Austria, throwing off the mask, stands confessed in her old
tyrannous cruelty, her old inexorable meanness. Count Louis Batthyani has been made to suffer a penal death at Pesth ; and at Arad several military leaders have been slaughtered, for the most part.by the rope. The charge was high treason. .411 Were condemned to death by hanging, and the sentence was only corn- minted to death by fire-arms in the case of a favoured fevP!: Count Louis Batthyani differed from some other Hungarian leaders in his strict adherence to the old constitution: by the constitution he stood against Imperial encroachment; by it he stood against Republican encroachment. rHe had taken no load in the war ; he was first seized while eMeavouring to negotiate a reconciliation; he had been tried by a rclitary commission, and acquitted ; he sought no refuge in fligl was again seized by order of Haynau, and condemned to be flanged. He had chal- leRged. a trial according to the constitutiozt of his country .' he now attempted to avoid the illegal penalty, by suicide; butfail- ing, he was led out to perish by military death. There can be no doubt that this act violates the letter of the law, as it violates all civilized usage and all dictates of humanity andsound policy. Count Louis Bathyani was not, strictly speak- ing, a prisoner of war ; even if he had been, he might have pleaded a previous acquittal for his conduct during the war; but the charge against him, that of having infringed the Pragmatic Sanction by exceeding his duty as a -Minister, was manifestly not one for a military tribunal. The conduct of the Austrian Government therefore is anarchical : it violates constitutional law and natural justice, and ought to rouse the nations in defence of order and justice. Austria rests on the combination of crowned heads and armies to enforce her will by such instruments as Hay- nau : her conduct is of a kind to strike despair into the timid, to rouse a fixed hatred in the bold. The Hungarians are not likely to forget it. A fortiori, it shows what would have been done with Kossuth had he been surrendered ; it justifies Bern in taking re- fuge from Austro-Russian Christianity, as Amurath Pacha, in the more generous good faith of Islam.
