HUNGARY'S PRESENT STATE AND PROSPECTS. * ITALY today, tomorrow Hungary. No
one believes in the stabi- lity of the system pursued since 1850 by the incapable and incor- rigible house of Hapsburg ; no one doubts that Hungary will rise again to vindicate her ancient constitutional rights. The facts disclosed through the public journals of Europe give warn- ing that the struggle cannot long be averted, and are full of en- couragement for the friends of national independence. But more information is needed than newspapers afford to allay their anxieties for Hungary, and to assure them that ten years of mar- tyrdom have not broken down the national energies, and unfitted them to contend as successfully as they did in 1848 with the mili- tary resources of Austria. This information is now supplied in the most satisfactory manner by M. de Szemere, late Minister- President of Hungary. His nation, he tells us, though silent and seemingly torpid during ten dismal years, has not been inert or hopeless ; she has been" collecting her scattered senses," andxeso- lutely biding her time. She now sees that the general situation of Europe is favourable to the designs she meditates. She will have to face Austria alone, and feels herself strong enough to re- sume the struggle. "She does not ask, and, which is a capital point, she no longer fears the intervention of a third party in her affairs." More than that, she has no internal dissentions to weaken her in the face of the common foe, she is in no danger of see- ing a portion of her people fighting against her under the banners of the common oppressor. All ranks, all races, all political and re- ligious parties are united as one man against the power that has duped, oppressed, and tormented all. But how, it may be asked, can we put faith in the permanence of this mutual reconciliation, appearing as it does at a moment when the free action of mutual jealousies is suppressed by a force from without ? By the decrees of the Diet in 1847-8 the constitutional rights of Hungary were shared in equal measure by all her children, yet Slaves, Roumans, and Germans rose against the cause defended by the Hungarians in 1848; why may they not do so again ? "That," says M. de Szemere, "is the very feature of our revolution most frequently misunderstood, but only by those who knowing the facts, close their eyes against the evidence, and those who are unacquainted
with our country as it was before 1848."
"In the first place, one important fact must be made known ; which is, that out of 2,400,000 Roumans, there were 1,500,000; out of 1,500,000 Ger- mans, 1,250,000; and out of 4,700,000 Slaves, 3,000,000, who could not be induced by any means of persuasion, nor even by force, to take arms against us ; on the contrary, most of them voluntarily joined our standard. The truth may, however, be found on a careful analysis of the elements of a movement apparently inexplicable ; and by accurately distinguishing the motives of the men who commanded, from the motives of the mass of the populations who generally suffer themselves to be guided either by craft or by force. They who directed the reactionary movement were nearly all Austrian generals and other officers, acting under secret instructions, and provided with arms and money by the court of Vienna. In Slavonia and Croatia, there was General dellacsics ; in the Bannat, General Supplikatz; in Transylvania, Geveral Puchner. These men were only the blind instru- ments of the Court Camarillo. But the people ought never to be so judged ; for even when in error, they will always be found to have acted on noble and generous impulses. Therefore, though it is an indisputable fact that the Croats were as soldiers brutally compelled to march against the Hun- garians; that the Serbs, aided by 20,000 foreign Serbs brought from Servia, contrary to international law, never thought of anything else but extir- pating the other races to possess their lands ; that the Roumans were only inspired by their brethren of the Danubian Principalities, who were anxious to enlarge their State at our expense ; it must, however, be confessed that at this period of febrile excitement of the national sentiment, all the races looked forward to a glorious future, and under the lying flag raised by per- fidious Austria, they despised the constitutional and national liberty which they enjoyed in Hungary. Thus the petty country of Croatia, poor and powerless as it is, aspired to found an independent kingdom ; the Woiwodina • Hungary from 1848 to 1860. By Bartholomew de Szemere, late Minister of the Interior, and President of the Council of Ministers in Hungary. Published by Bentley.
wanted to be incorporated in the future Servian empire, as yet unknown and the Romans aspired to become a part of a Daco-Roumania, which may perhaps be formed some day, but which has never existed yet It is easy to conceive that, in such circumstances, the cordial fraternity which previously existed between the different races was first changed into hatred and afterwards into sullen mistrust. Children of the same country, as they were, they nevertheless long looked upon each other as enemies. This was one of the worst consequences of the war ; it was the greatest internal diffi- culty to be overcome in Hungary, and Austria endeavoured, [after the war] but in vain, to turn it to her advantage. At last, after ten years of suffer-
ings, these races are getting reconciled ; one confesses its errors, the other pardons them ; those who disowned each other when free, have become
friends again in slavery ; and now they are profoundly convinced that the liberty and nationality lost by discord can only be recovered by a return to the concord of former times."
There is in the secret archives of Vienna a document in which are these words that perfectly epitomise the Hapsburg policy towards Hungary : Oportet facere Hungariam Catholicam, Ger- manam et miseram. With all her might has Austria been acting in the spirit of that maxim since 1849, with considerable success as to the third object it prescribes, with entire failure as to the other two. Non-Catholic Hungary remains as thoroughly Non- Catholic, and Catholic Hungary as resolutely opposed to Papal encroachments as ever. The only result of ten long years of per- severing labour to naturalize the German language in Hungary is to have made it equally hateful to all the races, and to have united them all in one common feeling of their danger. "Which- ever race may begin the struggle, the others will be sure unanimously to follow the example." The adherents of the Greek church in Hungary are nearly 4,000,000, all of them being either Roumans or Slavonians. Austria has made immense efforts to convert them, but only with the effect of exasperating their hatred of the Germans, their creed, and everything belonging to them.
"With respect to the Hungarian Roman Catholics, any one who should suppose that the Concordat was favourably received by them would be strangely mistaken. If Austria has concluded this treaty with the hope of deriving advantage from it, she has made a signal blunder. As in virtue of our ancient laws the bishops could publish neither bulls nor briefs from Rome without the assent of the civil government, they were in a manner almost independent of the Pope ; they were so many sovereigns in their dioceses. On the other hand, the inferior clergy were safely guaranteed by our ecclesiastical institutions against arbitrary proceedings on the part of their superiors; for in Hungary, as in every free country, the spirit of the canon law did not predominate in the general laws, but, on the contrary, the spirit of the constitutional laws modified the canon law in a liberal sense. The Concordat has, therefore, produced no result except to increase the number of malcontents ; for the diocesans, having ceased to be inde- pendent, are now at the mercy of intriguers at the court of Rome ; while the inferior clergy are at the mercy of their diocesans, who find no consola- tion in the thought of having a number of slaves under them since they have lost their own liberty. You need not, therefore, be at all astonished to learn that it was the Cardinal Primate of Esztergom who undertook to deliver to his sovereign the memorial of the Constitutionalists, or on read- ing the names of our richest prelates at the head of all the national move- ments and enterprises. The Hungarian Catholic clergy, for its tolerant spirit, sociability, patriotism, and love of liberty, differs from all others ; it can only be compared to itself."
As for the Protestants, by far the most important religious body in Hungary on account of their great numbers, (nearly 3,500,0000 their social status, their superior intelligence, and their hereditary antagonism to the encroachments of despotic Austria, their unconquered spirit is seen in their refusal to accept the plausible concessions made to them by the Imperial patent of the 1st of September 1859. The eminently liberal provisions of that patent astonished unwary observers, for they comprised a system of church Government "based on universal suffrage, uniting in beauteous harmony the most perfect order with the utmost individual liberty." But there was trickery and injustice in the specious offer, for it was the offer of a usurper to restore as a boon, revocable at pleasure, and not without injurious modifi- cations, rights which the Hungarian Protestants had possessed and exercised from the period of the Reformation, under the guarantee of ancient laws and of international treaties sanctioned by England, Holland, and other European powers. Therefore have the Protestants of Hungary steadfastly rejected the Imperial patent; they will accept nothing less than a full restitution of their ancient rights, and they are sincerely supported in their pretensions by the Catholics and the orthodox Greeks.
The impoverishing clause of the Hapsburg programme has been effectively worked out since 1849. The country, which then had not a farthing of debt, has now to bear the burden of 240,000,000/. of Austrian debt; the taxes have been quintupled, and in addi- tion to them there are the voluntary loans, to which every man is at liberty to subscribe or not ; but if he does not put down his name for the sum the tax-collector bids him, it will be added to his next year's taxes. Estates formerly flourishing are melting away, and the yeomanry and peasantry "are now far poorer, and be- yond all comparison more enslaved than they were before 1848." They know this, and they know the reason why, and they are 14,000,000 out of 15,500,000 inhabitants.
Hungary exceeds the rest of the empire in extent, and is not fax inferior to it in population, the numbers being—Austria, without Hungary, 17,598,354; Hungary alone, 15,500,000. The weakness of the empire must, therefore, be incurable and pro- gressive, so long as Hungary either remains deeply disaffected, pr is hindered from developing her natural resources. The loss
of Hu would be the destruction of the empire, and it is manifest that, without extraneous aid, the House of Hapsburg cannot long retain possession of that most important moiety of its dominions. Does it follow then that the Austrian empire must fall to pieces unless the other powers of Europe aid in propping up
the rickety fabric ? By no means. The Hapsburg dynasty may share the fate of the Stuarts and the Bourbons ; but its fall would be the renovation of the empire. Hungary cherishes no enmity against the other provinces, demands no privileges for herself which she would not gladly see extended to them. "Is she oppressed? then all the other provinces are oppressed also. Is she stirring? then all the others look towards her with hope. And if she becomes free, all the others must necessarily become free with her." If English statesmen still believe that the ex- istence of Austria is a political necessity, they should not be in- different to the conditions on which her existence depends. To regard her in her actual state as the keystone of the European edifice is an outworn superstition, for "how can you lean upon a power which cannot support itself ? "
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