COUNT BADENL W E have the usual news from the Hapsburg
Dominion,—that everything is going for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Something in the apparent situation of Austria—it may be her history of defeat in war ; it may be the perpetual bickering of her nationalities—deceives outside observers as to the strength of the links which bind her together, and every five years or so we are told that the Empire of the Hapsburgs, which has weathered such awful storms, is visibly going to pieces. Now it is the death of an Emperor, or, again, it is the disappearance of a statesman ; this year it is an unlucky war, next year it is a formidable rebellion, or in a third year it is a Quarrel of nationalities,—the occasion varies, but the comment is always the same. Austria is splitting up. All the same, Austria never does split up. The Emperor finds a successor, the states- man is replaced by a substitute, the unlucky war is made up for by a lucky treaty, the rebellion re-cements the Empire, the quarrel of nationalities dies away in a corn- proinise or a snarl. The Hapsburg Dominion is like some households in which there is perpetual small bickering, in which the sons are often "at cuts" and the daughters bridle and fume, and. the very dogs growl and snarl at each other for the middle place on the hearthrug ; but which for all that, owing to some inherent principle of vitality, usually a despotic head or mistress, always go on, outliving homes in which there reigns a perpetual peace. Three times in living memory has " Austria " fallen—after Kossuth's rising, or rather after the humiliating appeal for Russian aid, after Magenta, and after Koniggriitz—and there is Austria still, as homogeneous as ever she was, with her territory un- diminished, with her alliances immensely more solid, with an Army at least twice as strong, indefinitely richer, and with a future outlook into the west of the Balkan Penin- sula much brighter than her old outlook into the Italian principalities. The House of Hapsburg, supposed to be effete, has produced an Emperor who, originally considered at once feeble and unlucky, has been the most successful of modern managers ; it has found statesmen to help it who, whether first-class men or not, have always done what wanted doing ; and it has developed a, kind of loyalty among its subjects which, if it is neither as bright nor as hard as steel, is, for all its bending and shaking, as un- breakable and as lasting as bamboo. Now, this week, we have the old story over again. For months past men usually keen observers have been parading the difficulties of the Hapsburg Dominion. Hungary and Austria were about to quarrel on the most hopeless of all subjects, —a difference of religious drift ; Austria herself was being shattered by the conflict of races in her Parliament ; the Emperor was giving way to Rome ; he could find no Premiers ; there were troubles in Prague, in Buda, in Croatia, in Transylvania, even in Vienna,—surely this grand crash expected for three hundred years was arriving at last. Pessimism was reigning only a month ago, and to-day what is the spectacle ? The " impossible " House of Magnates in Hungary has passed all the impossible religious Bills, and agnostics are getting married in scores by civil rite, or even reverting to Judaism—the " conversions " so numerous after 1866 were, we imagine, all reversions— without any consequences, either social or political. The Emperor-King has been received by the most disturbed nationalities under his sway with the heartiest cordiality ; the newest and roughest province is drawing all Europe to see its wonderful scenery, and to attend an Exhibition amid a social security like that of Switzerland; the Treasuries buy gold with their surpluses till they affect the London rate of discount ; an acceptable Premier has been found for Hungary in Baron Banffy ; and a Premier has been found for the Cisleithan half of the Monarchy, all in despair only a week ago, who is so strong and so able that all the discontented groups are disconcerted, and mutter, "Count Badeni can govern." Throwing over the " dodgy " policy of Count Taaffe, which did its work for a while, but en- couraged grouping too much—it was exactly like the policy of the late Cabinet of Great Britain—Count Badeni an- nounces calmly that he shall defer to no group, but shall lead and not follow ; and so all the groups, with a gasp of relief, have silently come to heel. Count Badeni has even ven- tured to state facts, as Lord Rosebery once did, and is not expected, unlike our Liberal Premier, to explain away his sayings. He has ventured to say in Parliament that the ideas of the Anti-Semites are contrary to civilisation, and will have no tolerance from him ; and that, although he shall propose a broad Reform Bill, he shall leave a cer- tain ascendency to the German element, "whose civilisa- tion has served as an example for all the other peoples of the Empire." The Czechs sniffed, but every one knows that the statement is true, and it is fully believed not only that Count Badeni will get his majority, but that he will be strong enough to deal on equal terms with the Hungarian Premier, Count Banffy, as regards the resettlement of the compromise between the two halves of the Empire, which expires in 1897. Both halves, in short, are now politically in order, having found men to govern them, and the entire Hapsburg Dominion, which was said a few weeks ago to be a sort of dissolving-view, is again recognised as a great and solid, though slow- moving and perhaps slow-thinking, Power.
The incidents both in Buda-Pesth and in Vienna are worth the attention of English politicians. It is the cus- tom just now to attribute the safety of Austria solely to the ability of her Emperor, and no doubt the existence within the Empire of a Grand Referee in whom all its various nationalities equally confide, is one of her strongest bonds of union. But in 1866 this Emperor was denounced as an imbecile, and even in 1868 the people of Hungary regarded him with a sleepless suspicion. He has, moreover, been defeated three times, and still he has remained as strong as ever. Austria, moreover, has survived very feeble Emperors,—the Emperor Joseph, who was the Mr. Brooke of " Middlemarch " on a throne; the Emperor Francis, who was a more genial George III.; and even the Emperor Ferdinand, who was admitted by his own family to be intellectually deficient. The safety of Austria is due, first of all, not to her Emperor's personal qualities, but to what we must call the con- servative force of circumstances, to that impulse—or, if you will, destiny—which only allows Empires to form themselves where they are wanted. The States of Austria need imperatively a nexus, so to bind them together that they shall not fall a prey to their enemies ; they find it in the House of Hapsburg, and the House therefore survives all external defeats and all internal sources of decay. Most journalists, we do not know why, have a permanent notion that States are in a way artificial creations, and therefore fragile; but this is not altogether true. The conservative forces which protect them are prodigiously strong. Europe has been troubled for six hundred years by incessant war and revolution, and the only first-class States which have disappeared in that time are the Byzantine Empire and the Polish King- dom. There are France and. Germany and Austria and England just as there were in 1295, except the changes in their internal organisation. The only vast disturbance has been the rise of Russia to the rank of a grand military Power. Only one great dynasty, the House of Bourbon, has been uprooted, and even that retains the second of its three thrones. When Italy reunited herself, she accepted for her monarchs a dynasty a thousand years old ; when Roumania wanted to be ruled, she sent for a Hohenzollern. Great States, and dynasties, and even little kingdoms, do not die so easily as reporters fancy, nor are Parlia- mentary conflicts quite so epoch-making as those who take part in them contend. As Lord Beaconsfield said, representative Government is an admirable contrivance, but "the Jews have seen and have survived the Pharaohs," and it is perfectly possible, we should say most probable, that in the year 2495, the relative strength of the States of Europe will be much what it is now ; that their boundaries will be very nearly what they are ; and that special correspondents will be stating then that the con- flicts in the Hapsburg Dominion are irreconcilable, and it must shortly go to pieces. It is true, as Galileo says, that "the world moves for all that ; " but it is also true that "for all that the world continues very much as it was," cataclysms being excessively rare, and the thrust of the ploughshare being often taken by the worms for a hideous catastrophe.
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