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CHAPTER VIII

Transition (1860-1867)

"Das also was die Magyaren bei sich selbst für die grösste Tugend halten, nämlich die Liebe zu ihrem Volke, wird bei uns verdammt und als eine grosse Sünde betrachtet." — Sollen wir Magyaren werden ?[1]

THE disastrous issue of the Italian campaign of 1859 brought Austria to the verge of financial ruin, and made a continuance of the Bach system impossible. The army stores scandals brought the crisis to a head, and the grant of a constitution could no longer be averted. The fall of Bach was followed by a sudden reversal of policy towards Hungary. An Imperial Patent of April 19, 1860, nominated Benedek as Governor-general, dissolved the five adminis­trative districts, and restored the Palatinal Council in Pest, and more important still, the old system of county govern­ment; while a month later " la papauté thunienne " was wiped away, and the Protestant Patent withdrawn. The absolutist interregnum was at an end, though seven years of tentative and provisional government were to elapse before Francis Joseph and his advisers could be induced to conclude a compromise with the ideas of 1848. The long nightmare of an alien centralism was removed, and all Hungary breathed more freely. But the admirable intentions of the Government earned it no gratitude; as ever, half-measures proved fatal to their promotors, and while great expectations were roused on . all sides, their non-fulfilment threatened to plunge the country into anarchy. The so-called " October Diploma" (October 20, 1860) which was intended to provide the whole monarchy with a constitution, proved from the first unwork­able. It represented the passing triumph of the old con­servative elements in Hungary and in Austria; and its only real. significance consists in the pledge which it afforded, that Francis Joseph had crossed the Rubicon and would never again depart from constitutional ground. The Diploma marks the first departure from a centralist policy on the part of the Government, but to describe it as favouring centrifugal tendencies would be to create a wholly wrong impression. It attempted to reconcile the principles of Federalism and historic tradition, and has therefore been justly described as the sole alternative to Dualism or Absolutism. The presence of an energetic and broad-minded statesman at the head of affairs might have assured its success. As matters stood, it fell a victim to the skilful tactics of the Magyars, who acted on the assumption that its articles revived and sanctioned the laws of 1848. Baron Vay, the new Aulic Chancellor, in his enthusiastic desire to rally the nation, nominated High Sheriffs in the various counties quite regardless of their political past, with the result that the opposition gained the control of many of the local assemblies and exposed Vay to repeated humiliations and rebuffs. The Government, while issuing orders for the election of county officials, had expressly with­held the permission to appoint fresh notaries, intending to centralize the financial system of the country. But the assemblies calmly ignored these limitations, and proceeded to revive not merely the whole county system as it had existed before 1848, but even the National Guard. The growing chaos is clearly shown by the fact that Vay's angry rescripts remained entirely without effect. And here it was a born Slovak, the Cardinal Primate Scitovsky, who led the resistance. One day he submitted Vay's rescript to the county assembly of Esztergom, and exhorted obedience to its orders; the next, he was the first to sign the protest which the same assembly issued against the rescript![2] One county after another followed suit, and the opposition to Vay soon became general.

An impossible situation had thus been created, and the Viennese Government sought to escape from it by issuing the Patent of February 26, 1861. A passion for half-measures brought its nemesis, and the Habsburg Monarchy is still suffering to-day from the refusal of Schmerling and his German Liberal colleagues to look hard facts in the face. Dreams of expansion in Italy and Germany blinded the statesmen of Vienna to the march of events nearer home. Two alternatives lay before them. On the one hand, they might boldly espouse the principles laid down at Kremsier in 1849, and reorganize the Monarchy on a basis of complete racial equality, thus swamping the discontent of two races in the enthusiasm of ten; on the other hand, they might prefer might to right, and by creating an unholy alliance between the two strongest races of the Monarchy, might crush out mercilessly the resis­tance of their weaker brethren. Instead of adopting one of these courses, they made a fruitless attempt to breathe a constitutional spirit into the worn-out centralism of Bach, and thus merely outraged the legal traditions of centuries, without satisfying the yearnings of the "unhistoric nations." The triumph of Schmerling and his centralist system was welcomed as the surest guarantee of German hegemony throughout the Empire; in reality, by accentuating the struggle of German and Slav, it made the fall of that hegemony inevitable even in Austria, caused the two rivals to abdicate in favour of the Magyars, and left the real power in the hands of the latter for forty years. The February Patent led directly to Königgrätz and the Ausgleich: the October Diploma might have saved Austria from both events.

In the words of M. Eisenmann, " the Diploma still treated Hungary as a state, the Patent degraded her to the rank of a province."[3] The Patent was a direct challenge to the Hungarian nation, and the opening of Parliament in Pest (April 6, 1861) naturally aroused great expectations throughout the country. The Government was without supporters in Parliament, which presented an united front against Vienna. Constitutional problems naturally claimed precedence over all others; and the sole difference of opinion concerned the manner of approaching the sovereign — whether by an Address or by a Resolution. The session of 1861 will always remain one of the glories of Hungarian parliamentary history; the dignity and firmness with which the rights and traditions of the nation were defended, breathe the spirit of Francis Deák, whose noble figure dominates the debates. Deák realized from the first that the time was not yet ripe for the fulfilment of his ideas; and his main concern was to confine the action of Parliament within strictly legal channels. Hence the Address which was moved by Deák, and on June 5 carried by a small majority, was resolute in its refusal to recognize the February Patent or the Reichsrath's jurisdiction, in its insistence upon the laws of 1848 as the sole basis of accord, and in its reminder that an uncrowned king was no true sovereign in Hungary. The attitude of the Diet only served to exasperate Schmerling and Rechberg, for whom legal continuity was a mere idle phrase; and the situation abroad, which was now more favourable for Austria, encouraged them in their centralist policy. It has long been the misfortune of Austria that her rulers, when prompt and decisive action is required, prefer to choose the path of compromise and half measures. The via media of Schmerling in Hungary was fraught with peculiarly fatal consequences, and from the first was foredoomed to failure. The Diet of 1861 afforded a glimpse into the political paradise of the future, and no true Magyar cared to draw the distinction between Bach and Schmerling. For him both alike were Germans, and stood for a policy of Germanization, and every fresh action of the Government "strengthened this conviction and fanned the flames of Chauvinism. National feeling glowed with the same intensity as in the forties, and the discontent grew from day to day.

The general ferment extended also to the non-Magyar races, and the folly of the policy pursued towards them by the Viennese Government now became apparent. The Serb National Council, which met in April, instead of addressing itself to Vienna, made every effort to come to terms with the Magyars, pronounced itself openly in favour of union, and only qualified this step by claiming the appointment of a special Serb governor or voivode. In the same way the Slovaks, well-nigh cured of their Pan-Austrian leanings by the events of the past ten years, made their new appeal, not to Vienna, but to Budapest.²⁰⁰[4]

On June 6, 1861, a large number of prominent Slovaks met at Turócz St. Márton, and drew up and adopted an address to the Hungarian Parliament. This Memorandum, as it was called, opens in the name of the legal equality of all races, and conjures up an ideal picture of the brotherly concord which had prevailed for centuries in Hungary. The common task of all her races had been the defence of Western culture against the barbarians of the East, and "it never occurred to any one of them to despise or hate the language of another, or to aggrandize itself by exterminating the other." But the document soon passes from mediaeval to modern senti­ment and goes on, " Our conscience tells us that we Slovaks are as much a nation as the Magyars or any other nation in the country, and if national equality of rights and civil liberty are not to be a mere chimaera, it follows inevitably that we must have the same rights as any other nation in our fatherland actually possesses." And yet the laws passed by the Diets of the last seventy years recognize the Magyar nation alone, and ignore all other races.

The chief remedies upon which the Memorandum relies for the improvement of this intolerable situation, may be briefly summarized as follows: —

1.  The definite recognition, by law, of the national indivi­duality of the Slovaks.

2.  The formation of a North Hungarian Slovak territory (Hornouhorské Slovenské Okolie) rounded off accord­ing to nationality.

3.  The introduction of Slovak throughout this Okolie as the sole medium of public and civil intercourse, and as the language of church, school and lawcourt.

4.  The repeal of all recent laws (especially those of 1840-8) which infringe the equal rights and liberties of the "nations."

5.  The foundation of a Slovak Academy of law, and of a Chair for Slav literature at Pest.

6.  In return for these concessions, Magyar would be recog­nized as the diplomatic and official language of the central authorities.

The Memorandum reveals a certain dignity and self-confi­dence which were lacking in the petition of 1848, and it omits the most extravagant demands contained in the latter. But it is none the less diffuse in form, and doctrinaire and provoca­tive in spirit. Its very tactlessness goes far towards proving its honesty, but it also shows its framers to have been wholly lacking in practical statesmanship. The most effective passage is that which repudiates all idea of designs "against the unity and integrity of Hungary," and argues that if the Cumanian and Jazygian districts, the Hajdúk and Zips towns, or for that matter, the forty-four counties, could exist as auto­nomous municipal corporations within the bounds of Hungary, the same experiment might legally be made with the Slovak distri cts. Certainly the admission of Magyar as the language

of state, and the clear recognition of a central parliament for Hungary, definitely absolve the supporters of the Memor­andum from the charges of treason and violation of the con­stitution which were so freely brought against them; though indeed the very fact that it was submitted to the Parliament in Pest, and not to the Schmerling Government in .Vienna, ought to have been sufficient disproof of such tendencies.[5] But its most vulnerable point is its attitude towards the Magyar minority in North Hungary. These, it argues, are all renegates of Slav origin, and their wishes cannot therefore be taken into consideration. The Germans moreover are passed over in silence, no indication being given as to what their position would be in the new " Slovensko "; and we are left with the uneasy feeling that the reign of liberty which these Slovak apostles sought to inaugurate, might have been stained by reprisals against the " Ascendancy" minority when once the latter's privileges had fallen.

The Memorandum was signed by John Francisci (the only Slovak of national sentiments who has ever been made High Sheriff of a county), William Pauliny-Tót, a poet and journa­list of some ability: Abbot John Gocár, Dr. Miloslav Hurban, Rev. Andrew Hodža, Dean Pongrácz and Dean Závodník, and several other clergy, advocates and journalists.[6] The High Sheriffs of Liptó and Turócz, Szentiványi and Baron Révay, and the Vice Sheriff of Turócz, Justh — all three of pure Slovak origin — attended the meeting and promised to submit the Memorandum to Deák and to support all its clauses in Parliament save that which claimed a separate Slovensko.

All three, however, backed out, when they learned from headquarters that the Diet was unfavourably disposed to Slovak claims; and some of the peasants returning home from the meeting at Turocz, are said to have been arrested and flogged by order of the local officials, without any steps being taken against the culprits by the three trimmers.

The Memorandum was not allowed to pass unchallenged. The town councils of Tyrnau, Trencsén and Altsohl (Zólyom) sent addresses to Parliament, protesting against the claim of the Memorandists to speak in the name of the Slovaks. Further protests were handed in by the county assemblies of Nyitra and Árva, denying that the Memorandists represented "the Slovak-speaking Magyars " of North Hungary and describing their action as a mere intrigue of the Austrian Government, directed against the national freedom and existence of the fatherland. Unfortunately the stones thus hurled at the "Pan-Slavs "of Turócz, bring down the glass-house about the protesters' own ears; for of course neither town councils nor county assemblies in any way represented the feelings of the Slovak population. The former were close corporations, whose members were as a rule Magyar, German or Jewish, but hardly ever Slovak; the latter were dominated by the great land­owners and the " elected " officials who were really their nominees, and by this date even the Slav " lower nobles " were to a great extent Magyarized. In the case of Nyitra, it was not even the assembly (see p. 237), but a committee of the assembly, attended only by four or five members, which solemnly drew up the protest in the name of " the 300,000 Slovaks of the county"; while the Árva protest frankly confesses that it is acting on hearsay, without having seen the Memorandum. One further protest was handed in from " the Slav inhabitants of Nyitra; "[7] but the naive admission of the petitioners themselves, that they were only " for the most part " Slav-speaking, tends to confirm the suspicion that the necessary signatures were secured according to the most approved principles of Hungarian electoral canvassing. None the less, the Nyitra address was probably right in assert­ing that the "free use and development of their mother tongue " was the sole desire of the Slovak masses. North Hungary was poor and backward, cut off to a great extent from the outside world: the national leaders of the Slovaks, the nobles, had gone over to the enemy; a Slovak middle class could hardly be said to exist; and the clergy were left as almost the sole guardians of the national tradition. Thus many years were required before the whole lump could be leavened, and even to-day the process is by no means complete. While Parliament declined to receive the Memorandum, the counter-protests of the close local assemblies were accepted and greeted with applause. But the incident had roused Parliament from its absorption in questions of constitutional law, and directed its attention to the question of the nationali­ties; and on June 25 Baron Eötvös moved the appointment of a committee for its discussion. When, however, on August 1 the committee handed in their report, the second Address and the impending crisis filled all minds, and it is not surprising that no further steps had been taken in the matter, when the dissolution of Parliament was announced. None the less this report is a highly remarkable document, and has not merited the oblivion to which it has been consigned.[8] Its peaceful adoption by the committee, under no great pressure from without, proves that a strong element in the Hungarian Parliament was still free from those Chauvinist influences to which it was afterwards to fall a prey; and the hostile demonstration against Dobriansky, the distinguished Ruthene deputy, was probably the work of Coloman Tisza and his band of Radicals.[9]

The Report of the Committee[10] seeks to lay down the broad principles upon which the racial question can be solved. Instead of adopting as a basis for deliberation the non-Magyar memorials of grievances, it prefers to define the limits within which it is possible to allow free play to the individual nation­alities. It lays great stress on the fact that the races of Hungary do not as a rule form compact masses, but are inex­tricably intermingled, with the result that to divide the country into racial units would not merely endanger Hungary's political unity, but would also lead to the oppression of the lesser racial fragments living in the territory of the larger nationalities, and would give racial rivalry precedence over all other healthy forms of competition. By reason, however, of its peculiar geographical conditions, Hungary is faced by the necessity for a final solution of the racial question, in such a way as shall guarantee the free " development of the individual nationalities as corporations "; and indeed the instruments for such a solution lie ready to hand in the ancient communal, municipal and religious autonomy which have so long proved the bulwarks of individual freedom. After this introduction, the report lays down two principles:

(a)  " That the citizens of Hungary of every tongue form politically only one nation, the unitary and indivisible Hun­garian nation, corresponding to the historic conceptions of the Hungarian State.[11]

(b)  That all peoples dwelling in this country, Magyars, Slovaks, Roumanians, Germans, Serbs, Ruthenes, etc., are to be regarded as nationalities possessing equal rights, who are free to promote their special national claims within the limits of the political unity of the country, on a basis of freedom of the person and of association, without any further restric­tion."

Bearing in mind these two vital principles, the Committee submits a rough draft of the provisions, which it regards as calculated to solve the question. These may be summarized under the following heads: —

(1)  The official language of State is to be Magyar, but all posts are to be filled without distinction of nationality, and officials with a knowledge of the various Hun­garian languages are to be appointed in each govern­ment department (§§ 18-20).

(2)  The language of Parliament is to be Magyar, but official translations of the laws are to be published in all Hungarian languages (§§ 21-22).

(3)  The county assemblies and municipal councils are free to choose their own language: every member may use his own mother tongue, and each nationality has the right to demand a copy of the minutes in its own language (§§ 11-12). The language of inter­course between the assemblies and the Government is exclusively Magyar (§ 17), but any two assemblies who employ one and the same official language, may communicate with each other in that language (§ 15). The county officials are bound in all com­munications with the communes under them, to use the language of the latter (§ 14).

(4)  The communal assemblies are free to determine their own official language, and every member of them has the right to use his mother tongue in their debates (§§ 3, 4).

(5)  Every citizen is free to communicate with his own communal and municipal or county authorities, and also with the central authorities, in his own language (§1).

(6)  The Churches are free to select their own language for church and school (§ 6).

(7)  Every Church and nationality is free to erect secondary and higher schools, and to prescribe their language of instruction (§ 8).

This report, though ill digested and somewhat clumsily expressed, is evidently inspired by the writings and ideas of Baron Eötvös, the intimate friend of Deák, and one of the most attractive figures in the politics of the nineteenth century. Full of sympathy for western culture, Eötvös had devoted himself, after the failure of the Revolution, to literary and publicist studies, and in 1850 he published a small book on The Equal Rights of the Nationalities in Austria,[12] which was not without its influence on the progress of ideas in Hungary. He justly regards the absolute equality of all languages in a state like Austria-Hungary as incompatible with constitutional life, and as leading inevitably to Absolutism.[13] But he realized equally clearly that the principle of the majority cannot justly be enforced in racial questions,[14] and that the worst evils of the French Revolution were due not to democracy, but to the despotic power of a numerical majority. But these admissions do not lead him to support a system of federalism, since a division of the various provinces on a racial basis seems to him impracticable; and therefore he adheres resolutely to the via media, which accords to every race or nationality the same rights as the individual to develop so far as it can without injuring its neighbour.[15] This readiness to reckon with the nationalities as legal entities — which is reflected in the report of the Committee of 1861, when it speaks of " the individual nationalities as corporations " — is the determining factor in Eötvös' policy towards the non­Magyar races, and contrasts sharply with the theory upheld by, Coloman Tisza and now championed by Count Albert Apponyi, that as individual every citizen has equal rights before the law, but that the nationalities as such can have no legal status within " the one and indivisible political Hungarian nation." Neither standpoint satisfied the Rou­manian and Slovak leaders of that day, who still looked to Vienna for their political salvation, and whose lack of perspec­tive led them to entertain extravagant hopes for the future. But the next generation has learnt from bitter experience, that with the standpoint of Deák and Eötvös an honourable compromise is possible, while the standpoint of Tisza and Apponyi reduces the non-Magyars to the position of helots and threatens them with political extinction.

The Report never attracted wide attention, and among the non-Magyar nationalities it was quite eclipsed by Par­liament's harsh and tactless attitude towards the Slovak Memorandum and the Serb petition. Hence while the Magyars reverted to a policy of sullen and obstinate passivity, the Slovaks were driven once more into the arms of Vienna. The Palatinal Council, even under the " Provisorium " of Schmerling, was sufficiently Magyar in sentiment to threaten them with a further curtailment of the few rights which they still possessed. In direct defiance of two decrees of October 5, 1861, issued by the Hungarian Chancellory in Vienna, requiring the Palatinal Council to respect the wishes of the non-Magyars at the re­organization of Catholic gymnasiums, the latter body published only a fortnight later an order which threatened all German and Slovak schools with the introduction of the Magyar lan­guage, and which placed Magyar on an equal footing with Slovak in the Catholic gymnasium at Neusohl. This innova­tion caused great alarm and indignation, and could not be justified even on the ground of providing for a Magyar popula­tion, since the entire diocese of Neusohl did not contain a single Magyar parish. Roused by such unwarrantable action, Dr. Stephen Moyses, the Bishop of Neusohl, one of the truest of Slovak patriots, decided to appeal to the monarch direct on behalf of his unfortunate countrymen; and on December 12, 1861, a Slovak deputation headed by the Bishop was

actually received by Francis Joseph in the Hofburg at Vienna, and presented an address of grievances and requests. This address, and the memorial submitted by Bishop Moyses himself at the same time, mark a decided advance upon the manifestos of May, 1848, and June, 1861.[16] They are at once more lucid and dignified, they avoid the verbosity and provocative tone of the Memorandum, show far more respect for existing institu­tions, and base their case upon law and fact. They Jay stress upon the racial equality and concord which had prevailed in Hungary during former centuries, and contrast this with the Magyar hegemony which the legislation of the past seventy years has established. The non-Magyars, they assert, are quite content to recognize the Magyar language in the higher administration, but they demand free play for their own tongues in church, school and local affairs, and in their direct contact with the authorities. The Magyars will not allow this, and try to " cut off from the Slovaks every road to culture, and thus to let them languish in a condition of moral and social atrophy, as the prey of a future Magyarizing policy." In effect, they put forward the same claims as the Memorandists — the formation of a Slovak Okolie, with a Slovak local assem­bly: the introduction of Slovak within this district as the official language of administration, justice and education: free control of the schools by " the Slovak nation " — but at the same time they are careful to define the new territory of their dreams as " an integral part of Hungary," which would be subject to the central Parliament and to the supreme authorities. Moreover, they repair the most regrettable omission of the Memorandum: for while claiming Slovak as the official language of the Okolie, they specially exclude all places of other nationality, and express the wish that their communal affairs should be conducted without hindrance in the language of the majority.

Bishop Moyses was inundated with addresses of thanks from the Slovak villages and corporations of North Hungary for his courageous advocacy of the Slovak cause[17]; but the

slovak peasant girls.

(detva. county of zólyom.)

aspirations which he had voiced so eloquently still remained unrealized. None the less, during the Schmerling era the Slovaks were allowed to breathe more freely. Not merely Moyses, but Zabojsky, Bishop of Zips, sympathized with the movement, and permitted the appointment of Slovak professors in the clerical seminaries, a fact which filled Béla Grünwald and his votaries with rage.[18]

Almost all the existing gymnasia of North Hungary were, it is true, Magyarized; but at the same time the Slovaks were allowed for the first time to erect secondary schools of their own. In 1862 the Lutherans, led by Stephen Daxner, the author of the Memorandum, and Charles Kuzmány, the superintendent, founded two Protestant gymnasiums at Nagy­Röcze and at Turócz St. Márton; and five years later, when the Compromise had already been concluded, the Catholics followed their example by founding a third Slovak gymnasium at Znio-Váralja. The action of the Slovaks met with the greatest hostility from the Magyars and the renegates of the north; but under Schmerling, and during the first years of the new era, when Deák's influence was still supreme, they were allowed to'. subsist. Grünwald, in his slanderous and vituperative pamphlet, actually argued that a Slovak gymnasium was a contradiction in terms and could not be a gymnasium in the real sense of the word.[19] A further assertion of Grünwald — that the. chief aim of the Slovak nationalists was that their pupils should learn neither Magyar nor German — can only be described as a deliberate lie.[20] Not merely did the statutes of all three schools expressly prescribe such teaching; but no one knew better than Grünwald himself that the " Pansláv " gymnasiums in the brief period of their existence had provided their pupils with a thorough grounding in both these languages, and especially in the " language of State."

But by far the most important concession to the Slovaks was the legal sanction of a national literary society, the Slovenská Matica, at Turócz St. Márton. This permission, which according to western ideas of freedom should have been granted as a matter of course, had been withheld since 1851, when the poet Kollár and Kuzmány first brought forward the project; and it aroused the very greatest indignation among the Magyars, by whom the distinction between meum and tuum is applied with special rigour to matters of political liberty. The statutes of the new society laid down as its foremost aims the furtherance of the moral and intellectual culture of the Slovaks, the encouragement of Slovak literature and art, and the advancement of material wellbeing among the peasantry. A generous response was made to the appeal for funds, and considering the extreme poverty of the Slovaks, and their lack of a leisured class, it is little short of marvellous that 94,000 florins (£7,800) should have been collected before the day of the first meeting. The Emperor-King himself sent 1,000 florins, and over 5,000 persons are said to have contributed their mite to the Matica funds. 441 original members were enrolled, and almost as many ordinary members. The first general meeting was opened by John Francisci at Turócz St. Márton on August 4,1863, and was attended by many hundred educated Slovaks and 4,000 or 5,000 of the peasantry. Bishop Moyses, who appeared in person, had a triumphal procession most of the way from Neusohl: crowds gathered in every village to welcome him as " the father of the people," and according to Slovak custom mounted bands of Slovak youths escorted him on his way. When he entered the little town of Márton,under a triumphal arch erected for the occasion, an address of welcome was presented to him by the Lutheran superintendent Kuzmány, and cries of " Slava " resounded on every side. The assembly itself was opened by the singing of " Hej Slováci," the national hymn, which is now virtually proscribed in Hungary;[21] and in the evening a comedy was performed, and the poet Chalúpka recited some of his own compositions.[22] No one can doubt that the enthusiasm was genuine and lasting, and during the eleven years of its existence the Matica displayed great activity, considering the unfavour­able political milieu in which it had to work. Among its publications were eleven volumes under the title of Letopis (containing historical essays and collections of Czech and Slovak documents), a biography of the poet Zrinyi, and a number of schoolbooks and primers of agriculture, book­keeping, and various peasant industries. A committee was appointed to collect material for a new Slovak dictionary, to edit the rich store of folksongs, proverbs and legends, and to , prepare a suitable anthology of Slovak poetry. Prizes were offered for works on Slovak history and art, popular lectures were organized for the instruction of the people, and over a hundred reading clubs and tiny libraries in different parts of " Slovensko" received encouragement from the headquarters of the Matica. Finally it supported poor Slovak students at the Catholic and Protestant gymnasiums of Neusohl and Röcze and at the University, and advanced small loans to distressed Slovak communes.

The dissolution of the Diet of 1861 ushered in the so-called "Provisorium." This centralist scheme of Schmerling was doomed from the first to failure, for while in Austria it favoured the, Germans at the expense of all the other races, in Hungary it sought to reduce the Magyars to the status of a subject race, without at the same time making the necessary concessions to the nationalities. Schmerling's failure was due to a crass miscalculation, which can only be ascribed to ignorance. He had expected that the Magyars would attend the Reichs­rath, in which 120 seats had been reserved for Hungary (exclu­sive of Transylvania and Croatia); whereas their unanimous Abstention reduced the new Parliament to a Rump, and incidentally created a precedent which proved fatal to the Germans of Austria. In Transylvania alone did he achieve even a partial success; but the presence of twenty-six Saxon deputies in Vienna was discounted by the abstention of the Magyars and even of the Roumanians. Transylvanian autonomy was actively encouraged by Schmerling; the petitions of the Saxons, the deputations of the Roumanians, were alike received by the Emperor; the Magyar population was made to realize for the first time its numerical minority.

A rescript of June 15, 1863, revised the franchise in a sense highly favourable to the Roumanians, and limited to forty the number of Regalists, or deputies nominated by the monarch.[23] Hence the Diet which emerged from the new elections reflected fairly accurately the true racial divisions of the population; but for this very reason the fifty-one Magyar deputies refused to attend, and published a protest against the infringement of the constitution. The two other nations of Transylvania were thus left in possession of the field, and after declaring the Act of Union illegal and invalid, proceeded to proclaim the national and religious equality of the Rou­manians with the Magyars, Szekels and Saxons (August 31), and on September 24 recognized the equality of the Magyar, German and Roumanian languages for all official purposes of the principality. Just and enlightened as this law was, the fact that it was passed by two races in the absence of the third impaired its value and proved fatal to its authority. The situation in Transylvania remained unsettled, and the three rival races were at one in admitting that their fate depended not so much upon their own efforts as upon the result of negotiations between Vienna and Budapest.[24]

Schmerling's policy, despite his lofty ideals and single­ness of purpose, was from the very first condemned to sterility, and its abandonment was only a question of time. The growing sympathy which Francis Joseph dis­played for Hungary unconsciously kept pace with the diffi­culties which he encountered from Prussian rivalry; but even had the sympathy been absent, policy and dynastic feeling would have impelled him to make terms with that portion of his dominions which seemed on the one hand most capable of united action and on the other strikingly immune from the brawls and rivalries of Cisleithania. In the summer of 1865, Schmerling was dismissed with almost brutal sudden­ness, and the way lay open to the conclusion of an understanding with. Hungary. The appointment of the Belcredi Ministry deluded the Czechs with false dreams of a dawning Slavophil era in Austria, and a cruel fate had stricken their leaders with blindness, while dowering the politicians of Budapest with more than their share of statecraft and judgment. While Palacky and Rieger, in their enthusiasm for a Federal pro­gramme, lost sight for the moment of the claims of the Bohe­mian Crown, Deák only claimed from his sovereign a return within those legal limits to which the earlier Habsburgs had voluntarily submitted, but which they had so often and so cynically transgressed. In the latter case, concession might be distasteful, but at least it was not fraught with such adven­turous issues. The royal prerogative might be curtailed, but the survival of the Monarchy was not set in jeopardy; and a sovereign whose conscience had always been stronger than his imagination and whose whole nature was still summed up in the dramatic phrase " Sire, I am a German prince,"[25] was bound to regard the Magyars as a more conservatory element in the state[26] than the Czechs.

In November, 1863, the Transylvanian Diet was convoked at Kolozsvár under the old franchise, and a House of 225 members, of whom only sixty were non-Magyars, gave its sanction to the union of 1848. A month later, Francis Joseph opened the Hungarian Diet in person, and negotiations were resumed with Deák, now more than ever the central figure of his country. In the critical months which preceded the war with Prussia, Deák's calm and noble character showed to signal advantage. The monarch was disposed to withhold his sanction of the laws of 1848 until some of the features which he regarded as objectionable had been revised, and to make his oath and coronation dependent upon the Diet's compliance with his wishes. A statesman less imbued with constitutional ideas and usages, might have been tempted to concede this as a mere point of honour; Deák, who saw clearly the vital issues involved, would not hear of any settlement on lines of opportunism, which he regarded as at variance with law and 'constitution alike. To concede the legality of the existing situation would be, as he rightly argued in his famous speech of February 22, 1866, not opportunism, but absolutism pure and simple. The two Addresses of Parliament to the sovereign were closely modelled on these views, and laid special stress on the legal continuity of the Hungarian constitution. The idea that the laws of 1848 were merely concessions due to the dangers of Ferdinand's position — an argument put forward during the subsequent negotiations between Deák and Beust — struck at the root of all constitutional government, and would have invalidated the compromise of 1867 in its turn. It is perfectly true that every exponent of absolute govern­ment, from Charles I to Nicholas II, has yielded to the exi­gencies of the moment rather than to his personal convictions: but this cannot form an excuse for the violation of laws duly voted by the legislature and sanctioned by the monarch. Deák braved the displeasure of the Court and resisted the advice of the more diplomatic Andrássy; but at the same time he carefully refrained from any step which might offend the sovereign's pride or prove a hindrance to subsequent negotiations.

The war with Prussia necessarily postponed the settle­ment, and the prorogation of the Hungarian Parliament was regarded on both sides as a mere truce. Hungary's attitude during the war was one of extreme reserve; yet the fiasco which attended the inroad of Klapka's Prusso­Magyar Legion was not solely due to the hostility of the Slovak peasantry, and it is probable that the publication of an appeal to the Hungarian nation, which Bismarck urged upon King William, would have met with little response. But on the other hand, the transference of military operations to Hungary, which must have followed the rupture of negotia­tions at Nikolsburg, might have led to a recrudescence of Kossuthist sentiments and the creation of a very serious situation; for even the Hungarian origin of Benedek[27] was insufficient to rouse the enthusiasm of the Magyars for the cause of Austria. One more Austrian reverse, said Somssich after Königgrätz, and a rising is certain.[28]