THE CABINET' CRISIS IN VIENNA.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.1
SIR,—Under the above heading your issue of last Saturday has an article on which I trust you will allow me space for a few remarks. First, I must ask where the writer of that article found authority for the astounding statement that in Cis-Leithania (as it is now the fashion to call the non-Hungarian portion of the Austrian Empire) "the Germans are as nineteen to eleven in numbers"? The newest issue of the Almanac de Gotha—quoting from a German statistical work published last year in Vienna— gives the German population in the Western Crown Lands and countries a total of 7,230,000; and the Slavonic inhabitants of the same a total of 11,556,000! This completely disposes of the numerical preponderance of the Germans. The writer of the article, alluding to the opposition of the Slays in Cis-Leithania to the strictly centralizing policy of the Vienna Govern- ment, further says :—" The centralists are not in any way giving cause for a plea that revolt against them is revolt against oppression. They refuse to Bohemians and Galicians no privilege which we grant to Welshmen or Highlanders. All classes and provinces elect their members in the same way ; all enjoy the same liberties ; all are equally admissible to every office and post in the service of the State." These assertions are un- happily entirely opposed to facts. In Bohemia and Moravia the electoral laws are flagrantly unjust to the Czechs, and since the first assembling of the Diets of those countries in 1867, according to the octroye February constitution of that year, these unjust electoral laws have been repeatedly and emphatically, though vainly, protested against by patriotic nobles and the repre- sentatives of Czechist towns and districts. The Bohemian delegates to the Reichsrath in the first instance only accepted the new Constitution on condition that no injury to their State-rights should therefrom obtain, and that the central Par- liament should be composed of representatives of all the Crown Lands, Hungary included. In the " Engerer Reichsrath " (as the Parliament subsequently was called), in which for a time these delegates sat, in consequence of the inequitable electoral laws in Bohemia, and of bureaucratic pressure, 1,700,000 Germans had 43 representatives, whereas 3,000,000 Czechs had but 11! Further, in respect to the absence of oppression on the part of the German centralizing Government, is the writer of the article in question ignorant that a state of siege has latterly prevailed for eighteen months in the Bohemian capital, and that it only came to an end about ten months ago ? Since the advent to power of Dr. Herbst as Minister of Justice, in Prague alone 156 persons have been condemned to prison (Kerkerstrafe) for political offences, and the sum of the imprisonments, lumped together, amounts to upwards of one hundred years ; fifty-six other individuals have been condemned to " detention" for periods taken together amounting to 29 years. These condemnations have been chiefly for "Press offences," many of the most trifling character, brought before venal and subservient tribunals. Had there been trials by jury, I fully believe that in no one instance could the Government have obtained a conviction. So little real freedom of the press is there still in Bohemia, that the only decidedly out-speaking organ of the Bohemian patriots is the Correspondance Teheque, published in Berlin.
Into the question of federalism in Austria, or more correctly to express the views of non-German politicians, of the continuity of historical rights and of self-government without detriment to central power, I cannot venture to enter, without requiring more space than you could possibly grant. I must be content to say, however, that to compare the claim to autonomy of the Kingdom of Bohemia with a like claim on the part of the Orkneys, York- shire, or Cornwall is simply absurd. Bohemia possesses State-rights legally as sound as those of Hungary. It has, more than any country on the Continent of Europe, its well-defined geographical boundaries, and the present Emperor of Austria, moreover, is the first of the House of Hapsburg who, as King of Bohemia, has not been crowned at Prague.
As for the danger to the German element in Cis-Leithania," the attempt which would be made in Bohemia to crush down a more civilized minority" if the systemlof strict centralization were departed from, I have only to observe that the eight million Austro-Germans can have butilittle faith in their boasted civiliza- tion and "mission," supported as that civilization is by, and derived as it mainly is from, the :thirty million outside Germans, with whom they are in close contact, if they really fancy it would be endangered were equal political rights and ample means of education in their own languages (now not allowed) to be granted to Creeks and other Slavonic populations. Two of the Viennese newspapers (Die Presse and Der Wanderer) have just had admirable articles on this bug- bear of danger to German civilization which the venal and well- subsidized Government Press is daily holding before the eyes of timid Philisters. This self-interested party manceuvre is suffi- ciently understood by all Austro-Germans of superior education and uprightness of character.
The fear of making my communication too long checks me from commenting further on the article in your last issue. Much I regret that for this reason I must omit an extract from a power- ful and eloquent speech on the present crisis made on the 18th inst. in the Vienna Reichsrath by Count Diirkheim, a representa- tive of a German constituency. I will merely state that, appeal- ing to facts, with scathing criticism and unflinching logic he exposes the policy of the Giskra-Herbst Government, and of the narrow-minded ruthless party which supports it ; denounces the "social and material monopoly" they uphold in the name only of Liberalism ; shows it to be utterly opposed to real freedom ; and declares that the power and supremacy which this party bureau- cratically wields is merely distinguishable from pure despotism by not emanating from one head only.—I am, Sir, 8:c., R. R. NOEL.
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