TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE AUSTRIAN SURPRISE.
TT really does look as if the White peoples of the world were fated to yield to democracy, as if universal suffrage were inflicted on them—perhaps as a punish- ment, perhaps only as a tonic—by some power higher than themselves. One would have said that Prince Bismarck was the last man to establish such a franchise, or to believe that the German Empire could be strengthened by a mass- vote ; and he was not pressed by any overwhelming neces- sity. The Emperor and the German Kings can hardly have desired such a long step forward to Republicanism; the public did not expect it, and there were a dozen alternatives, one being an educational vote entirely in harmony with the German mind. Yet universal suffrage was adopted as the base of the German Legislature. And now we have the Emperor of Austria, of all man- kind, proposing to introduce it, or a scheme declared to be its equivalent, into the whole Cis-Leithan Monarchy. Count Taaffe, the Premier in that side of the Empire, has introduced a Bill under which all who have passed through the elementary schools, which are compulsory upon all, all who have served in the Army in war time, all who can read and write, and all who know one of the national languages and have been resident for six months, are admitted to the franchise. It is difficult to conceive under that proposal who is left out, or why Count Taaffe takes the trouble to avoid using the simpler, as well as more honest form, " universal suffrage. The Bill is to be discussed immediately after the Budget and the Landwehr Bill have been passed ; and as the Emperor must have given-in his full adhesion, there can hardly be a doubt that the measure will be accepted. No class will fight on such a subject if the Government has yielded, or expose itself without a hope of ultimate victory to the bitter animosity of the masses. The middle-class is like the wall of an upper chamber, strong enough for all purposes so long as there is no thrust from the roof ; but the moment there is one, liable to tumble in pieces on the street. Even the landlord class is powerless before the Emperor ; and the " national " sections which are aggrieved by the measure will not unite in an effort to resist it. It will pass. But what can have induced the Emperor and his advisers to try such a far-reaching experiment ? They must know that the faith in universal suffrage, whenever it has been accepted as a principle of Government, spreads like typhoid or scarlet-fever; that there is sure to be an agita- tion for it in Hungary, and that in Hungary it means the subjection of the great political race of the Magyars to the Slays they have governed so long, and, as far as politics are concerned, have oppressed so much. In Bohemia, it means the subjection of the German element under the Czechs ; in Galicia, it makes the peasantry supreme ; and even in the old provinces of the House it will secure a representation by no means so devoted to the Monarchy as the old. Why has the Emperor made such a concession, which was not expected, which annoys the classes most devoted to the Throne, and which will, in the end, almost crush, as legislators, that aristocracy for which the House of Hapsburg has risked so much, and to which it has so nearly confined active political life ? No feeble upper class can stand against universal suffrage. The able correspondent of the Times hints that the motive was fear of the Socialists, who, with their allies among the Radicals, have been holding great meetings all over the Cis-Leithan Monarchy, at which the speakers made universal suffrage almost their sole demand ; but the request was not urgent for the moment, and the Emperor, confident in his Army and his hereditary followers, has faced greater risks before. We fancy that he has been greatly moved by his experience of the weakness of the present Parliament, as regards the questions which lead to disintegration. That Parliament has done practically nothing towards absorbing or even attracting the divided nationalities which make up the Cis-Leithan Monarchy as well as the whole Austrian Empire. It has been necessary, within the last few weeks, to restrain the Czechs of Bohemia, because they were growing anti-dynastic, and to place Prague in the secondary state of seige. Still more recently the Emperor has been besieged by his Italian subjects in the Trentino to liberate them from. the Tyrol, and has felt himself com- pelled to give an answer which might have been written by Mr. Gladstone, it is so impossible to understand whether it implies concession or refusal. Every other corner of the Monarchy has its own request to prefer, even if it is not so loud about it ; and the Emperor may not unreason- ably have thought that a stronger, unified Parliament might reduce these obstinate sections to consent to their own absorption. He does not greatly care which nation- ality wins. The House of Hapsburg grew its traditional policy while its head was always the COMA', rightful lord of the world, and not of this or that people ; and it has never lost the feeling so engendered. The Emperor would as soon be Slav as German, or Italian as either, provided only he were still within his dominions the universal referee. But he desires to see the two halves of his Empire less divided internally, to be lord of two great countries, and not of an imperfectly welded federation of ten or more States, in which every State is jealous of, or hostile to, every other. He wishes to " slump" the nationalities in universal suffrage; and certainly it is- true that a Parliament so elected rarely cares much about local or sectional claims. The French Convention, with all its theories of liberty, had no scruple whatever about terminating particularism in Brittany by the unsparing application of the sword ; and the German Parliament, though torn in pieces by religious, financial, and military differences, has never allowed itself to be worried for one minute by any claim on behalf of any kingdom within its purview. The Austrian Parliament, when organised on its new basis, may be as masterful ; and if so, the Emperor will have been more successful than any ancestor in ap- proaching towards that "fusion" which his House has never secured and never for a moment forgotten. As to the internal questions of which the Times' corre- spondent speaks, the Emperor probably regards them not at all, looks quietly down on Socialism as a jacquerie to which by-and-by some concessions must be made, and welcomes the Labour Party like another, if only it will give its vote for him. Why should he care what form internal society takes, so long as he is Emperor, and is when he intervenes, obeyed ?
Of course, as soon as the far-reaching character of the new measure is perceived, and class-agitation has become loud, there will be, as there always has been within the last two hundred years, a chorus of predictions that the Austrian Empire will go to pieces. It will not go to pieces, nevertheless, not even if it receives a shattering mili- tary blow. It has always been beaten without anything happening ; and as it survived the great Turkish Viziers,. and Frederick the Great, and Napoleon I., and Napoleon so it will survive also General Gourko. Whether its, ruler is Maria Theresa or Ferdinand I., a " patriot. Queen " or a semi-lunatic, makes comparatively little dif- ference, for its principle of life is independent of the accidents of fortune. The States of Austria are bound together by a bond which cannot break,—the certainty that the province which stands alone must undergo the one fate which it dreads more than extinction. In the worst hour of the Empire, Peak refused Kossuth's advice to proclaim Hungary independent, for that meant Hungary lost in the Slavonian morass. Now it is Bohemia which is making a fuss ; but Bohemia left alone is a mere enclave of Germany, and would be occupied at once, like Schleswi6- Holstein," to protect our brethren from oppression." Does Galicia want the rule of Russia, or Bosnia that of the Turk, or the Tyrol that of Italy ? They have only to shake off the rule of the Hapsburg, try Home-rule in its only logical form, and be crushed into powder by the Powers they most in the world detest. Nothing will happen to Austria as an Empire, even if the Fates which govern battle remain as adverse as they have always been ; but, of course, great changes are possible in her internal constitution, and statesmen will be curious to see the direction they ulti- mately take. Will the universal-suffrage Parliament kill the national acerbities, or will the national acerbities kill the Parliament ? We incline to believe the latter supposi- tion, for hatred of race increases as you descend to the bottom of the pyramid ; but the Emperor of Austria thinks otherwise, and if there is a man on earth who knows the height and depth and limits of race-hatred, it is the Monarch who has to speak four languages habitually, and get good service out -of unpaid soldiers from twenty different tribes.
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