THE HOUSE OF HAPSBURG.
ANY politician who, twenty years ago, had imagined the spectacle Pesth witnessed last Saturday, would have been ridiculed as a dreamer of silly dreams. He might have con- jured up in fancy the celebration, a week earlier, in Vienna of against the Magyars, the objects of their common aver- existence.
dilections been consulted, Austria would have allied herself alarm was sufficient to unite populations for the purposes of with the Porte, and the Russian army of the Balkans would the necessity which had brought them together. When have been bidden to withdraw across the Danube, on pain that need was not operating, each resumed its own course, of having its base of operations cut by an Austro-Hungarian though the same Sovereign governed all and governed host. The measure in itself unpopular has been traced not ob- strongly. At various times, a monarch of exceptional scurely to the initiative of Francis Joseph himself. Yet Maria energy has crushed his several dominions into temporary Theresa did not awaken a more extraordinary burst of loyal unity. The Thirty Years' War was a consequence of devotion than Francis Joseph. The Sovereign who had the power of aggression Austria thus acquired, also it was a brought in the stranger to insult the Hungarian nation, and demonstrative proof of the attempt's inherent impractic- from whom the nation had to wrench its liberties by continual ability. Her truer interpretation of her European duty is menaces, was acclaimed as if he had been the national liberator, to stand on guard within her own frontier. So long as The festival of Saturday was no pageant arranged by authority, she administers her incohesive territories on the basis of Silence had been kept as to the very day and hour of the Ln- allowing to each section the utmost independence consis- perial arrival. The King and Queen of Hungary came ; on tent with the contribution each must make to the general the instant their capital, without consultation, without pre- safety, Europe need not be jealous though 66 felix Austria" paration, developed a gala to welcome them as naturally as should go on attracting new principalities, as she has attracted flowers open in the sunshine. House-fronts blossomed with recently Bosnia and Herzegovina. The collapse of the militant gay parterres and festoons of shawls and banners. The whole force of the Porte has not rendered Austria superfluous in East- town had poured out to meet its Princes, in a holiday mood, ern Europe. She is required as much as ever, as a barrier which was even the more conspicuous for the absence of holi- against Turkish anarchy and Russian despotism. Very possi- day dress. An eye-witness wrote :—" Every one had come bly her resources, even for defence, might be augmented by out in the state in which he happened to be at the time,—the the territorial concentration which the political school of Prince workman as he had left his tools, the shopkeeper as he had Metternich desired to effect. What is more certain still is that left his shop." her means of offence would be enlarged. We have no desire Never was popular affettion more spontaneous. Never was to see Europe divided among half-a-dozen Powers, each an loyalty more genuine. The first impression the description armed gladiator, always ready trained for the ring. Austria of the incident makes on a foreign reader must be simple may be thought by some to be already a member of such a pleasure at a national manifestation of kindly sentiment, body, but her political divisions place her in a different class. It is impossible not to feel sympathy with a people im- Her position may be compared with that of a redan among personating itself in its chief, whatever the deserts of that fortifications. Readily defensible towards the east, she is an chief may be. Curiosity succeeds. We inquire the steps and unarmed, open work towards Western Europe. In proportion the means by which a country that once forswore all alle- as her political unity became more absolute, the tendency would giance has readopted its ancient dynasty as its representative, be, it is true, to render her defensive capabilities more manage- and concentrated upon it this wealth of homage. The able ; but in the same proportion would the temptation be explanation appears at first only too simple and common-place. intensified to apply them for ambitious purposes of European Hungary is prodigal of gratitude to its monarch, because he has aggression. Were, however, the uncertainty less as to the parti- been content to accept her view of what is best for herself. cular mode in which an Austria endowed with the unity of France His ancestors, and himself, acting at the beginning of his might employ that unity, that would constitute no valid reason reign on the precedent they had made, were convinced they why we should sympathise with plots against State independence. knew the wants of their subjects better than did their subjects Austria has become the vast territorial aggregate she now is, themselves. The Hapsburgs have not been specially selfish, by virtue of the willingness of her rulers to accept each new for Princes. All have believed in their duty to their peoples. accession on the condition itself laid down for the preserve- Several were ready to sacrifice ease, prosperity, even the safety tion of its national life. The Austrian Empire is the result, of their Crown, to the discharge of their Royal and Imperial not of a series of conquests, but of semi-voluntary coalition. obligations. Their non-German subjects cursed them ; when Hungary, at any rate, has never evinced the most pass- they could, they rebelled, as did Hungary in 1848; but execra- ing disposition to abdicate her State independence. There tions and insurrections were to a Hapsburg only so many exists no power under the Constitution of the Empire by proofs the more of the incapacity of his people for working which the Empire, as a whole, could override the attach- out their own welfare. Had it rested with the rulers, there is ment of a part for its separate rights. Ill-advised councillors no ground for supposing that the system of paternal Govern- of Francis Joseph's half-witted uncle and of Francis Joseph ment would have ever ceased in the Austrian Empire. himself, felt humiliated at the constitutional necessity of solicit- Happily, paralysis seized the nerves which brandished the ing the assent of what they considered a merely provincial Diet whip and which fastened the handcuffs. The Austrian States, to acts of Imperial policy, and they cancelled the franchises of and Hungary first and foremost, found themselves free to Hungary, but their master's throne all but perished in the shape their destiny. The Hapsburgs were reduced to look on, shock. The acclamations of a week back in Buda-Pesth are with no choice hut to ratify the national will. The consti- the evidence of the Hungarian nation's expression of gratitude tutionsl independence of Hungary was thus no gift of the to its Sovereign for letting it possess its own. Surely monarchs dynasty. But the dynasty has retroactively affirmed a system have themselves to blame, if they are followed by curses, which was none of its own devising. Hungary, in winning instead of blessings. back her old liberties, has reconquered her Kings for her own the Silver Wedding. That would not have seemed a wild use. The scene of Saturday is but one of a multitude of fiction. Vienna, twenty years back, was scarcely better manifestations of Hungarian thankfulness to the Hapsburgs, affected to the Hapsburgs than Buda-Pesth, but the Haps- for permitting Hungary to feel that they belong to her. The bugs were German, and so was Vienna. The Imperial city moral of the attitude of Hungary towards its German Bove- might fret and sulk at a policy she disliked, but she and her reign seems written in characters so wide and deep, that it Austrian Princes understood each other. They were certain, might be thought impossible to misconceive it. She after a decent interval, to make up their quarrel, and would thanks him for allowing her to join, with her internal then conspire with a pleasant unanimity of vindictiveness freedom preserved, in a Confederation necessary to her very sion. Hungary, it would have been thought, cherished A system by which no foreign enterprise can be under- too deep a vendetta against her King and his race for taken without consulting a couple of Legislatures has its five times twenty years to heal it. She might be crushed by manifest drawbacks. The double machinery does not always the brute force of Russia. Her strength to resist might be work in concert. There is often a dismal and ominous broken by the entrenchment of a Slav camp, recruited from creaking of the springs. For a State which its cir- the subject populations within her borders, but Hungarian souls cumstances compel to act at times offensively as well were free ; and Hungary and the Hapsburgs seemed parted in as defensively, so complicated an apparatus of government heart for ever. No recent event has happened to win back must be troublesome and vexatious. But the Austrian the affections of the Hungarians to the Austrian Emperor. Empire is not a State like other States. In truth, it is not Bosnia and Herzegovina have been united to the Empire, but so much a State as a Confederation. Separate atoms and that is an accession of territory against which Hungary pro- fractions, belonging originally to masses which the Turkish tested vehemently when the project was originally entertained, onset on Europe had split up, fell to the Hapsburgs, from the and the annexation has been accepted only under protest spontaneous instinct of a common peril. Austria was a Cave when already an accomplished fact. Had Hungarian pre- of Adullam, and the bond was terror of the Mussulman. That
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