24 SEPTEMBER 1892, Page 3

M. Kossuth is a great patriot, and his record in

1848 secured him the warmest sympathies of Englishmen, but he is not a great statesman. He has lived since the emancipation of his country chiefly in North Italy, and on Tuesday, when re- ceiving congratulations on his ninetieth birthday, he stated his resolution to die abroad. He has long, he said, been free to return, but he would never re-enter Hungary while his country- men accepted for their King an Emperor of Austria. That means that he desires separation, but what would Hungary,fwith its two nations—the Magyar and the Slav—do as a separate

State? It would either become a second-rate Slav Kingdom, or be absorbed in the Russian morass. Deak was far wiser when he accepted the principle that, though Hungary must be free, the eldest Hapsburg must be her King, so that the alliance between herself and the Austrian Federation should be perpetual. M. Kossuth's feeling is only a survival of that bitter hatred which in 1848-49 every Liberal in Europe enter- tained for the House of Hapsburg, a hatred terminated by its defeats and the consequent reform of the Hungarian Administration and the liberation of Italy.