mean of the most radical inversion ... historical right is overthrown, whoever appeals to it, makes himself ridiculous." No sooner did Georgey hear of the declaration of independence, and of Kossuth having stated, that it was the wish of the army, than he made arrangements for going to Debreczin and giving the statement a flat denial, but this intention was defeated by the vacation given to the deputies, until the 1st of June, when the Diet was to be held at Pesth.

In my humble opinion, the territory of Repeal royalisın is sufficiently remote from the legal and historical rights of Austria, but in justice to Georgey, I confess that nothing seems to me more inconsistent with British fair play than to see a man who cannot defend himself, accused of an unpatriotic hatred and envy of the man who deposed him in the hour of victory-who is called an intriguer because he would not accompany Kossuth from the common territory of royalist Repeal to democratic Repeal,-and, lastly, accused of being a traitor, after every inch of Transylvania had been swept clean of Magyar armies, and all Hungary to boot, except a single corner, and the fortresses of Comorn and Peterwardein, impregnable to be sure, but for all the purposes of the Magyar campaign useless from their distant isolation.

In conclusion, it would be difficult to find, in the whole range of History, a man of more splendid genius than Kossuth, as the Incendiary Rhetorician, in contra distinction to Sechenyi, the Patriotic Reformer, and to Batthyany, the Practical Revolutionary Statesman. If Sechenyi be immortal, for the erection of the modern temple of Hungarian Liberty, Kossuth, has also for all time, prima facie, associated his name with it, as its Herostratus.

History shows that one of the arrangements of Providence, is that large heterogeneous empires should exist, composed not of one nation, but of many nations. Hence the Roman empire, the British empire, and others that have been associated with a high degree of civilisation.

The British empire is an agglomeration of various states, races, and nations, the majority of the inhabitants of which are ruled by military despotism, but we, the dominant race, among ourselves have a representative form of government, and within our wide dominions a British citizenship resembles in many respects what a Roman citizenship was.

But that is

But if India, Malta, Canada, the Ionian Islands, and twenty other dependencies, Dutch, French, and Spanish, were all to be aggregated on the Atlantic, just on the other side of Ireland, could we conveniently grant parliaments to each, with those rights of an independent army which a faction claimed lately in Hungary? Certainly not. If we did, adieu to the British empire and its integrity. Our colonies and dependencies are so far off, that it is quite possible for us to rule different parts of the empire on the opposite principles. not the case with Austria: all her states are contiguous. She must, therefore, either rule them all on the constitutional principle, or rule them on absolute principle. The former is only practicable if the component parts freely consent to the central power being in full possession of the imperial prerogatives of military tenure and diplomatic representation; but, as the schemes of the Hungarian revolutionists were purely and simply a grasp at military independence, in order to carry through the extinction of the original nationalities of Hungary, the chances that Austria had in 1848 were entirely thrown away. The bonâ fide Austrian liberal and constitutional party was stabbed in the back by these ultra-Magyar egotists, and, subsequently, the Russian occupation of the Principalities, the Concordat, and nearly a hundred millions sterling spent in a war with Russia, were still more signal results of the Batthyany-Kossuth projects than even the frustration of Austrian hopes of constitutional government and the extinction of that modicum of liberty which Hungary enjoyed previous to the Batthyany-Kossuth meddling.

The excessive decentralisation, which these men attempted, has merely aided in giving a greater impulse to that vortex of bureaucratic centralisation, which seems characteristic of the Slaavic revolutionary law, for although Austria has a Germanic nucleus, her destiny has been determined by the large preponderance of the Slaavic element; and in taking a survey of the Austrian revolution which was begun by the Emperor Joseph, we must remember that she follows the law of Slaavic, and not of Saxon revolutionary development, the latter being directed chiefly to secure the free energies of the individual, the former accompanied by an imperfect development of the spontaneous energies of the individual man, but a vigorous development of the state as a military institution. The Germanic nucleus has impregnated these various Slaavic and other races with German order and German civilization, but it has been impregnated by the conquered, or annexed races with that tendency to pure monarchical government which is a characteristic of the national physiology of the Slaavs.

We will now collate, in a brief, and, we hope, intelligible manner, the respective laws of Saxon and Slaavic revolutionary development:

SAXO N.
Third Stage.

Power of crown and aristocracy limited; fuller representation of third estate.

SLAAVIC.
Third Stage.

Emancipation of peasantry from serfdom by the crown in spite of the prejudices of the nobles. Aristocracy balanced by bureaucracy; subordination of all civil privileges to the scheme of military defence.

Thus both revolutionary cycles abase the feudal delegates of empire, and limit the clerical power; and both emancipate the peasantry. But while the Saxon law of revolutionary development limits the power of the crown, the Slaavic makes the army the first incorporation in the realm, and the master of that army the master of the state so long as he chooses to remember that all government must be positively or negatively founded on public opinion.

But it will be asked, was there no escaping this strong tendency to centralisation? was this fatality absolutely inevitable? I do not think it was, and I am firmly persuaded, that in 1848 there was an opportunity for giving a different direction to the governments both of Austria and Hungary. Had the Hungarians, instead of resigning themselves to the direction of a Batthyany and a Kossuth, placed at the head of their affairs, moderate and rational men, who, giving up all idea of Magyar-supremacy over the non-Magyar Nations, and all idea of the violation of the Pragmatic Sanction, had come to an arrangement with the bonâ fide liberal and constitutional party in Austria, headed by Stadion, Schmerling and Bruck, it is impossible to doubt, that the Municipal development of the leading Races of Hungary, instead of centralisation;-and bold measures of free trade, instead of timid experiments in that direction,-would have been the result. From the larger customs revenue, there would have been less direct

taxation, and less discontent, a less disproportioned standing army in time of peace, and loans resorted to, only as an extraordinary measure, in a crisis of actual war, in short the contrary of what has actually happened.

I will now close my political observations, with a short account of the new organisation of Hungary, which was the great bone of contention between the Schwarzenberg Cabinet and Baron Josika and his ex-collegues of the days of conservative official power. This new organisation was the work of Mr. Bach, and was usually called by the Hungarian conservatives, "Das Bachische system." The agitation amid which it fell in 1860 is beyond the sphere of this work.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE NEW ORGANISATION OF HUNGARY INTO PROVINCES 1 ACCORDING TO NATIONALITIES.

Is the new organisation of Hungary likely to tend to the union of the Austrian empire and to the happiness of the various nations of which Hungary is composed, Magyar as well as non-Magyar? This is the to be or not to be of Austria-this is the question of question, and I will attempt to answer it with that moderation of tone which befits the criticism of the handiwork of men for whom I have the most sincere and unfeigned personal respect and esteem, who are exercising a military dictatorship with a genius and energy which completely belies the opinion popular a couple of seasons ago, that Austria was irremediably effete. And if I have misgivings as to the future, it is because I have looked into the past, and because I have some doubts if all this high pressure and

Published in 1851.