revolutionists, directed by the clubs of France and Germany, comprehended very well that it was neither at Milan, nor at Presburg, nor at Cracow, that they could overturn the Austrian monarchy, but that it was necessary to strike it in its heart, — and they appointed their rendezvous at Vienna. The 13th of March, while the members of the Estates, professors, and lawyers bore their respectful petitions to the foot of the throne, believing that only some reforms were demanded, the real reformers, aided by the students of the University and the populace, made a revolution in the streets. Assuredly, if in such a case the goodness and loyalty of the sovereign could save a state, Austria would have escaped the scourge of a revolution ; but for those who wished the ruin of the Empire, the announcement of the concessions made by the Emperor became merely a signal of revolt.

" The revolutionists at first turned the popular hatred against a man whom they had for a long time designated as the keystone of the arch of the ancient system. This man was removed, and the same day the monarchy crumbled to pieces. But the edifice was everywhere undermined, and all the genius of Metternich could no longer have sufficed to uphold it. Besides, however great had been the influence of this statesman, it was not, at least had not been for some years, so preponderating as to render him responsible for the acts of the Austrian government. He had against him the constant opposition of one of his colleagues, sustained by a bureaucracy the most jealous, the most Voltarian, the most numerous, the most indomitable, and the most powerful to be found in the world. For a long time there had been no unity in the government, and it could be neither strong nor durable.

" Having entered upon the affairs of state in the sequel of the old French Revolution, and during the disastrous wars in the early years of the present century, Prince Metternich was able, in the Congress of Vienna, to reconstruct a powerful state from the vast provinces of the ancient monarchy so powerfully shaken by the conquests of Napoleon. It was not in his power to fuse all the heterogeneous elements which composed the Austrian empire, and to form from nationalities so different and so opposed one to another as the German, the Hungarian, the Italian, the Bohemian, &c, perfect national unity. He cemented together the materials which Providence furnished him ; the weather or revolution dissolved the cement, and the edifice fell to pieces. But the different races that composed this grand empire too soon forgot that the acts of Prince Metternich had been infinitely more useful to Austria than the conquests of Napoleon to France.
" In Austria harmony was preserved by a skilful balancing of province against province, and of their reciprocal pretensions. Austria has often been blamed for this system, which, however, was for her a necessity, and at the same time an act of good government. France will always be o«e, whether as a monarchy or as a republic. Paris has become France; all is centralized there ; centralization in Austria is an impossible evil. In general, the provinces were well administered ; nevertheless, if more development, more life, had been given to provincial and municipal institutions, they would, perhaps, in the hour of danger, have been found powerful auxiliaries, instead of emitting from their bosom, as was the case, the first sparks of that fire which is now consuming the monarchy.

"But would it answer any good purpose in these times to attempt by means of concessions to allay the storm which is everywhere raging ? It is not when the river overflows its banks, but when it flows peaceably in its channel, that durable dikes can be constructed against its foreseen inundations. Prince Metternich did not lack foresight. He perhaps was not well informed of the nature of the movement that broke out at Vienna, on the 13th of March, but he had for a long time followed the progress of revolution in Europe with all the clear-sightedness of his genius, and he has often been heard to say, ' We are hastening with giant strides towards an abyss.'
" People and kings have rushed onward to the precipice with equal blindness. Revolutions, those eternal scourges of God, succeed each other, as formerly those hordes of barbarians whom God sent against those  he  would chastise.    This chastisement is the most terrible that can be inflicted on the human race. * God,' says Bossuet, ' sends them to punish scandals, to awaken the faithful and their pastors, the people and sovereigns ; sends the seducing spirit to deceive haughty souls, and to diffuse everywhere a haughty chagrin, an indocile curiosity, and a spirit of rebellion.'* (footnote: * Bossuet, Oraison funebre de la Heine d'Anghterre. end of footnote) To strike a death-blow at Austria, the revolutionists hypocritically revived in the provinces a vain spirit of nationality. This the secret societies labored assiduously to effect. Then, on a convenient day, the 13th of March, the delegates of the twenty nations, or rather, twenty clubs, proclaimed the revolution under the windows of Prince Metternich, and in the evening he went into exile. These were the real actors, all the rest were simpletons or dupes. The Austrian people were as much surprised by their revolution as were the rest of Europe. The Viennese themselves had no suspicion of what they had done, if we except a fanatical sect which is sure to appear in evil times, like birds of prey on the field of battle, or wherever there is a carcass to devour. The Jews contributed powerfully to the revolution, and these knew what they were about.* (footnote: *As much as I am led by character, by principle, and, above all, as a Christian and a priest, to preach forbearance, and to rise against the unjust persecutions of which the Jews are sometimes the victims, I must still brand with infamy the conduct of those among them who use all the means in their power to disturb and ruin the states which afford them hospitality, and who pay with their gold for the publication of the most infamous libels against religion and government. end of footnote).

"Foreign emissaries had indeed some accomplices in the interior; but at first these were limited to a small number of nobles greedy of popularity, to booksellers who wished to sell publicly unlicensed publications which they had long been selling privately, advocates who aspired to be ministers, medical doctors without patients, desirous of trying on a suffering public the experiments suggested by their rash empiricism, and professors without talent, without conviction, and without faith, who had taught their pupils to rebel against God, waiting for an opportunity to teach them to stir up an insurrection in the streets. These all made use of young persons, rash and inexperienced, whom they might disavow at need ; but, placed in advance by men who were less courageous, these young persons remained there. Hence it is that we saw for the first time in the annals of the world one of the most powerful monarchies governed by the students of a university.

"Whilst they conducted the car of state through the rugged roads of insurrection and terrorism, the population of Vienna, proud of the precocious reputation of their young Phaetons, imprudently yoked themselves to it, and ran with them to cast themselves into the abyss. From the very beginning, men of the old nobility, generally esteemed for their character, their talents, and their experience, and who had adopted in good faith the innovations of the month of March, endeavored by devotion to their sovereign and their country to give a regular direction to the progress of affairs, to ally liberty with order and justice, and thus prevent the ruin of the state. Then it was that we saw the Count de Fiquelmont charged with Foreign Affairs, the Count de Latour Minister of War, and the Count de Hoyos at the head of the National Guard. But their very titles were crimes ; the people screamed, It is aristocracy, camarilla, reaction !
 The populace of Vienna invented then a new constitutional means to rid themselves of the ministers. This was the charivari. During the night, some hundreds of workmen, students, and National Guards assembled before the houses of the functionaries marked out for insult, and forced them to resign their offices. One of the ministers, M. von Pillersdorf, was able for a time to sustain himself in office by means of concessions. He had been the representative of the revolution in the Council of State, under the former order of things, lie became unexpectedly Minister of the Interior, and charged to form a ministry. Without character, without energy, without any fixed purpose or definite end, his policy was always to give way ; a deputation, a few cries in the street, an article in a newspaper, infallibly resulted in obtaining from him a dangerous measure, of which he could not calculate the reach : he appeared to hold, that to flatter the people is to govern.

" All the powers, however, were more and more concentrated in the hands of the students; and the inhabitants of Vienna, now so proud to belong to a constitutional state, submitted with a bonhomie which seemed to flow from imbecility to the most arbitrary and despotic government ever known. t When the multitude are once taken by the bait of liberty, they follow as blind men provided that they only hear its name.' *(footnote: * Bossuet, ubi supra.)  We can with difficulty conceive the abject state to which the Viennese were sunk before these petty tyrants of twenty-one.

" The students, while they yet suspected the intentions of the National Guard, made an appeal to those upon whom they had fired on the 14th and 15th of March, and joined the populace. The greater part of the National Guard were at first well-intentioned. They desired order, and would have been contented with the liberties obtained on the 13th, 14th, and 15th of March; liberties which they compromised, by believing that it remained for them to defend them, and  that by marching at the tail of the University and populace they would abdicate their dignity, and sacrifice to fear their liberty, their fortune, their existence, and that of the monarchy.

" The alliance of the National Guard, of the students, and of the populace once completed, there were seen frequently at Vienna what are called demonstrations. These scenes were at first hypocritical, then they became threatening, and at length so revolting, that in the night of the 17th of May the Emperor was obliged to leave his capital with all his family. He who had given his people liberty was the only one that was not free, and the Viennese must for ever blush, that on the evening of the 15th of May they turned against the sovereign whom they had sumamed the Good those very arms which he himself had given them.

" However, all these demonstrations were the work of a directing club, who from the bowels of the earth, where they were concealed, the same day and hour, by secret means, moved the blinded populations of Paris, Frankfort, Berlin, Vienna, Naples, and Home. All these people believed themselves free, and yet they obeyed servilely unknown, irresponsible masters, who commanded all their proceedings, all their actions, all their thoughts, and all their assassinations.
" The terrorism which hung over Vienna soon drove from this city all who could live elsewhere. Their departure was said to be a plot of the aristocracy and the rich to ruin the poor people. The resources diminished daily, commerce languished, public credit was gone, the workmen threatened the proprietors, anarchy was complete within, new crises were inevitable. Yet in such a state of things it was necessary to carry on the war in Italy.

" If the revolutionists wished not to preserve to the monarchy its most beautiful province [the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom] they would at least, one would think, interest themselves in the fate of that army under Radetzky, composed of their brothers and sons, who, believing themselves bound by their oath, daily exposed themselves to death with a bravery that commands the admiration of Europe, not excepting even Italy herself. And yet I very much doubt if there was anywhere a city where the victories of the Austrian army were received with more displeasure than at Vienna, where the very flag of that army was proscribed. It mattered little to these false patriots that province after province should be lost to the Empire; for the only empire which existed for them, that which commanded all their sympathies, was not Austria, but the revolutionary empire which embraced all Europe. They disavowed the army of Italy, and Count de Latour was obliged to apologize for sending it reinforcements. The army sustained itself by its valor and its fidelity, and it was the sole support of the state, which  its own citizens sought with a blind fury to destroy. Experience has demonstrated, that, if there is a good constitution in Austria, it is that of the army.

" The evil was extreme, since the monarchy was attacked at the same time within and without. Foreigners have been much astonished at the revolution in Vienna, for they had supposed no people were less inaccessible to revolutionary ideas than the Austrians. Their ancient fidelity to their sovereigns was proverbial, and it was constantly repeated that the Viennese remained outside of the intellectual and political movement of the age, and had but one want, that of good living. But the citizens of Vienna had read this reproach so many times in books and journals, that it contributed not a little during their glorious days to inflame the ambition of all those heroes of the shop and the college who wished to ape the gamins dc Paris, and the pupils ofVEcole Poly technique. They wished to imitate at Vienna what was done in Paris, and they attempted it with a servility that bordered on buffoonery. There came from France, among others, professors of barricades. One day they invented an imaginary enemy, and in less than no time all the pavements of Vienna were piled up even to the first story of the houses ; men, even women, watched all night in the useless intrenchments, and the next day the greater part of the journals exclaimed, with an ecstasy truly German, Now we can look the great city of Paris 'proudly in the face; we have nothing any longer to envy her. It is the servility with which all that is done in France is copied in Germany, that led M. de Humboldt to say to a French gentleman who was taking his leave of him to return to Paris, ' See to it that your country keeps herself well, for when France gets a cold in her head all Europe is obliged to sneeze.' I do not know whether this is a great honor for France or not, but surely it is very little for the rest of Europe.

" If Prince Metternich foresaw the use which the good Viennese , would make of liberty, he did very wisely in granting them only good living; for assuredly nothing has so completely vindicated the old order of things as the new order which they have instituted in its place.

" It has been the same with the liberty of the press. Certainly I am not the man to make an apology for the censorship of the press as it was formerly practised in Vienna. It was in the last degree irreligious, silly, and absurd. But that censorship was perfect liberty in comparison with the frightful tyranny which under the revolutionists weighs upon the manifestation of thought. The most unbridled license propagates each day the most disgusting pamphlets against religion, and against individuals supposed to be hostile to the new order; and I have seen many persons make fruitless efforts to find a journal or a printing-office which would publish some timid rectifications.    Not only could they get nothing printed at Vienna, but the Committee of Public Safety (there was a committee of public safety!) had the folly to attempt to strike by its measures even the journals of foreign countries. One fact will serve to show what was the liberty of the press there enjoyed. As there were no Jesuits at Vienna, and as the revolutionists must have a phantom, they took the Liguorians. The Swiss radicals, or rather Swiss societies, affiliated with the secret societies of all countries, had decreed that the Liguorians, the Benedictines, the Sisters of Charity, and many others, must be considered as affiliated with the Jesuits. The students and Jews of Vienna ratified this judgment, and shamefully expelled these religious from their houses, stripped of every thing, and reduced to the necessity of begging public charity in the environs of the capital. Four citizens of Vienna, touched by their situation, wrote a confidential letter to the Archbishop, praying him to intercede with the minister that some slight succors might be given to these unhappy proscribed, out of the sums of which they had been despoiled, to save them from dying of hunger. This letter was sent to M. Pillersdorf. The students, becoming aware of it, obliged the minister to give up to them this culpable letter. They caused it to be printed and placarded on the walls, in order to denounce its signers to the public hatred ; they treated these worthy citizens to a charivari, and then forced them by threats and injuries to retract the sentiments of humanity which they had expressed in their letter.

" The liberty of writing went even to that. O Galileo, it has been said that the intolerance of the Inquisition condemned you to retract your admirable system of astronomy,* (footnote: * I am far from conceding this stereotyped calumny, due to the had faith of the anti-religious. Galileo was only obliged to respect the Holy Scriptures. end of foonote) but you were happy that it did not force you to deny your humanity !

" Thus it is, the revolutionists of all times and countries are alike. In Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland, they promise liberty, and give only the most hideous slavery.
" We have just seen how the people of Vienna, maugre their habits of fidelity, order, and peace, suffered themselves to be drawn into revolution by foreign emissaries. But it must be confessed that there were many internal causes which greatly facilitated the efforts of those who sought the ruin of the monarchy. There was no unity, there was no life, in the upper regions of the government. This great empire moved on the old machinery, upheld solely by the affection of the people for their sovereign. Their attachment to the imperial family was not belied for a single moment. In the very worst days of the revolution, the Emperor appeared in the streets, and was always hailed with enthusiasm.    If subsequently the people rushed with threats towards his palace to wrest from him some new concession, they never dared avow that their demonstrations were directed against the person of the sovereign. Obliged, in order to obtain freedom of action, to quit Vienna, the Emperor Ferdinand did not quit his states, and there was not a province that would not have been happy to possess him. An indissoluble bond, a bond of reciprocal affection and esteem, binds together this family and the people.

"The Austrian people are kind-hearted, religious, honest, and distinguished for their good sense, and consequently are little accessible to revolutionary ideas. It was not these people that made the revolution. They were the most peaceable, wealthy, and happy people in Europe. But among them was a minority called intelligent; that is, reading newspapers, discontented, and irreligious. This minority had been for a great number of years in open conspiracy, and it comprised the entire body of the officials of the government. The bureaucracy was a leprosy which extended from one extremity of the empire to the other, and eat into its very heart. An innumerable army of officials seemed to have no other duty than to impede the progress of affairs, to render the government odious within and without, and to ruin the state. It is commonly believed that the Emperor of Austria was an absolute monarch ; but there were by his side, below and above him, councils, cabinets, bureaus, presidents, referendaries, &c, that sanctioned, modified, or annulled his decisions. The signature of the Emperor was often a recommendation very little respected by the officials. This bureaucracy, very unpopular, and necessarily so, sought to obtain pardon of the intelligent public for its attachment to the budget by its manifest contempt for the government. The government itself was sustained by nobody. To attack it passed for good taste and breeding in the court, the public offices, the saloons, and even in the antechambers of the Emperor. The Austrian Moniteur, that is, The Vienna Gazette, published on its first page the ordinances of the government, and opposed them in the other three.

" The bureaucracy inspired an infinity of hatreds against the government. In making a revolution, all thought they were attacking the bureaucracy ; what was their astonishment, when, mounting to the assault against the government, they found the bureaucracy by their side, mounting with them !

" The bureaucracy had obtained possession of the Church and of education, the customs, the censorship, and the police. It had enslaved the Church. This was the gangrene of the Austrian monarchy. A jealous, inept, and tyrannical legislation had petrified all the institutions of the Church. The bishops were generally little more than Aulic Councillors, and could seldom attain to the episcopate, except after having been imbued in the public offices, during many years, with Jansenistic principles, the germ of which they must transplant into the ecclesiastical institutions. Some few prelates, worthy of the ancient times of the Church, were persecuted by the provincial governors, who were always sure to be sustained by the government. Parish priests were the heads of bureaus, sometimes agents of the police. One would believe that this order of things was established expressly for the irrevocable destruction of both Church and State. With very few exceptions, there were no preachers in Austria ; the word of God was not free.

" In the choice of professors of theology, what was most feared were men of Catholic convictions. During a long series of years the only authorized text-book on canon law was a work placed on the Index by the Holy See, and it is a curious pendant to this condemnation that the Index of books prohibited by the Church was itself proscribed at Vienna, and even the Roman Breviary was placed on the index of the Austrian censors. The priest who should use the said Breviary, not corrected by the Austrian censors, was liable to a fine of fifty florins. The law, indeed, was not executed, but it existed. Pious associations, congregations, confraternities approved by the Church, were prohibited by the civil, and often also by episcopal authority.

" Notwithstanding the will of Francis the First, expressed on his death-bed, that regular relations with the Holy See should be reestablished, and that the laws contrary to the discipline of the Church should be modified, after a great many years and a thousand fruitless efforts on the part of Rome, not a single step toward this important result had been effected, — a result which would have been even more useful to the State than to the Church. The bishops of Prussia, of England, of Turkey, could correspond freely with the Holy See ; the bishops of Catholic Austria could not. Let it not, however, be forgotten that this was the work, the creation, the fetiche of the enlightened, intelligent, and liberal party, whose most constant, and perhaps only, opponent in the government was that same Prince Metternich who has been held responsible for acts which he uniformly fought against. Hence, immediately after the revolution these tendencies became a thousand times more manifest and oppressive than they were before. The first acts which signalized the era of liberty were acts of intolerance and proscription so revolting, that it is necessary to go very far back in the history of tyranny to find any thing to equal them. But the actual trammels will break of themselves when the ephemeral terrorism born of the clubs and the University shall have had its day.* (footnote: * The present pious Emperor, Francis Joseph, has verified this prediction in abolishing at the commencement of his reign the infamous Josephine laws. — ED. B. Q. R. -end of footnote).

" As in all revolutions, they attacked violently the clergy at "Vienna. Tiie insults, calumnies, and menaces were directed principally against, the bishops and the rich abbeys which had escaped the vandalism of Joseph the Second. The poor convents and inferior clergy, however, though treated with less envy and severity, did not escape their share in the persecution. But this was not all. Books, pamphlets, journals, caricatures, and those impure works which ignorance and corruption have produced, were circulated, tending to bring religion itself into derision. It would not, therefore, have been just to spare its ministers.

" However, it was especially against the nobility that the wrath of the people was directed. It is true that the nobility enjoyed great privileges, that many of those privileges ought not to exist in the present times ; that the charges and rents of the tenantry were sometimes rendered extremely burdensome by the severity and intolerable vanity of the possessors of titles and seigneurial rights ; that many of the nobility gave grave scandals ; and that many Austrian, Bohemian, and Hungarian counts and barons, in regard to instruction and the opinions they entertained of themselves, seemed to be ghosts of the thirteenth century, — all this was true, and to be expiated. But it is equally true that a large number of great names were nobly borne, and were found at the head of great and useful undertakings; that many of these old families had the purse always open for the unfortunate ; that their gardens, museums, picture-galleries, were constantly at the service of the public ; that the peasants on their lands were infinitely better treated than the peasants on the lands of rich commoners ; that often they founded schools, erected and endowed churches; and that they furnished in all departments distinguished men, whom Austria will always honor.

" Austria, a Catholic power, has always been the most tolerant power in Europe of the other forms of worship embraced by a small minority of its subjects. The government seems to have reserved all its jealousy for the so-called dominant religion. In the sequel it will do better than tolerate it, better even than protect it; it will leave it free. The bishops have a great duty to perform, and a great future opening before them. Their duty is to take the place which God gives them, without fear of the edicts which impiety may launch against them. Every one will be. free to speak, to write, to associate for worldly or political purposes, and no one can deny the same right to the Church. The time has passed for expecting the aid, often suspicious, always impotent, of the government. The Church has a life and a strength of her own. Let the bishops reject, if they still retain them, their absurd prejudices against the Holy See, the remains of the Reformation which the enemies of the Church revive, which ignorance propagates, and which the light of truth will dissipate.    Let them attach themselves more closely to the Chair of Peter, — to that impregnable tower against which all the efforts of the wicked break, and fail, — to that Mother-Church, severed from which all other churches are but withered and dead branches.

" Heresy, as a destructive scourge, had torn up the soil of old Germany, and covered it with blood and ruins. The heresies of the last three centuries have sunk into a nihilism the most absolute offered us in the whole history of the aberrations of the human mind. Nothing remains of them but the name, and that hatred of the one only religion which survives all heresies. Catholic sovereigns have shown only too many unjust prejudices against the Church. May the sad experiments of Antichristian legislation which they have made serve as a warning to their successors ! Unhappily, a part of the bishops sustained the laws which oppressed the Church, under the pretext of freeing themselves from the yoke of Home; but the tendencies now manifest, especially among the younger clergy, are very different, and we may be sure the Church will be free from the moment that the clergy are worthy that she should be. O, if Austria had known how to take the position in her interior and in the affairs of religion which belongs to her as a great Catholic power,— if she had left to its free development in her states that Catholic element which is the element of order, peace, and justice, — if she had not suffered the consummation of that greatest political crime against a Catholic nation committed since the division of Poland, — a crime so much the greater as it was wholly unmerited, — her government would not have been overthrown on the 13th of March, by a few operatives and students from the University, at the bidding of foreign revolutionists. Catholic France and Austria suffered the radicals under their own eyes to cut the throats of the most Catholic people in Europe, for wishing to defend their liberty and their faith, conquered, centuries ago, at the price of blood ; and not half a year after the destruction of the Sbnderbunde passed away, before they both fell prostrate under the force of the radical doctrines which annihilated the Swiss Cantons. In the political as in the moral and as in the physical order, we are always punished where we have sinned. Never are we the accomplices of a wrong, without finding that wrong, sooner or later, our chastisement.* (footnote: * Montalembert, la Chambre dos Pairs, Affaires de la Suisse.     1847.) The people of Vienna, like those of Milan, of Leghorn, of Home, applauded the disasters of the Swiss Catholics, and the justice of God was not tardy in weighing upon them as they had weighed upon others. In the Swiss question the Austrian government was guilty only of weakness, while the people of Vienna approved the violences and sacrileges of radicalism. They were therefore ripe for revolution.    They had for a long time been perverted, and yielded in nothing to the population of Leipsic, Berlin, or Frankfort. I speak always of the lettered or radical population.

" I have often heard it said that the Viennese conducted themselves so grossly in their revolution only because they had no idea of political life, and that the fault is chargeable upon the previous government, which prohibited foreign journals. But I do not concede that the education of a people is made by journals; and, moreover, the journals were passably numerous in Austria. It is true that those published in the monarchy were strictly gagged by the censorship; and this shows the absurdity of that censorship, since at the same time it permitted foreign journals, however bad they might be, to enter, or at least was unable to prevent them from entering. It was the same, too, with books. The few authors Austria produced were obliged to send their manuscripts to a foreign country for publication, while all the worst books published in Germany and France were sold publicly in Vienna, except those which attacked the government. These last were sold only in secret ; yet every one could obtain them. Thus the Austrians, as well as the Prussians, the Saxons, and the people of Baden, could at their ease form their mind and heart in the study of the most revolting productions of France and Germany. Nevertheless, the censorship of the press was one of the principal pretexts of the revolution. It deserved not so much hatred ; it deserved only pity and contempt.

" We can easily understand that, with such an order of things, education must have been in a deplorable state. The bureaucracy hated the Church and feared revolution. Between this fear and this hatred, it crushed all the young minds, of which it had taken possession for half a century. It had the shame of being overturned by those it had formed after its own image and likeness. Science, generally little esteemed, and poorly recompensed, was cultivated only by a few individuals who had a passion for it, which infallibly conducted them to the hospital. Many of the professors devoted themselves to teaching only after having failed in other pursuits, and they lived isolated, discontented, and unknown. Never could a poet or a serious author leap the threshold of the saloons of the great, so as to receive some words of recompense and encouragement. In order to gain a momentary admission, he must declaim some frivolous scene, or sing some smutty couplets. In the time when France produced Racine, Bossuet, Corneille, there were Colbert, Turcnne, the great Conde, and a whole people, to comprehend and admire them ; while the upper and lower society of Vienna understood and admired only farces and ballets, and produced only dancers and buffoons. The government which had so great a fear of the independence of the Church had no fear of the immorality and irreligion which overflowed in all directions, but even caressed them. It was for works of beneficence that pieces the most immoral were represented in the theatres, so as to attract a greater crowd.

" While the Catholic cause was abandoned in France by the several ministries which issued from the revolution of July, 1830, whilst Spain and Portugal struggled under the pressure of a revolution always breaking out anew, whilst Italy inflamed herself for a future revolution, anti-Catholic and anti-social, while Protestant Switzerland profaned Catholic churches, pillaged convents, and destroyed the institutions of learning, while the Machiavellian governments of Germany demanded laws under the name of liberty for the oppression of Catholics, Austria, if she had had the courage to unfurl anew that ancient banner of Catholicity, which is also that of liberty and civilization, showing by her interior administration and her foreign policy that she respected, and would cause to be respected to the full extent of her power, the rights of Catholics in Prussia, in Russia, in Switzerland, in Syria, she would have found in herself the strength which the protection of Heaven gives, and would have commanded the sympathies of the whole Catholic world." —pp. 1-16.

Our readers, we are sure, will thank us for this long extract, which not only reveals the character and the impartiality of the author, but gives us a very full and satisfactory account of the origin and character of the Austrian revolution of March 13,1848. He is no enemy to Austria, but he is no flatterer of the Austrian government, which, though not censurable under the relations alleged by the revolutionists, had many and great faults, which no lover of freedom and Catholicity can palliate or disguise. The imperial family were pious and well disposed, but the administration was almost wholly in the hands of the enemies of the Church. Happily, however, the government was forced by the rude shocks it received to recognize its errors, and the present Emperor has already done much, and we trust he will do still more, to correct them. Even as a matter of sound policy, he should leave the Church free, for it is only through her freedom and independence of the state that government, or even society, is practicable in any part of Christendom. The attempt to maintain society on atheistical principles, by chaining up the Church, disparaging the clergy, ridiculing religion, and directing attention solely to worldly interests, roast beef and plum-pudding, has signally failed, and we hope it will be long before a new crop of fools will be produced to renew it.

From Vienna the author passed through Hungary. He embarked on the Danube in the steamboat Ceres, on the 24th of June, 1848.

" Our boat," lie says, " shoots rapidly along among the islands of the Danube, so green, so beautifully shaded by trees of every hue. I have already lost sight of Vienna, all except its admirable Tower of St. Stephen, on the summit of which floats a flag, but not that which has united so many different nations in one empire, and been consecrated by a glorious history of a thousand years. The Austrian flag is now proscribed in Austria, torn and insulted more than if it were the flag of a foreign or a hostile nation. O the unspeakable folly of men ! They imagine themselves free because they have a flag of three colors, which is imposed upon them by the clubs of Paris! These nations in revolution have denied all their historical recollections, in order to have, like the French, a tricolored flag, which is not national even in France. If this mania of imitation continues, I shall see on my return the Seine and the Gironde flowing at Vienna and Berlin, and the Column of the Place Ven-dome ornamenting the capital of German unity.
u The revolutionary ideas, which are now triumphing in Germany, Italy, and elsewhere, have so little foundation in the actual wants of the people and the demands of the age, that they were very different only a few months ago. But for the French revolution of February, we should have seen constitutional monarchy established some seven or eight times in Italy, and forty times in Germany. Tlic republic of San Marino alone would not have adopted it, for the want of space for a Palais-Bourbon and a Palais du Luxembourg. All Europe would have had seven or eight ministers more or less responsible, presided over by an immutable thought, a Douse of Peers for life, and a House of Commons chosen for five years. But all at once the mould breaks in the hands of the masters, and more than one constitution which began monarchical has ended in being the most democratic in the world, — desinit in piscem. The wants of the people change not with the winds which flap the flag on the old metropolis of St. Stephen, or with the storms that periodically break forth on the banks of the Seine." —pp. 18, 19.

As he visits Presburg, the ancient capital of Hungary, the author makes some reflections and offers some details not without interest. The Hungarian revolution has not yet broken out, but it is on the eve of its explosion. The author sees clearly what is coming, and gives a brief and trustworthy account of the causes and nature of the struggle which was then prepared.    He fully confirms the view which has  been  uniformly taken  in this journal  of  the Hungarians and of their late rebellion against Austria.

" A few years ago I assisted at one of those turbulent Hungarian Diets which preluded the present tempest. After a stormy session of the Chamber of Deputies, in which I had seen the Austrian government furiously attacked without hearing a single voice raised in its defence, save that of the official and almost indifferent voice of the President, I observed to the President, that it was impossible for an edifice to remain a long time standing which every body conspired to demolish. 4 The Hungarians,' [Magyars,] ho replied, 4 are ardent, vivacious, high-spirited, clamorous, and fond of opposition in — phrases. It is necessary to let them throw oil* their excess of fire and eloquence. My predecessor, who took every thing literally, died in endeavoring to restrain them, but I, who know them, leave them to act and speak in their own way. Whatever they may do or say, they arc sincerely attached to their king, and let there come a real danger for the state, they will be its most courageous defenders.' The President left me very little convinced by his observation.

" I love the Hungarians for their open and chivalric character. They are religious, brave, hospitable, prepossessing to strangers. When I first presented myself in the Chamber of Magnates, I knew nobody; a simple priest, I was at once received as a brother by many prelates and bishops, who came to meet me, and with whom I have remained ever since tenderly united. More lately 1 have obtained rank among the Hungarian clergy, who had for a long time opened to me both their arms and their hearts. But this year 1848, the Hungarians have forgotten the recollections of 1741; they have forgotten that chivalric cry of loyalty and enthusiasm', Moriamur pro rege nostro Maria Theresia, [Let us die for our king, Mary Theresa,] which had remained as the symbol of their national character. It is true, Joseph the Second but ill repaid the devotedness of this people ; but, strange as it may seem, he is the idol of the revolutionary party. If he struck the people, he struck the Church still harder, and the Brother Sacristan of Frederic the Great has obtained the pardon of the sovereign who imposed on Hungary the German language, and carried away from Presbur" the crown of St. Stephen.     

"A violent reaction has manifested itself in the late Diets, not only against the German language, but also against the Latin, which was the language of public affairs ; and they have substituted the Hungarian or Magyar language in its stead. In Europe generally this victory is regarded as the triumph of the liberal party ; hut it was in fact only the self-styled victory of a turbulent minority over the Catholic clergy and the Austrian government. This, however, is enough to render it popular with foreigners.

" In Hungary, in a population of twelve millions and a half, there are not less than fifteen or sixteen distinct nationalities, each for the most part with a different language of its own. The Hungarians, or rather the Magyars, form only about one third of the whole population. How embarrassing for a government to make itself understood in this tower of Babel ! Usage had introduced the Latin. The Latin of Hungary had long been the subject of the railleries of those who did not know it; but, without being as pure as that of Cicero, it had the advantage of not being the idiom of the Illyrians, the Magyars, the Croats, the Wallachians, or the Saxons, and of being understood by all the nations of the earth. In the United States as in 1/ranee, in England as in Germany, they can use a passport, or any other document, written in Latin ; but if written in Hungarian, it would be as unintelligible as if written in Chinese or Sanscrit.

" In a political point of view, the triumph of the Magyar language has been, therefore, an act of oppression, and the Liberals who committed it were so intolerant, as to wish to oblige the Croatian deputies present at the Diet forthwith to speak a language which they did not know. Through the intervention of the Austrian government, the Hungarian Diet granted to Croatia the interval of two Diets to provide herself with a language. Yet this decision did not prevent the Magyar Liberals from hissing her deputies, as often as they attempted to avail themselves of this respite to defend the interests of their country in Latin.

" I insist on this fact, because it has been, not in itself, but in the tendencies it betrayed, the first cause of the misunderstanding between the Croats and the Magyars, and of the war which is on the point of breaking out between them. The triumph of the Magyar language in the parliament was a new irruption of the Magyars into Pannonia, the subjection of fifteen nationalities to one alone, or of eight millions of people of other races to four and a half millions of Magyars.
" The revolution in Vienna, last March, was hardly known at Presburg, before on the one hand the Hungarians attempted their separation from the empire, and on the other sought to incorporate with Hungary proper Croatia, Sclavonia, and Transylvania, so as to have a compact kingdom of fifteen millions of inhabitants. The Diet, the ministry, the Palatine, that is to say, the three constitutional powers, took the road to Pesth, under the direction of Kossuth, who soon absorbed them all, and summoned the Sclaves to unite with them. The Croats, with their Ban Jellachich at their head, who had heard it said that the revolution of Vienna was made in favor of all the nationalities of the empire, and therefore in favor of their own, declared that they would be to the Hungarians what the Hungarians wished to be to the Austrians, that is to say, independent, holding immediately from the crown alone.
                                      
"The Magyars take up arms to subject the Croats, and the Croats take up arms to defend themselves against the Magyars. Here are the two nations in face of each other, or, I prefer to say, two men, Kossuth and Jellachich, so completely is each identified with the cause he defends. The one, Kossuth, is an eloquent rhetorician, able to stir up the masses as the tempest stirs up the waves of the ocean; the other, Jellachich, a soldier, loyal and intrepid, electrifies an entire people, rude indeed, but brave and devout. The one fascinates by his discourses, the other by his example; the one is nourished by the discourses of the old French Convention, which he admires, the other by the history of his country, which he loves ; the one glorifies revolutions, the other glorifies liberty."—pp. 21-24.

We commend this parallel between Kossuth and Jellachich to the admirers of the former.     No one questions that Kossuth is a distinguished revolutionary orator, and in that sort of eloquence — the lowest in  the scale and the easiest to be attained  to — which is adapted to rouse up the evil  passions, and stimulate the natural insubordination of an unreasoning and unscrupulous multitude, he stands  preeminent.    But of the   lofty character of a true patriot, of a real lover of liberty, or of a wise and prudent statesman, he has as yet given us no indication. His speeches in this country tire by their repetitions, and disgust by their egotism.    His credit is every day diminishing, and if he ever leaves this country it will  be as a small  man   in comparison  with   what  Ik;  was  esteemed when he first set his foot on our shores.    He is far inferior, in all the qualities that fit him to be a leader of a revolutionary movement, to Joseph Mazzini, and can fill only a subordinate place under him.    Our people  have shown their usual bad  taste  in  attempting to  make him the object of their hero-worship.    They love liberty and delight to honor it in  its  representative, and  for this we  honor them.    But in Kossuth they have selected a second-rate revolutionist, —a sort of Camille Desmoulin, or rather a Robespierre without Robespierre's incorruptibility in money matters, — not the representative either of liberty or of a noble struggle in behalf of national independence.    The Magyars were the oppressors, not the oppressed, and while they were seeking to render themselves independent of the empire, they were fighting to keep eight millions of Hungarians of other races in subjection to themselves.    It was the Croats who were fighting for liberty, and who were the real champions of freedom. lie who deserves our sympathies and honors is not Kossuth, but their noble chief, the Ban Jellachich (Yellashish, as we have been told to pronounce it). He loved his country and liberty, and knew how to defend both, and he deserves to have his name placed high on the list headed by our own Washington.    But we return to our author.

" But behind this question of language there is a war of nationality to be settled, of which language is the expression. The Magyars have two objects to accomplish, that of consummating their separation from Austria, and that of confirming their independence by rendering themselves powerful enough to defend it. Certainly, if Croatia, Sclavonia, and Transylvania could identify their interests with those of Magyardom, place themselves under the direction of Kossuth, and declare war on Austria while she is engaged in suppressing the revolt in Lombardy, it would be the severest blow that could be struck to the monarchy ; but this blow will not be struck, for they will never submit to the Magyars.

" Moreover, the opposition of Hungary to Austria is not at all the work of the people, as was that of Galicia in 1846. It is a conspiracy of a part of the nobility, availing itself of all the anarchical elements of the country to obtain its ends. Hungary, enjoying a constitution and privileges of its own, must have fewer grievances from Austria to complain of than other provinces. If that constitution and its privileges are absurd in our times, as in many respects they undoubtedly are, the fault is not in the crown, which has frequently attempted to introduce some modifications, but to this same Magyar nobility, who always resisted them, and now rise in rebellion. The lands of the nobles, for instance, were subject to no tax or impost whatever. How, then, could the Austrian government open its frontier to the productions of Hungary, and thus ruin the proprietaries of the other provinces, which bear all the burdens of the state ? How could it construct roads, protect agriculture, commerce, and manufactures? The resources of Austria, compared to those of other states much less important, are very inferior, although the taxes in the German, Bohemian, and Italian provinces are very high. If the finances of Austria are in a deplorable state, the fault is chiefly that of Hungary. Thus, many provisions of the Hungarian constitution maintained by the Diet, in spite of the crown, have the disadvantage of keeping this kingdom in a semi-barbarous state, and of also seriously injuring the prosperity of the whole empire......

"It is curious to see the democratic clubs of Europe make common cause with  the aristocratic movements of Hungary, as they did two years ago with the popular movements of Galicia. Provided revolutions are only made, it is all the same to them whether they are made with or without, for or against, the people. ' In our times,' Chateaubriand says, ' liberty is reason. It is without enthusiasm, and is sought because it is necessary to all, — to kings, whose crowns it secures by restricting power, and to the people that they may no longer rush into revolutions to find what they already possess. Certainly, then, all the revolutions which we have witnessed of late lead very far from their avowed object, independence and liberty.'

" Formerly the revolutionists appealed to the fraternity of nations now they appeal to the distinction of nationalities, that is, to the isolation of nations. But here, again, the same contradiction. The same radicalism that seeks to separate the Italian and Germanic races in the broad plains of Lombardy, compresses under the same yoke the people of French, Italian, and German descent in the narrow valleys of Helvetia ; the same spirit that tends to detach the Magyars from the Austrians, would compel the Bulgarians, Germans, Sclaves, Croats, &c. of Hungary to submit to the domination of the Magyars." — pp. 24-26.

We regret that our limits compel us to take leave of our author, at least for the present, at Presburg; we hope, however, to rejoin him in our next Review, and accompany him on his journey to the Holy Land. We have merely cited here his testimony as to the causes, character, and tendencies of the Austrian and Hungarian revolutions. What we have cited was written in the month of June, .1848, after the revolution in Vienna, and before the outbreak of hostilities between Hungary and Austria, but by one who saw clearly what was to be expected, and fully comprehended the causes which were at work to ruin the Austrian empire. Since then, Austria, who appeared to us at that time utterly prostrate, whose empire we thought must be dissolved, and the German provinces be united to a new German empire embracing all Germany, the Italian be absorbed in an independent federative Italy, and the Sclavonic be in part merged in a new and independent kingdom of Poland, and in part incorporated with the Magyars, forming an independent and powerful kingdom of Hungary, —since then, we say, Austria has suppressed the revolt in Italy, put down the revolution in her hereditary states, and reduced the Magyars to submission. This has disappointed and enraged the revolutionists, for Austria was the key-stone of the old European edifice, and it was only by her destruction that it could be demolished.
Threatened with Red Republicanism within, with continued revolt in her provinces, and having to oppose, not only her own rebellious subjects, but the combined power of the whole revolutionary party of the Continent, Great Britain, and the United States, Austria called upon Russia to assist her in putting down the rebellion in Hungary. Russia complied with her request, and the Magyars were finally defeated and reduced by the combined forces of Austria and Russia.
This assistance granted by Russia to Austria has been represented by the defeated revolutionists, Great Britain, and the United States, as an unauthorized and criminal intervention in the domestic affairs of independent nations, and the revolutionary ex-Governor Kossuth, liberated from a Turkish prison through the intervention of Lord Palmerston and Mr. Secretary Webster, calls upon us to give him material aid in reviving the suppressed revolution, and to unite with Great Britain and intervene so far as to prevent Russia from again intervening. He made the same demand of England, and found many of the English people ready to respond to it — in their toasts. This demand is the burden of all his speeches here, and their name is legion. Our government, if we may judge from the President's late message, was at first inclined to favor his revolutionary projects, and even to comply with his demand. Many of our citizens have been quite enthusiastic on the subject, and, having declared Kossuth the champion of liberty, the apostle of humanity, a second Messiah, come to break the power of tyrants, and to redeem the human race from bondage, have been ready to respond to his appeal, and to force their government into a war with both Austria and Russia in his behalf.

Kossuth, in all his speeches that we have read, in all his reasonings, quietly assumes as the basis of his arguments what he knows perfectly well is false, and the mass of his American sympathizers take his statements as true, without having any clear or just conception of the real merits of the question. Four years ago Hungary, to the great body of our people, even our educated people, was as much a terra incognita as the interior of Africa. Very few of them had any knowledge of its inhabitants, its domestic institutions, or its relations to the Austrian empire. Italian refugees and French liberals had prejudiced them against Austria, and prepared them to believe that any party opposed to her must be in the right. When, therefore, they heard Hungary had revolted and taken up arms against her, they took it for granted that the Hungarian cause was a good cause, and deserving the sympathy of every American citizen, and every friend of liberty throughout the world.

But Kossuth knows perfectly well that Hungary had no ground of complaint against the Austrian government. That Hungary had not developed her resources, that she had not kept pace with the industrial progress of tin? age, that she had to suffer very serious evils, very many things that needed reforming, is most true and undeniable; but all this was due, not to the Austrian government, but to the obstinacy and folly of her own Diet, or local parliament. The imperial government labored constantly to persuade the local parliament to introduce the reforms which in the process of time and change of circumstances had become necessary, but always without success, and there was not a grievance complained of, not a reform needed, that the Hungarian parliament was not competent to redress or to introduce, if it had been so disposed. This fact should never be overlooked or forgotten, for it renders the opposition to Austria wholly unjustifiable.

Moreover, the immediate causes of the war with the imperial government were not the grievances that required redress, but desire for national independence on the one hand, and on the other the determination of the Magyars to subject to Magyar rule the non-Magyar races of Hungary, or rather of Croatia, Sclavonia, Transylvania, &c., in a general way reckoned as parts of Hungary, but not within the limits of Hungary proper, civil or geographical. The pretext for hostilities was, that the imperial government would not aid the Magyars in reducing these non-Magyar races, that is, would not aid in stripping the empire of a number of her provinces, and give them to the Magyars, to render the kingdom they proposed to declare independent powerful enough to defend itself. If the imperial government consented to let Hungary separate herself from the empire, and become independent, it could not be»expected to add to her proper dominions other provinces, or to refrain from efforts to confine the independent kingdom within the limits of Hungary proper.    The demand of the  Magyars was itself unreasonable, and they had no right to feel aggrieved that it was not complied with, or that the imperial government aided Croatia, Selavonia, and Transylvania to maintain their independence of Hungary, and their loyalty to the empire. Even assuming Hungary, which, however, was not the case, to have been recognized as independent of the empire, this would have been no cause of war on the part of Hungary. A state has a right to defend its loyal provinces, and in fact the war of the Magyars on the Croats, who adhered to the empire, was itself a war on the empire, and of itself justified the imperial government, and would have done so even assuming Hungary to have been independent, in making war on Hungary. The revolt of the Magyars had no justification, and their war upon the empire was aggressive, and in all respects unjustifiable. Under any point of view, then, from which we choose to consider the Magyar cause, it was essentially a bad cause, with which no friend of freedom or of justice could, understanding it, sympathize.*(footnote: We are not sure that this is sufficiently clear to all our readers. Hungary is sometimes spoken of as including Croatia, Selavonia, and Transylvania, and sometimes as excluding them. Geographically it includes them, politically it in some respects did, and in some respects did not, include them. These states, inhabited chiefly by Sclavonians and Roumans, wen; distinct from the Hungarian state, but were for certain purposes of administration joined to the kingdom of Hungary, and dependent on the Hungarian crown. Yet they had a civil organization of their own, and diets of their own, at least Croatia had a diet, distinct from the Magyar Diet, which is meant whenever mention is made of the Hungarian Diet.

While Magyar Hungary, or Hungary in its restricted political sense, remained united to the empire, those provinces in some sense held from the empire, if we understand it, through the Hungarian crown. In consequence of this fact, when the Magyar kingdom obtained, in March, 1848, from the concessions of the good, but weak and terrified, Emperor Ferdinand, an independent ministry, the Magyar government claimed these provinces as a part of the Hungarian state, and demanded their submission to the new independent ministry. As the concession of that independent ministry was a virtual separation of Hungary from the empire, and threatened to be soon even a formal one, and to render Magyar Hungary in all respects an independent kingdom, the effect of this demand would have been, if complied with, to sever Croatia, Selavonia, and Transylvania from the Austrian empire, and to make them provinces of the independent Magyar kingdom, and to subject the Sclavonians and Roumans to the Magyars, their bitter enemies and hereditary oppressors. The Croats, who were impatient of their dependence on Hungary even while Hungary was united to the empire, could not entertain the thought of being dependent on her as an independent kingdom.    They preferred being united to Austria, and holding immediately from the Emperor, to being subjected to the Magyars no longer united to Austria.  They consequently, under the lead of their noble chief, the Ban Jellachich, refused to submit to the Magyar ministry.  The ministry took up arms to compel them to submit, but were defeated by Jellachich.  They then applied to the imperial government to use its authority to compel them to submit, and to put down what Kossuth calls "the Servian insurrection."  The imperial government, if its action has not been misrepresented, counting on the loyality of the Magyars, and trusting that they would still remain united to the Austrian state, appears to have been at first disposed to listen to their request; but as soon as it was clearly manifest that the Magyars were to be satisfied with nothing but absolute independence of the empire, it refused, and approved the Ban Jellachich.

Here we get at once at the immediate causes of the war of the Hungarian ministry under Kossuth against the empire.  The Magyar Diet had so alienated the affections of the non-Magyar provinces of the geographical kingdom of Hungary, that they would not consent to belong to the political kingdom of Hungary, if independent of Austria, and governed by the Magyar nobility.  The Magyar ministry undertook to force them into submission, and, failing, called upon the empire, from which it was separating and wished to separate them, to assist it.  The imperial government, after a brief hesitation, refused its assistance, and even extended its protection to the non-Magyar provinces.  Then the Kossuth ministry turned against the Austrian state, fomented the new Red Republican revolution in Vienna of October, 1848, and marched its troops to the aid of the insurgents, a-with the hope of securing Magyar independence and the subjection of the Croats and non-Magyar races, under the walls of Vienna, by the ruin of the Austrian monarchy.  They were defeated, as every body knows, by the noble Prince Windischgriit, and obliged to retreat across the Danube, followed by the Austrian army. Now the sole pretext of this hostility against Austria was, that the imperial government would not aid the Magyars to reduce the non-Magyar races to subjection to the Magyar ministry, and thus aid in strengthening the Magyar kingdom resolved to become independent, by divesting the empire of Croatia, Sclavonia, and Transylvania, and giving them to that kingdom. The baseness of the Magyar ministry has been disguised by the common mistake of confounding these non-Magyar states with the Magyar state of Hungary proper, or Hungary in its restricted political sense, and by not regarding the fact that the non-Magyar states were not struggling for independence of the empire, but for independence of an independent Magyar Hungary. They were loyal to the empire, but would not consent to make part of a Magyar kingdom independent of the empire. They were bound to the Magyar kingdom only as that kingdom was indissolubly united to the Austrian state, and consequently owed it no obedience when it ceased to be so united. The attempt on the part of the Magyar ministry to subject them was a wanton invasion of their rights, gross usurpation, and an outrage upon common justice, which would have amply justified Austria in making war on that ministry, even if it had been the ministry of an absolutely independent state. The defence of Austria and of the Croats is triumphant, and one must be wholly blinded by the revolutionary mania of the times, not to see that Kossuth and his party were wanton aggressors, and under every conceivable point of view in both law and justice deserving of condemnation and the utter reprobation of mankind. Not only the men were bad, but their cause was bad, and we have just as little sympathy with those who condemn Kossuth, and yet approve his cause, as we have with those who make Kossuth their fetiche.

But Kossuth and his friends misrepresent the relation which subsisted between Hungary and the empire.    Certainly Hungary was distinct from and independent of the Duchy of Austria, but to assert it to have been independent of the Austrian empire or state, and connected with it only by the accidental union of the crown of each in the same person, is to assert a palpable falsehood.    Hungary was an integral part of the Austrian state, as much so as the Duchy of Austria itself.    Austria aside from Hungary Bohemia, Galicia,  Croatia, Sclavonia, Transylvania, M-matm, the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, &c, is not an empire, but a dukedom, and these kingdoms and provinces, in forming in union with the Duchy of Austria the Austrian empire,   are   not  regarded   in   law  as  subjected   to   that duchy, and dependent on it.    They are, in reference to it independent states, as the several States of our Union are in relation to each other, independent states.    The empire of Austria is federative, or, as some term it, a composite state. The members or components, taken separately, are mutually independent, and have each their local institutions and administrations; but in their composition, federation, or union, they form one state, just as the States composing our Union are one state in their federative character. The relation of Hungary to the empire was substantially the relation of Massachusetts to the federal government of the American Union ; and she had no more right to secede from the empire, and declare herself independent, than Massachusetts has to secede from the Union, and declare herself a complete and independent state. How Hungary came to be thus united to 1 ho empire, we have, heretofore shown at length, when treating expressly of the Hungarian rebellion. Suffice it to say here, that the union had received the assent of the Hungarian Diet, and therefore of Hungary herself, and she could not dissolve it without a breach of faith, or treason to 1he empire. However independent of Austria Hungary might have been in her local civil administration, she was not separately from the empire an independent state.    She was not in herself what the authorities call a complete state; which is evident from the fact, that she had no ambassadors at foreign courts, and could maintain diplomatic relations with no foreign power. In all external or foreign relations she was merged in the Austrian state. She could declare herself, therefore, independent of the Austrian empire only by an act of rebellion, and justify herself in doing so only on those grounds, if such grounds there are, which justify revolution. She had, as we have seen, no such grounds to allege, for she really had no grievance to complain of against the imperial government.
Hungary at war with the empire was then simply the rebel at war with his sovereign, and every sovereign has the indefeasible right to reduce the rebel to his allegiance. It makes no difference here whether the sovereignty is lodged in an emperor or in a president, in a king or in a congress; the sovereignty and its rights and prerogatives are always the same. In the case before us the Emperor represented the sovereignty of the state, the sovereign stale, and had therefore the right to reduce Hungary to her obedience, and consequently the right to invoke the aid, if he saw proper, of Russia, or any other friendly power, in doing it, and the power invoked had the right, if it saw proper, to grant the aid solicited. No man who knows any thing of the meaning of the word stale, or of international law, or has the least glimmering of common sense, can deny this.

But, if this be so, no nation, unless in a clear case of self-defence, can have the least right to intervene to prevent the power called upon from granting the aid invoked. Here is a point to which we wish to call the attention of our readers. Those of our statesmen who have opposed Kossuth's demand for intervention against intervention, have done so on the ground that such intervention would be impolitic, and contrary to our interests as a nation. This is no doubt true, but we would oppose it on higher grounds,—on the ground that we have no riff fit to intervene in the case, and could not intervene without manifest injustice, — not, indexed, without striking a direct blow at the right of independent nations to manage their own domestic affairs in their own way. We retort Kossuth's doctrine of non-intervention upon himself. He says, nations have the right to modify their institutions, and to adopt such ameliorations and such forms of internal government as seem to them good, without the interference of foreign powers. As against one another, with the single exception of the right of neighboring nations to intervene simply in necessary self-defence, and understanding by nations independent nations, we accept and even maintain this doctrine. But in the present case this doctrine applies to Austria and Russia, not to Hungary, for Hungary was not an independent nation, was not in herself a complete state. She could introduce no reforms or alterations incompatible with her indissoluble union with and subjection to the Austrian state. She had no competency to declare herself independent of the empire ; and to intervene at the request of the empire to prevent her from doing so, or to aid in reducing her to her allegiance, was not in any sense of the word to intervene in the domestic affairs of an independent state, — was and could be no violation of the law of nonintervention. Bat to have intervened to prevent Austria from invoking the aid of Russia, or to prevent Russia from granting it, would have been a direct intervention in the domestic affairs of independent states, and an undeniable violation of the law of non-intervention.

What Kossuth is soliciting of us is manifestly in violation of the very law of non-intervention he contends for. He wishes us to unite with England in saying to Austria and Russia, that if Hungary again rebels, — for Hungary is not now in a state of rebellion or revolt, — and declares her independence, Russia will not be permitted to take any part in the contest, and if she presumes to do so, it will be counted a casus belli. But this would be, not an intervention in behalf of a revolutionary government already existing tie facto, but an intervention to encourage a province of an independent state to rebel and organize such government. If this would not be intervention in the internal affairs of independent states, we are at a loss to understand what would be. In any point of view, then, from which you choose to consider the matter, Kossuth's doctrine of non-intervention condemns him, and his insisting upon it proves that, however brilliant a rhetorician he may be, he is but an indifferent lawyer, and a sorry logician. If nonintervention is the law, we have nothing to do with the case, and have no right to protest against the conduct of cither Austria or Russia.    If intervention is the law, or the right, as it must be to justify ns in intervening at all, then the alleged intervention of Russia is justifiable, for she has as good a right to intervene to put down revolution as we have to intervene to sustain revolution.
But we deny that there was any intervention, in the legal or political sense of the term, in the case. To assist a friendly power, at its request, to put down a rebellion in its states is not intervention, is not to violate the law of nonintervention. The intervention prohibited by the law of nations is the intervention of a foreign power, motu propria, in the internal affairs of an independent state, or without the request or permission of its sovereign. We have for this the authority of one of the greatest revolutionists of the age, the Abbate Gioberti, who belongs heart and soul to Kossuth's party, and is as innocent of all Catholic faith and tendency as the well-known pantheist, Stallo, who recently defended Kossuth at Cincinnati. Whatever Oiioberti may have once been, his recent work, Del Rinnovamento Civile d? Italia, proves that he can no longer be regarded as a Catholic, and that for years he has been a thorough-going revolutionist, prepared to carry his points with or without the Mope, with or without the Church. He is a decided liberal, and can no more than the fallen Lamennais be regarded as a Catholic priest, or as a Christian believer. He must therefore be good authority for Kossuth and his friends. Well, Gioberti, when accused in the Sardinian Chamber of having proposed, as Sardinian minister, to intervene in the affairs of Tuscany, replied, " I ask, Is to enter any foreign state whatever with an armed force always intervention, in the political sense of the word? I answer, if this entrance is by the request of the prince and people, it is not intervention ; if against the will of the prince and people, it is intervention." * (footnote: * Del Rtinnovamenlo Civile d' Italia, Tom. II. p. .593.) By people in this connection we must understand the people, not of a particular province, but of the state, and the people also in a political sense, speaking through its legal organs, not the mob or club. Now Russia did not take part in the contest against the will, but at the request, of the prince and political people of the Austrian state, and therefore neither intervened nor asserted the right to intervene in the internal affairs of independent nations.    We are, as our writings have sufficiently shown, no special friends of Russia, and we do not seek to conceal the fears with which we see the advances of the Russian empire; but we are bound to be just at all times, to all persons, and to all states, and we must say, that, since the peace of 181/3, we have seen no disposition on the part of Russia to intervene in the internal affairs of any of the western states of Europe, in the sense in which intervention is contrary to the law of nations. It is rarely that we find on the throne an abler or a more equitable prince, aside from his schismatic character, than the Emperor Nicholas. If he were, as he should be, in communion with the Church, we should have no fears of his power or his growing influence. All things considered, it will be difficult to name the European state which for the last twenty-live years has been more wisely or advantageously governed than Russia, or a secular prince who has more scrupulously observed his engagements, and respected the rights of his neighbors, than its present sovereign.

There having been no political intervention in the case, and no assertion of the right of intervention, the request of Kossuth for our government to intervene against intervention is absurd. The fact is, all' the intervention there has been, has been on the other side. In the first place, in the revolution in Vienna and in that of Hungary, the organized revolutionists of Europe openly and avowedly intervened, and many of the chief officers in the Magyar army were foreigners, such as Hem, Dembinski, and Guy-on. Austria had to resist, not only her own Hungarian rebels, but armed Poles, Italians, Germans, Frenchmen, Englishmen, and perhaps Americans, aided by the popular demonstrations of the people of the United States, England, Germany, France, and Italy. In the second place, the English government and our own openly sympathized with the Magyars, and were on the eve of opening diplomatic relations with them. There was no lack of at least indirect intervention against Austria, amply sufficient to justify Russia, had she chosen, in volunteering her assistance to Austria, and in entering unsolicited into Hungary, in the interests of order and humanity, with an armed force adequate to suppress the rebellion.

Little does it become either the  British government or our own to complain of Russian intervention.    The British government has  not  ceased, for the last twenty or thirty years, to intervene in the internal affairs of Continental states.    Blackwood's Magazine for February last, speaking of Lord Palmerston, says very truly:  He supported openly, so far as he could, —- favored covertly when this was impossible, — the cause of revolution all over the world.    He aided by the fleets of England the establishment of one revolution in Belgium, by the marines and volunteers another in  Spain.    He concluded the Quadruple Alliance to force revolutionary queens upon  a reluctant people in  both kingdoms of the Peninsula.    He covertly aided in the spread of liberal ideas in  Italy, —openly in supporting the insurgents in  Sicily.    He took Russia by the beard in the Dardanelles on account of the Hungarian  insurgents;   and afterwards, for  a wretched private dispute at Athens, ranged  France by her side,—-all but brought on a war with France by the bombardment of Beyrout, and hostilities against Greece; and irritated Austria past forgiveness by the open sympathy expressed for the Hungarian insurgents." * (footnote: * Blackwood, Feb. 1852, pp. 255, 250.)    And in the discussion  in the   British   Parliament  growing  out of inquiries  as to the dismissal of Lord Palmerston, it was avowed by Lord John Russell that the policy of the government had  been the introduction and support of constitutional government in Continental  Europe.    As for our own government:, no man can deny its interference in  Mexico in "favor of federalism, its open declaration that it would intervene to prevent the ^establishment of monarchy in  that now distracted republic, or its unwarrantable interference  in  the affairs of European states by its expressed sympathy with the revolutionists, by resolutions of Congress, the "diplomatic correspondence of the  Secretary of State, and the official messages of the President.   England has been constantly intriguing, and sometimes openly warring, for the establishment of British constitutionalism on  the  Continent, and we have become a nation of democratic propagandists, openly, and even through our government proclaiming all non-popular governments illegal, and virtually all crowned heads tyrants and usurpers, against whom it is lawful for their subjects to conspire when they will; and there is little room to doubt that Mr. Webster and Lord Palmerston contemplated an Anglo-Saxon alliance for the protection and support of the revolutionary movement of Europe, which is headed by Mazzini, Ledru-Rollin, Kossuth, and men of like character. Mr. Webster, we can believe, intended on our part no armed intervention, for he seems to have believed that the presence of English and American ships in the Mediterranean, and the united declaration of the two governments, would so overawe the sovereigns, and so encourage the revolutionists, that nothing more would be necessary. That something like this was in contemplation may be easily inferred from the acts and avowals of the government, and the lacrymose tone of the honorable Secretary's letter to Mr. Hives, instructing him to maintain his diplomatic relations with Louis Napoleon. Now, if we have a right to intervene for the spread of democracy, and England for the spread of constitutionalism, and to encourage revolutions for one or the other, neither we nor England can deny the right of Russia to intervene in opposition, and by our intervention we give her at least a very plausible pretext for doing so. The silly pretence that the Allied Sovereigns propose to intervene against our democracy here at home, is unworthy the least consideration, and no man knows it better than our present Secretary of State. Mr. Webster pretends that the Allied Sovereigns, in their famous Laybach Circular, assert principles which deny the legality of our institutions ; but we have, in replying to his letter to the Austrian Charge d'Ailaires, proved that this is not the fact. Mr. Webster is a great man. We have never denied it; we have heard him advance truly conservative doctrines, and develop views which proved him capable of being a statesman of the very first rank ; but his mind is comprehensive rather than acute, stronger in grasping certain general conclusions than in the analysis of principles. He has strong sympathies and strong prejudices, and is not incapable of blunders which would be unpardonable in a smaller man. He read the Laybach Circular as a democrat, not as a statesman or as a lawyer, and entirely misapprehended its character. We have never been the advocate or the apologist of what has been called the Holy Alliance, but we prefer it to the unholy alliance of the revolutionists. That alliance was rendered necessary against the doctrine of the Fraternity, the " Solidarity" of peoples, proclaimed and acted upon by the French Jacobins; but in no document we have seen has it ever proclaimed the right of one nation, of its own motion, to intervene, against the will of the sovereign authority, in the internal affairs of another. That the alliance was intended to maintain the historical rights of nations and sovereigns against modern revolutionism is conceded; but this in the mind of such a man as Mr. Webster should be an argument in its favor, not against it. 80 eminent a man as Mr. Webster cannot be ignorant that revolutions, even when necessary, are a terrible calamity, and that in Europe, and indeed in all countries, if we except our own, they have uniformly ended in destroying constitutional freedom, and in rendering military despotism more or less indispensable for the maintenance of society. Such were the effects of the movements of the Gracchi, and of the revolutions produced by Marius and Bylla in Rome ; such were the effects of the old French revolution, and such throughout Europe are likely to be the effects of the lied Republican revolutions of 1848. Louis Napoleon is no tyrant, is no enemy of popular freedom, but he has been forced either to leave France a prey to anarchy or to rule her through the army. His constitution is not liberal, is not democratic, but we are much mistaken if it does not. give to the people more power than in the present state of opinion is compatible in France with the peace and security of the state. The democratic revolutions and revolutionary ideas have rendered popular freedom impracticable in every European state, and we cannot but regard every man as really an enemy to liberty who sympathizes with them.

For ourselves, to return to Kossuth, we care not how much he is feasted, nor how much money he may induce silly dupes to give him. In himself he is nothing to us but a simple human being, whom we should be glad to see leaving off' his trade of revolution, and settling himself down quietly to the work of making his peace with Heaven. All we regret is, that his progress amongst us keeps alive the sympathy of many of our people with revolutionism, and tends to foster feelings and wishes incompatible with the safety of our own institutions. No people is secure that runs mad after revolutionism, and we shall not feel that our institutions are safe till our people cease to sympathize with revolutionists.    We have no solid support for our institutions till our people know that treason is a crime against the state -and a sin against God* and that everyone who rebels against legal authority, and conspires by-force of arms to overthrow it, is a traitor. The revolutionists have destroyed liberty on the continent of Europe, they have involved their respective countries in all but complete ruin, and here, the last stronghold of political freedom, they will do the same, if not frowned instantly down by our people. We may give them an asylum, for hospitality is a virtue that we would have our nation always practise, but we should do it only on condition of their remaining in private life, and scrupulously abstaining in word and deed from all interference in politics, foreign or domestic. It will not answer to make heroes of them, or to put them forward as our teachers and leaders. Let them live and repent, but live in retirement, without honor or notice, as they deserve. The facts detailed by our author in his account, which we have translated, of the revolution in Vienna, fully warrant this severe judgment, and admonish us to look upon all revolutionists, in the modern sense of the term, as the enemies of God and of mankind. We have been wrong and foolish in the sympathy we have extended to them ; let us correct our error, and hereafter show that we are capable of honoring the cause of freedom and order.