The Sovereign most awkwardly placed is the Emperor of Austria,
as King of Hungary. He probably does not care one straw about the Civil Marriage Bill, but he does not like quarrelling with the great ecclesiastics who preach to him, or with the great Magnates among whom he lives. He therefore refused to create Peers enough to carry the Bill, hoping either to find a new Ministry, or, if he could not, to convince those around him that he submitted to force majeure. He gave the Premiership, therefore, to the Ban of Croatia, Count Khun Hedervary, a Liberal, who promised to pass the Bill without any creation of Magnates. Unfortunately he found that no Liberal would join him, and was compelled to resign without having faced Parliament even for a day. The King was thus compelled to revert to Dr. Wekerle, and concede everything, asking only in return that the Minister of Justice, Count Szib.gyi, who had bitterly offended the Clerical party, should be left out of the new Ministry. Dr. Wekerle, as
indifferent to colleagues as Mr. Gladstone, was quite willing, but the party was not, and the " crisis " was, by Friday's advices, still raging. The Emperor will get over it, as he always does; but one fancies he must sometimes long for the old days when he could have sent Dr. Wekerle to a fortress, and placed Count Szilagy i before a platoon of soldiers without audible re- monstrance from his people. He is a remarkable instance of a man bred a tyrant, who has become an adept in the patient craft of a constitutionalist. He does not, for all that, often give up his own way.
