' and the freedom of the press. For the greater part of these 'objects,' says Mr. Paget (in 1839), they are still struggling.' In the Diet of 1832, it was proposed to begin with an inquiry into, and a reform of, the commercial system; but, on the plea of the greater urgency of other measures, this inquiry was craftily delayed, and the code of laws relating to the peasantry was taken up instead. The liberal party united their strength to carry through a measure for giving to the peasant the unrestricted privilege of buying and selling landed property, and the enjoyment of equal rights before the law; but this great act of justice, from which Hungary might have dated a new era in her history, was not carried. Eleven times,' says Mr. Paget, (translating Hungarian forms into English terms,) the 'Commons passed the bill; eleven times the Magnates rejected ' it. At last, a majority of two voices was obtained against it ' in the Commons-that is, against its immediate consideration; ' and it was accordingly put off to another Diet.'* Thus it will be seen, that, in Hungary as in England, the struggle for constitutional freedom has been all along connected with practical objects, with religious freedom, freedom of commerce, and fiscal reform. Some of the reforms adopted by the Diet of 1847, 1848, had been advocated by the patriotic Count Széchenyi, in his work upon Credit,' as far back as 1830; and nearly all of them in his work entitled 'Stadium,' published in 1833 at Leipzig, the Austrian censor having objected to the work. In fact, proposals for many important reforms had been made by the national party at a much earlier period, although it is only since 1832 that they have been enabled to maintain the struggle for them in the Diet, in spite of the determined opposition of the Crown.

Prince Metternich's last act had been, to dissolve the popular chamber of Hungary, in reply to a free remonstrance against his policy, addressed to the Emperor. His fall and flight opened the way for pressing upon the new cabinet the Hungarian claims, including an independent ministry; none of them, however, involving any new principle of fundamental law. The administration of Hungary has always been, in theory and form, separate and distinct from that of Austria; and when a new constitution, with a responsible ministry, was conceded to the Austrians, it rendered it at once the more reasonable and the more necessary that the Hungarian administration should be put upon the same footing. To the new laws proposed by the Chamber of Deputies, and unanimously

voted by the Chamber of Magnates, at the formal request of the Palatine, Ferdinand V., on the 11th of April, gave his solemn assent at Presburg, in the midst of the Diet, in the following terms:

'Having graciously listened to, and graciously granted the prayers of our beloved and faithful dignitaries of the church and of the state, magnates and nobles of Hungary and her dependencies, we ordain, that the before-mentioned laws be registered in these presents, word for word; and as we consider these laws and their entire contents, both collectively and separately, fitting and suitable, we give them our consent and approbation. In exercise of our royal will, we have accepted, adopted, approved, and sanctioned them, in assuring at the same time our faithful states, that we will respect the said laws, and will cause them to be respected by our faithful subjects.

'Signed,
'Countersigned,

FERDINAND.
BATTHYANI.'

The Emperor and his Court remained for some days at Presburg; and at an entertainment given on the occasion, Mr. Toulmin Smith tells us, the Archduke Francis Charles, brother of the Emperor, made a speech to the following effect: We are heartily glad to have given our sanction to the reforms 6 so ardently wished for by the Hungarian nation; for they have been struggling for them, not only with a rare persever< ance, but in an unswervingly legal and constitutional way; 'while the Viennese, children as they are, think they have gained a constitution by force-a circumstance which I unhesitatingly regret, and which bodes no good. I repeat, we are heartily glad to have been able to satisfy you.' Subsequent events, with the notorious habit of lying' ascribed to the Archduke, warrant the belief, that these words were spoken with the deliberate intention to deceive the Hungarian people. On the opening of a new Diet, however, on the 2nd of July following, the Palatine expressed the unalterable determination of the sovereign to maintain the integrity of the kingdom, and all the laws of the land, especially those which he had sanctioned at the last Diet, in the preceding April. Yet, at that very time, Jellachich, acting upon secret orders from the court, was preparing the invasion of the country. The atrocious and systematic perfidy of the Austrian government outstrips even that of the Stuarts. On the 10th of June, a royal decree proclaimed Jellachich a rebel, and suspended him from all his functions, civil and military at the same moment, the Ban was secretly confirmed in all his dignities by the Austrian ministry, while a Croatian and Servian deputation was received with honour by the Court. Again, on the 2nd of July, the

:

Croatian and Servian movements were stigmatised as revolts, and the Emperor-king recommended active measures for their suppression. In the following month, a state document was transmitted to the Palatine, disavowing the Hungarian laws of the 11th of April, so solemnly ratified; accompanied with a royal letter, commanding the attendance of the Hungarian ministers at Vienna, to concert the consolidation of Hungary with Austria.

'The policy of Austria, for a long time crooked and concealed, at last unmasked itself. The reactionary party, which till then had struck in the dark, was emboldened by the successes of Radetzki in Italy; and by its own avowal, the Austrian government had stirred up a fratricidal war, only to subjugate Hungary, and to oblige her to purchase peace at the price of her independence. The Austrian ministry no longer hesitated in the course they adopted: they made the Emperor-king withdraw, on the 4th of September, the decree which suspended Jellachich from all his dignities, as a person accused of high-treason; and this was done under the pretext, that all the accusations against the Ban were false, and that he had exhibited an unflinching fidelity to the House of Austria. Jellachich was re-instated in all his offices, although he was actually encamped with his army on the frontiers of Hungary, and was ready to invade her. In consequence of this retractation on the part of the Emperor-king, the Hungarian ministry which had been appointed in March, gave in their resignation.'-Case of Hungary, pp. 23, 24.

On the 9th of September, Jellachich passed the Drave at three separate points, and advanced towards the heart of the kingdom, pillaging and ravaging the country. On the 2nd of the same month, Count Latour, the Austrian minister of war, had declared before the Diet at Vienna, upon his word of honour, that he had no correspondence whatever with the Ban. From an intercepted correspondence, which was discovered and published on the 24th, it was proved, that, on the same day, the Austrian ministry had sent to Jellachich 150,000 florins, and ammunition, for the purpose of prosecuting the war against the Hungarians. The Palatine had professed (Sept. 15) to accept the command of the defensive forces hastily levied by the Hungarian ministry to repel the Croat invasion; but, on the 23rd, he deserted the camp, and fled to Vienna; while Count Lamberg was nominated, by an absolute decree of the Emperor, commander of all the troops in Hungary, for the obvious purpose of betraying them into the hands of the Ban. On the 27th, the Hungarian Diet declared this appointment illegal, and Lamberg a traitor, should he attempt to carry it out. The Count had reached Pesth, with the determination of getting possession of

the citadel of Buda, when, on crossing the Danube bridge, between the two towns, he was murdered by the infuriated mob. Had he been arrested and judicially condemned, he would have deserved his fate. Under this extreme emergency of actual invasion, deserted by the Palatine, and with the full proof in their hands of the perfidy of the Austrian Court, the Hungarian Diet, for the first time, on the 29th of September, authorized a committee of war to act with temporary executive authority; and on the same day, a great battle was fought, four leagues from Pesth, in which Jellachich was totally defeated, to the utter disappointment of the Austrian ministers, who had calculated upon his taking Hungary unprepared, and crushing all opposition. The Ban fled to Vienna; and on the 3rd of October, an imperial decree was issued from Schönbrunn, dissolving the Hungarian Diet, placing the kingdom of Hungary under martial law, and investing the Ban of Croatia with the command of all the troops in Hungary and Transylvania, and with absolute and plenipotentiary powers as the royal commissary.

This decree can be regarded in no other light than as a declaration of war on the part of the Austrian Government against the legal and constitutional authorities of Hungary, who had taken no step hitherto in contravention of the royal prerogative. If there ever was a righteous cause of revolt,—if ever a nation was justified in taking up the sword in defence of their constitutional rights and liberties against the violence of a perjured despot, the Hungarians have thisjustification. The sword was first unsheathed, in fact, by the King; for although, in repelling and defeating the invader, the Hungarian Government opposed no avowed Imperial authority, the acts of Jellachich must be considered as the illegal and masked acts of the Austrian Emperor, levying war against his own subjects, without either a declaration of war or a casus belli. The Case of Hungary' is fairly stated by Count Ladislas Teleki:

'Taking their stand upon the Constitution, which enacts that royal ordinances are not legal unless they are countersigned by one of the responsible Hungarian ministers; which further enacts, that the Diet can neither be closed nor dissolved before the vote of the budget; convinced that the King had in no case the right to leave the country at the mercy of an armed enemy, and to abolish the constitution; that it was contrary to the royal oath, contrary to all the compacts which united Hungary with the Austrian monarchy, to take the legislative power from the Hungarian National Assembly, to give it to an Assembly composed, in a great measure, of the deputies of the hereditary states: the Representatives of the nation declared the self-styled

royal ordinance which invested Jellachich with the executive power, null and void, and the measures that accompanied this ordinance, illegal and unconstitutional, both in form and in substance.'

In speaking of the Emperor, we, of course, speak of the Camarilla by whom he is ruled and guided, without reference to his personal feelings and character. The Emperor Ferdinand, clouded as was his intellect, is stated to have uniformly resisted the proposal of Count Stadion to subvert the constitution of Hungary, with the reply, 'My oath forbids.' Hence it was deemed necessary to extort from him his abdication. The young Emperor is only nineteen years of age, and the mere instrument of the ambitious woman (the Archduchess Sophia) to whom he owes his elevation to the throne. We do not deem it necessary to discuss the constitutional question arising out of the forced abdication of the ex-Emperor, together with the fact insisted upon by Mr. Toulmin Smith, in his able exposition of the case, that Francis Joseph is not, as yet, the legally crowned King of Hungary. The union of the two crowns,' it is contended, has always been liable to be severed, just as the union of the crowns of England and Hanover were always liable to be severed, and finally became severed on the death of William IV. 'If England is a province of Hanover, then, and not any more, 'is Hungary a province of Austria.' At all events, the people of Hungary might seem to have as legitimate a ground for declaring the throne vacant on the abdication of Ferdinand, as had the Parliament of England on the actual abdication of James II., in 1688. Nevertheless, they adhered to their allegiance; and it was not till the events of the spring of the present year, and the invoking the aid of Russia, destroyed every hope of maintaining the union between the two countries, that the Diet proclaimed to all the nations of the civilized world, that the House of Hapsburg-Lorraine, as perjured in the sight ' of God and man, has forfeited its claim to the Hungarian throne.' The Times, presuming upon the ignorance of its readers, has spoken of the Hungarian war as having commenced, on the part of Austria, in order to prevent a repeal of the union between the two countries; but the union which it was sought to force upon the Hungarians, had never existed. A union did exist, however, between Hungary and Croatia, and had existed for eight centuries, which the Austrian Government attempted, by the most perfidious means, to dissolve. Imagine a King of Hanover subsidizing a rebel Irish army to invade and lay waste England, in order to prevent the repeal of the former union between this country and the kingdom of Hanover, and you have