THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN QUARREL. T HE new quarrel which is bursting out
between Austria and Hungary will be exceedingly interesting, and may even prove to be of European importance. It will probably be settled easily if the present Emperor lives, for he is a genuine diplomatist and understands his many peoples ; but if he should die—a contingency which would shake all Europe, and of which no one ever thinks—it might develop into a strife which, though it could not produce separation, might paralyse the action of the Austrian Empire as a whole. The quarrel has apparently arisen in this way. Hungary, singularly favoured by Nature and governed by a mighty caste which knows how to rule, has, ever since the acceptance of Deak's compro- mise in 1867, prospered exceedingly, her trade increasing by leaps and bounds, and her revenue expanding until, though the country is only half the size of France, and her population under eighteen millions, she raises without oppression half the amount collected in Great Britain in ordinary years. Her capital, Buda-Pesth, recently quite a third-rate city, has drawn to itself six hundred thousand inhabitants, more than a thousand large factories have been started and have succeeded, and the whole country has been covered with a network of successful arterial railways. This flow of prosperity has created some natural jealousy in Austria, which has been increased by the tendency of the Hungarian politicians to think that they are statesmen while Austrians are mostly fools, and to insist, therefore, on a somewhat unfair share of influence in the foreign policy of the Empire. These feelings, however, would not have mattered much, the Emperor-King retaining his supreme authority as general referee in all disputes, but they have been aggravated by a change which has recently been apparent within Austria itself. Owing to causes which we imperfectly understand, and will not therefore describe, there has occurred in Austria a sudden recrudescence of ultramontane feeling, producing a dislike for Liberalism, which is dominant in Hungary, akin to the dislike of the Belgian Clericals for the Liberals of their great cities. The feeling seems to be compounded of genuine horror at open impiety and a contempt for revolutionary tendencies, both of them sharpened by a third feeling which has attained in the cities predominant importance. The Austrian Ultramontanes and the " Socialists" are at one in their hatred of the Jews, the former from a survival of misdirected religious antipathy, the latter from detestation of the most visible section of the capitalist class. The two sections are united in a policy which they call Anti-Semitism, and which practi- cally means the reduction of all Jews to the position of foreigners, disqualified by law from entering the public service, from lending money at usury, from practisiug any profession, and from holding land or newspaper property. The united party has captured nearly two- thirds of the citizens of Vienna, it is numerically pre- dominant in most of the smaller Cisleithan towns, and it hopes before long to return a majority in the Austrian Parliament. It has much support in the middle class, it has numberless friends among the aristocracy, and it is so powerful even at Court through the higher clergy that the Emperor, who usually discerns aright the trend of any powerful stream of opinion, has suddenly startled the public, and also, it is said, his own Ministers, by a. remarkable concession. The representative man of the Anti-Semites is Dr. Lueger, whom we take to be a Mr. Labouchere with flashes of earnestness in him, and who has been three times elected Burgomaster of Vienna, and as often has been rejected by an Imperial veto. The Emperor has now summoned this personage to his presence, a summons regarded in Austria, as a singular honour, and has informed him that though he cannot be Burgomaster he may be Vice-Burgomaster, which means, under the circumstances, Mayor of the Municipal Palace, and that if Vienna elects any other Anti-Semite to the highest position his election will be ratified. Now Dr. Lueger is of all Austrians the one most opposed to Hungary, and the one whose attacks, said to be often clever as well as spiteful, are the most bitterly resented by Hungarians. It is loudly asserted in Hungary, therefore, that the Emperor, hitherto the impartial arbiter, has allowed himself, under the pressure of ultramontane Princes, nobles, and high clerics, to be captured by the anti-Hungarian party. 79.43 incident has the greater effect because of the circumstances of the hour. The Hungarian Millennium is to be celebrated by national festivities, which begin on .May 2nd, and are to last for months, and the people, the .Magyars more especially, are in a fever of national delight and pride. They are full of dreams, and are especially disposed to exult in the " glory " which they think has come to them, and to vaunt the position to which they, .originally a small Mongolian tribe, have raised their country and their race in the Europe which, as their advocate in England, Dr. D. Emil Reich, maintains in the Nineteenth. Century, is everything, the rest of the civilised world being merely " Europoid," a new term of contumely Of which we shall hear more. They are, therefore, in a mood to resent bitterly any anti-Hungarian feeling if they suspect it in their sovereign, to be ready to defy Austria, and to be especially eager not to yield a step in the negotiations now pending between the two countries. The pivot of these negotiations, which must be settled this year, is the proportionate contribution of the two halves of the 'united Empire to their common expenses. The Austrians say the Hungarians pay about 15 per cent. too little, and that while this was bearable when Hungary, paralysed by 'her quarrel with the Hapsburgs, had fallen into poverty, it is not bearable now that she has recovered, and flaunts a prosperity greater than Austria enjoys. The Hungarians, on their side, deny that they pay too little, and, being sore for other reasons, are inclined to believe that they are to be fined because they have managed their financial and commercial affairs so much better than their rivals, whom they half-despise for being, as they say, such slaves of the Vatican and of their own anti-Jewish prejudices. The Hungarians, it should be observed, do not share that prejudice at all, partly because their Catholicism sits -easily on them, but chiefly, we imagine, because nothing ,Asiatic—and the Jews of Austria are very Asiatic— offends their instincts in the degree in which it offends those of men of the German civilisation. The quarrel, therefore, is a bitter one, and it might easily be envenomed - during the Millennial festivities by indiscreet speeches, or by any failure in Vienna of respect for Hungary, until the two kingdoms become for a time as sullenly hostile as they were before D,!alr and the Emperor had arranged in a personal interview their terms of civil peace. The quarrel, as we have said, cannot lead to separation. The Austrians know that without Hungary they would be comparatively of small account in Europe, and the Hungarians recognise that without Austria the Slav glacier would slowly advance across their frontier, and in the end overwhelm them. They recognised this even in the moments of their wildest anger with the Hapsburg tyranny, and it was for this reason that they accepted the Deak programme instead of the one to which Kossuth to the day of his death so steadily adhered. The Emperor, who is still most popular, will be able, - we doubt not, during the festivities to soothe away much of their irritation, the financial quarrel can be com- promised by diplomacy, and as to the language of the Anti-Semites, the Magyar magnates are protected, like Englishmen, by an inner pride from which satirical words rebound, having inflicted little injury. The -quarrel, however, may for a, time greatly depreciate the position of the Hapsburgs in foreign affairs, more especially if for any reason the pacifying authority of the Emperor should be even temporarily suspended. That Sovereign, in many ways one of the most interesting per- sonages in Europe, has become of late years more and more the universal referee of his Empire, and in spite of his history from 1848 to 1867, is still regarded in Hungary as its legitimate King. He has repeatedly succeeded in smoothing away difficulties which, owing to the passionate pride of the Hungarians, seemed insuperable, and he even contrived by a timely concession to avoid a quarrel which seemed mortal about the constitution of the militia. His ascendency is, however, to a large extent personal, and if his powers decayed—and he is a weary and sad man—or if he were succeeded by an heir of the Austrian tempera- =meat and ultramontane proclivities, it might prove nearly impossible to keep the two kingdoms marching in step. They are bound together by a kind of political necessity, but their ruling classes are by no means in full accord, either as regards the regulation of life or its permanent ends, and if Hungarian prosperity continues, or if the States of the Balkan should ever federate themselves, the politicians of Hungary may doubt whether they could not stand alone, or whether they could not find allies less distasteful and less exacting than the ruling classes of the Cisleithan monarchy. It is to be hoped for the sake of Europe that such a rupture will never take place, but the present quarrel reveals a difference of sentiment and of tendency which divides nations more sharply than any difference of interests. Belgium and Holland, after ages of unity, were separated by a divergence of feeling, not by any means unlike that which is now manifesting itself between Hungary and Austria. No doubt in the latter case the centripetal forces are much stronger, but then the most active and most adaptable of those forces is the personal character of the Emperor, who has received no exemption from the common human lot.
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