THE PRESENT CRISIS IN AUSTRIA.
WE do not believe that the Austrian Empire is in any danger of splitting up. Its organisation is cumbrous with its two kingdoms and sixteen " Diets," its races are many-tongued and all jealous of each other, and its social body is divided into at least five castes—the noble, the military, the educated, the masses, and the Jews—which are divided from each other by singularly deep cleavages; but the Empire will not split up. It is held together by at least three bonds, which have proved their strength in hours of the deepest adversity, hours of defeat, of extreme poverty, and of almost savage dis- content. The first of these bonds is that the dynasty is accepted in every kingdom and province as national, and benefits, therefore, not only by the claim of the Crown to respect, which even in England is so strong, but by the semi-filial feeling for the Monarch which in Russia, in rural Prussia, and both in Hungary and Austria is still an emotion to be reckoned with alike by rebel and reformer. The second of these bonds is the brotherhood which exists throughout the Austrian Army, and which makes of the vast armed force a military caste, the first article of whose creed is that it is a duty to die for the Empire before any nation. ality within it. And the third and strongest bond of al is that any State which quits the Hapsburg dominion must, and knows that it must, accept the fate which of all others repels or disgusts it. These bonds have sufficed to hold the Empire together even when defeated as it was by the Turks, by Frederick the Great, by the first Napoleon by the third Napoleon, and by the Prussian King, and th.. State which survives the test of repeated defeat has always true vitality within it. The Austrian Empire may trans- mute itself, as Mr. Gladstone once prophesied it would, into a Federal Monarchy, but it will not, as we judge history, die within any period worth a statesman's calcu- lation.
Nevertheless, the Empire, or rather the Cisleithan halt of it, appears to be approaching a very dangerous crisis. It looks as if the system devised for the government of the Monarchy after the great trouble of 1861, and under which it has recovered prosperity, while its people have enjoyed a large measure of happiness, were about to be overthrown. Under that system two States were recog- nised—the ancient State of Hungary and the new State of " Austria "—in each of which substantially the same system was adopted. That is to say, in each the head of the reigning house, in Hungary as King, in Austria as Emperor, was recognised as the true chief of the Executive, to be advised, restrained, or aided by a Parliament of limited powers, the two Parliaments being linked together for foreign affairs by a third body, the Delegates, whose attributes are, so far as we know, unique in the world, though the American Senate when dis- cussing foreign affairs bears to them some imperfect like- ness. The scheme worked fairly well in Hungary, and being managed by a dominant caste of high political capacity, it still works well, Hungary as a State being unprecedentedly prosperous, fairly contented, and devoted to its hereditary head. In Austria, too, the scheme worked well at first, though with much friction; but latterly the friction has increased, and at present, under the impulse of a great quarrel about languages, it threatens to take fire and burn up. German and Slav, Clerical and Liberal, Anti- Semite and Socialist, there is a welter of passionate faction in the Parliament which has already reduced it to the level of a discreditable debating society, and threatens to destroy its usefulness altogether. Nut only is ordinary business stopped altogether by planned dis- order, ending occasionally in free-fights, but the great agreement, the " Ausgleich," which binds 11:11^...sary and Austria together, and which is indisper.4-e,e, if not to the life, at least to the mechanism of the general Monarchy, cannot get itself renewed, and c aly exists, like the British Army, by virtue of repeated Continuing Bills. k The factions have, in fact, seized upon it as their strongest weapon, the Germans threatening to shatter the unity of the Empire unless their ascendency is restored; the Slays—we use the racial terms instead of the terms of party as giving a broader view—hoping to compel the Emperor to intervene and give them a final victory.) It looks, indeed, as if with such hatreds, such pretensions, and such jealousies prevailing an ordinary Parliament were impossible, and as if the Emperor must either further federalise the Cisleithan Monarchy, making Bohemia a separate State, or be must suspend the Constitution by taking legislative power into his own hands.
The former plan, though not unacceptable to the Hapsburgs, who are proud of their Bohemian crown, cannot be adopted because the Hungarians will not stand it. The statesmen of that kingdom say definitely that they have agreed to a Dual Monarchy, and know how to work it, but that they never agreed to a Triune Monarchy, cannot work it, and will therefore, if Bohemia is made a kingdom, proclaim the independence of Hungary, always, of course, under its beloved King Francis Joseph of Hapsburg-Lorraine. The second alternative remains practicable, and doubtless if the Emperor-King were a Hapsburg of the hereditary type would be adopted at once. Francis Joseph of Austria is, however, no ordinary man. He is not highly intellectual, he is not an original administrator, and he has never shaken out of himself the dull pride which seems to be in the very blood of his house ; but his long career of failure and success, the awful blows he has suffered—think of Sadowa, and the suicide of the Crown Prince, and the triumphs he has won —think of the pacification of Hungary and the acquisition of Bosnia without a shot fired, have made him a great diplomatist, calm, tolerant, even when his ultramontanism is attacked, and he thinks he is tolerating blasphemy, and a cool student of countries other than his own. He has one card still in his hand other than the reassertion of his right to govern, and it is quite possible that he may play it. (The franchise on which the Austrian Parliament rests is an absurd one. The intention of its framers, there can be little doubt, was to avoid a representation of the nation by granting a representation of classes, each of which has its own separate right of election. The calculation was that all the Conservative classes would pull together, and if the population had been homogeneous they probably would have done so. As it was, they split into a multi- plicity of groups with no common tie, and little care for the dignity, or even the power of Parliament if they might not rule it. ) The idea of the Emperor, therefore, who sees that in spite of the German Parliament the German Emperor governs as well as reigns, is to declare that the class franchises have made the Consiitution unworkable, to annoiiiie-e-that he for one does not dread his people, and to decree universal suffrage without restrictions. He will thus, he thinks, obtain popular support, rid himself of the unmanageable groups, and obtain a Parliament divided into great parties with which his Ministers or he himself can come to an understanding. The irritation in some quarters will probably be very great, but of resistance there is no chance whatever. Who is to resist ? The Hungarians, though bitterly annoyed because of the precedent, will have no locus standi. The classes cannot oppose, for alone they have no power, and no people as a whole will ever insurrect against universal suffrage until they have tried it and found it fail. If the Emperor adheres to his idea, therefore, we shall see all the Austrian factions swamped, and for a time lost in a new body of voters, whose action it will take several Sessions to regularise and solidify,—the Emperor, who grows old, gaining all that time. Whether the scheme will succeed when tried is of course uncertain, there being ground for serious doubt whether a Representative Body composed of many fairly equal races will ever be a success—suppose three hundred and fifty of our own House of Commons were Celts of the South Irish type—but it is a bold manoeuvre, and not one which in justice can be called tyrannical. The decree, if it comes, will be unconstitu- tional ; but is not the vote of a universal suffrage Parliament equivalent to a plebiscite ? And does any one know of a political act, not being an immoral one, like a massacre or a breach of treaty, which the nation, acting through a plebiscitum, is not at liberty to condone ?
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