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CHAPTER XII

Administrative Evils

" For forms of government let fools contest, That which is best administered is best."

Pope.

THE chief curse of Hungary is its bad administration, and until a thorough revision of the much-vaunted system of county government is undertaken, matters are bound to go from bad to worse. Formerly the bulwark of the Hungarian constitution, the county assemblies are to-day mere preserves of a few great landed families, and of the ineffi­cient and intolerant officials who depend upon them. It has sometimes been argued that the racial question in Hun­gary is an administrative question, and even if this is an exag­gerated view, there is no doubt that the oligarchic nature of county government aggravates racial differences, and that these will tend to grow more, not less acute, so long as the democratization of local government is postponed. A really adequate account of local government in Hungary would involve the study of a lifetime, and would far exceed the limits of the present volume. All that I can attempt is a brief analysis of its most salient features, and an indication of those flaws which most obviously require a remedy, my main object being to supply a key to the abuses connected with the electoral and judicial systems.

Before 1848, the Kingdom of Hungary proper was divided into forty-six counties, Croatia-Slavonia into six, Transylvania into 25 counties or districts,[1] thus making a total of 77 for the territories of the Crown of St. Stephen. As the Diet was merely composed of delegates from the county assemblies, elected by public vote and charged with strict marching orders, the centre of gravity naturally lay not in the capital — which was indeed more German than Magyar even as late as 1840 — but in the provinces. To the jealous and obstinate manner in which the counties guarded their privileges may fairly be ascribed the fact that the constitution survived the peril of the Turkish occupation, of Jesuit perfidy and of Habsburg absolutism. In the same way, to the political judgment and tenacity of the local assemblies Hungary owes most of the rights recovered or acquired during the reigns of Leopold II, Francis I and Ferdinand V. Without the incentive imparted by the local assemblies, the Diets of the " forties " might have been reduced to impotence by the central government, and the year of revolution might have found Hungary still unripe. Under the mediaeval franchise, which was not overthrown till 1848, the lines of cleavage lay not between race and race, but between populus and plebs, in other words between nobles and non-nobles ; and thus the evils to which Hungary was ex­posed were merely those to which all countries are liable where whole classes are excluded from the franchise and where no machinery has been devised against corruption. As, how­ever, nationality became a factor in modern life, new elements of discord were introduced ; by an unhappy chain of events a single race was able to concentrate in its own hands the power of a class which had been inter-racial, at least in name ; and the helotry of the non-noble classes was perpetuated after 1848 in the exclusion of the non-Magyar races from all political power.

The congregations, as the county assemblies were called, were composed exclusively of " nobles," either dwelling or owning property in the county ; but as rights of nobility had always been lavishly conferred in Hungary and were vested in all male descendants of the original grantee, the franchise was at the commencement of the nineteenth century enjoyed by a relatively greater number of persons than in other Wes­tern states.[2] This circumstance led to extraordinary abuses. The numerous needy " nobility " — the "bocskoros nemesség" or " sandal nobility," as they were called from their dilapidated footgear — found their votes at the triennial county election to be a valuable asset, allowed themselves to be organized by the rival candidates, and being as ignorant as they were needy, gave their votes to whoever plied them most liberally with food and drink, found them free lodging for the longest period and sent them home when all was over with the largest pourboire in their pockets. Indeed this " noble rabble " was a class which, in the words of a Magyar writer, " had not its like in Europe for poverty, violence, arrogance, laziness and worthlessness." Marshalled for days before the election into two hostile columns, they often met in battle array in the streets of the county town, and the doughtiest upholders of this fist and cudgel law, left in possession of the field, thronged the county hall and secured the vacant posts to their own party. If the rival party still succeeded in effecting an entrance (a pro­ceeding which reasons of space sometimes rendered impos­sible), scenes of the stormiest character ensued. Freedom of speech was little respected, the minority was howled down, and the exertions of the " noble rabble " were aided by a mixed crowd of non-nobles which intruded upon the pro­ceedings, and gave an added zest to the scene by their tumultu­ous applause or abuse. At length excitement reached a fever pitch, and the assembly too often degenerated into a free fight, with its attendant crop of broken limbs and bloody noses.

As the feeling of nationality grew more intense, the turbu­lence of the county assemblies became more marked, and the press of the forties is full of the excesses indulged in at the congregations and " restorations " (restaurationes, or elections of county officials) and of suggestions for the reform of such abuses. This increasing violence is to be ascribed, at least in part, to linguistic rivalries. Till 1840 the entire proceed­ings were conducted in the neutral Latin tongue ; but in that year Magyar was proclaimed the language of the Government and administration, and the application of this rule to the debates in the county assemblies virtually disfranchised the non-Magyar members, who in those days rarely knew a word of Magyar. The abuses to which this innovation led may be simply illustrated by the proceedings in Liptó County Assembly in 1841 during a debate on mixed marriages. " The lower nobles, not understanding Magyar, desired to have the mean­ing of the matter explained to them in Slovak, but this was refused to them."[3] Here then, as elsewhere, the decision fell into the hands of an insignificant minority[4] whose racial fanaticism passed all bounds. A further cause of the violence of the assemblies was the gradual abandonment of the ancient practice of vota saniora (non numeranda sed ponderanda). In former days the president of the assembly had it in his power, in cases of disagreement, to class the votes by culture and merit instead of by mere numbers, and thus to ensure that the more sober elements of the assembly should not be swamped by the " sandal nobility." This custom, well as it seems to have worked in practice, was too flagrantly at variance with modern ideas to survive; but unhappily its abandonment left all critical decisions with the least worthy section of the electorate, and the non-Magyars found themselves almost everywhere in a crushing minority, which was rendered still more effective by the new linguistic provisions.

The election of delegates to the Diet was by no means the only important function of the county assemblies. They also elected by public vote the leading officials of the county — the vice-sheriff, the deputy vice-sheriff, the notaries, the Fiscals, the preceptor, the szólgabirós (who then presided over the district courts in addition to their local executive functions) and the jurymen (jurassores). The high sheriff of the county possessed the right of nominating candidates to all these offices, and successful candidates had to submit to frequent re-election — as a rule every three years ; they were thus at the mercy of the dominant local party, and were forced to devote themselves to canvassing and party intrigue in order to maintain their position.

When in 1848 the special privileges of the nobles were abol­ished, and the franchise was extended to the bourgeois classes, a reform of the county assemblies became inevitable. But events moved too fast in that eventful spring; the law dealing with local government was hastily drafted and avowedly provisional in nature (Law XVI., 1848) ; and the opening of hostilities relegated further discussion to a distant future. For the ten years following Világos, the ancient county auto­nomy was suppressed, and Alexander Bach's officials admin­istered Hungary on centralist lines. The old half-Asiatic principles on which the country had hitherto been governed, and which are so vividly described in the novels of Baron Eötvös and Maurice Jókai, were now suddenly abrogated, and the bureaucratic ideas of the Germans of Austria infused a new life into the rusty and disjointed machine. But with all its sterling merits, the Bach system was based upon an arbitrary negation of historic rights and traditions, and as such was opposed by the entire political nation of that day, while even the Slovaks, though they welcomed its humane and impartial administration, were alienated by its unwise Germanizing tendencies.

One of the " Bach Hussars," as his officials were contemptu­ously nicknamed by the Magyar gentry, has left us an admir­able account of his term of office as szólgabiró (or Stuhlrichter) in a remote Slav district. Nothing could be more graphic than the tale of his vicissitudes. When he reported himself at headquarters before starting, one of the sectional chiefs expressed the hope that he would have things in order in the course of a year. Full of astonishment, he replied that he fully expected to have everything in full swing within a few weeks. "Don't flatter yourself!" was the discouraging answer, "you don't know the old régime." Nor had his chief exaggerated. The office could not even boast of tables or ink. The documents at first lay upon the floor, for want of cupboards or boxes. The land registers, which had been entirely omitted from the formal inventory, were discovered under the bed of the beadle. Arrears of taxes amounting to 35,000 florins were due to be collected. There was no jail in the village ; the prisoners were quartered at the inn, where they were free to go in and out at pleasure. The junior officials knew Magyar and a smattering of canine Latin ; all were bad at German, and one knew no Slav, though the surrounding district was entirely Slav. Two of them had never read a law, and he had to begin by teaching them the elements of their work.[5] Yet these ignorant fellows treated their superior with studied con­tempt, and habitually spoke of him as " the Bohemian dog," The nobles were still more supercilious, and at an evening party a Magyar lady, roused to enthusiasm by the singing of one of our chronicler's Bohemian colleagues, exclaimed, " Then it is true what I have often heard, that every Bohemian is either a musician or a thief."[6] One more story must suffice. He received a visit from a neighbouring priest, who complained of the insults of a peasant and demanded his summary punishment. On closer inquiry, the priest merely said : " He insulted me and I boxed his ears for it once or twice ; be kind enough to punish him." When the new official hinted that this also was a punishable offence, the priest indignantly re­torted : " Formerly when the szólgabiró came'and I complained of anybody, he did not ask his name or what he had done, but simply ordered his haiduck (servant) to give twenty-five strokes to the man whom I pointed out to him."

The Bach régime was from the first doomed to failure, for its very merits were at variance with the wishes of the nation. When Bach fell in 1859 hardly a voice was raised in favour of the officials who had served him so loyally. They were sum­marily dismissed without compensation, and in more than one case were ejected in midwinter by the Magyar authorities under circumstances of peculiar brutality. But it is worthy of note that all advocates of administrative reform during the past forty years have freely recognized the efficiency and impartiality of the Bach officials, and have advocated the adaptation of their methods to the national requirements, rather than a further advance on traditional Magyar lines.

In 1860 the old county autonomy was revived, but remained throughout the period of the " Provisorium " in a more or less chaotic state. The one really clear provision of the law of 1848 (§2, e) by which Magyar was declared the sole language of debate in the congregations, provided the Magyars with a powerful instrument against the other races, of which they were not slow to take advantage. Parliament was now no longer composed of delegates from the local assemblies, but of deputies elected by direct franchise. But the congregations, though deprived of this important function, still retained complete control of the administration, and their officials conducted the elections, with the result that the Slovaks, Roumanians and Serbs together returned less than twenty deputies to Parliament.

After the Ausgleich many of the wisest Hungarian statesmen favoured an extension of the powers of the central executive as the sole remedy for the many abuses of local administra­tion. But local sentiment proved too strong for these views ; and the only really radical reform effected in this direction was the withdrawal of the lower courts from the jurisdiction of the county assemblies, and the erection of District courts with judges nominated directly by the Crown.[7] In the same year some order was introduced into the chaos of the county assemblies. These were henceforth to be composed of 120 to 600 members, according to the population of the county ; of these half consisted of the chief taxpayers of the county, known in Hungary as " virilists," and half were elected by those persons enjoying the parliamentary franchise.[8] The chief functions of the assemblies were defined as the publication of statutes, control of traffic and public works, contracting of loans, revision of local finance, discussion of appeals from communes, and all other matters of municipal self-government. Finally the assemblies elect sexennially their chief administra­tive officials — the Vice-Sheriff, who conducts the affairs of the county, carries out the decisions of the assembly and of the Government, prepares periodical reports to the assembly and draws up the agenda of its meetings, checks the accounts and signs official documents, prepares all protests against, ministerial orders and has power to suspend negligent officials ; the Notaries, who keep the minutes of the assembly and its committees and draft all official reports and correspondence of the county ; the Fiscal, who represents the county's in­terests at law, acts as its general legal adviser, takes action against faulty officials and prosecutes in cases of libel against the authorities ; the Szólgabiró (Stuhlrichter), the local exe­cutive official who enforces the instructions of the Vice-Sheriff, exercises control over the communes in his district, imposes fines or short terms of imprisonment for the infringement of police regulations and similar delinquencies, and possesses a special seal of his own and a clerk for the conduct of his busi­ness ; the president and members of the Board of Orphans, the cashier, archivist, bookkeeper, county engineer, official doctor and veterinary surgeon.

In 1876[9] the privileges of forty-seven free towns — for the most part towns where the non-Magyar element predominated — were annulled, and they were incorporated in the surround­ing counties. At the same time the State's solemn pledge to respect Saxon autonomy was set at open defiance, and the historic Königsboden was swallowed piecemeal by the Transyl­vanian counties, care being taken to adjust the county bound­aries to the advantage of the Magyar element.[10] A farther law of the same year introduced a new system of county administrative committees (Közigazgatási bizottság: Ver­waltungsausschuss) to which were henceforth assigned almost all the essential functions of local administration.[11] These committees were composed on the one hand of ten members of the county assembly, elected for two years, and half retiring annually, and on the other hand of the ten chief administrative officials of the county,[12] while the High Sheriff possessed the casting vote. The wide executive and disciplinary powers thus secured to the committees divested the assemblies of much of their power, reduced popular representation to a mini­mum, and strengthened the hold of the central government upon local affairs.

In 1886 the system of county government was subjected to a partial revision. Henceforth the county assemblies are to consist of from 120 to 600 members, according to the population of the county; but the franchise under which ' they are elected cannot be described as truly representative, still less as democratic. One half of the seats are assigned automatically to the virilists, or most highly taxed persons in the county, and in an agricultural country like Hungary these are of course generally the great landed proprietors. Only the other half is elected at all, and then under the narrow and com­plicated parliamentary franchise, of which we shall have occa­sion to speak later.[13] In addition, the county officials — the vice-sheriff, the notaries, the fiscals, the president and mem­bers of the Orphan Board, the official county doctor, the chief szólgabirós, the treasurers and archivists, and the mayors of all boroughs situated within the county — are ex officio members of the assembly,[14] and as the posts of all save the latter are not held for life but are subject to sexennial re-elec­tion by the Assembly, their holders are naturally dependent upon the virilist squires, who are thus enabled to secure a clear majority. Every six years three candidates for each office are nominated by the County Committee,[15] in which the high Sheriff (főispán) commands the majority, and thus in practice the vacancies are virtually filled by the high sheriff himself, who is as a rule a prominent landlord of the county and con­sults the interests of his own narrow class. The captain of police, the archivists, bookkeepers and clerks, the unpaid supernumeraries (gyakornokok), the county and district doctors and veterinary surgeons, are indeed all appointed directly by him for life. The whole system of " election " to such offices is open to grave objections. It tends to encourage subserviency and intrigue ; those who are most in evidence and make the noisiest proiession of patriotic feelings, are, as a rule, those whose advancement is surest. The uncertainty which the short period of office and the passions of local politics engender militates against industry and devotion to duty, and the average official's energies are devoted to furthering the interests of the party to which he owed his election and on whose favour he depends. Short hours, non-attendance, incredible carelessness and accumulation of arrears are ram­pant in many counties. Many officials live beyond their means ; card playing and gambling are only too common vices. The extent to which municipal offices had been sinecures for decayed members of the gentry, may be gathered from the fact that in 1882, out of 428 szólgabirós, as many as 243 had not passed any legal examinations, and over 100 had not com­pleted their school education.[16] By the law of November 22, 1882, the county officials were for the first time required to qualify for their posts, but even now the old system of " pro­tection " lingers on. Many men enter the civil service imme­diately after their " maturity " examination, are inscribed at an academy of law, and pass out without having heard a single lecture. Influence secures promotion to worthless members of a decayed family, shuts off advancement from good men, and gives the right of decision to men who are not quali­fied to use it aright. In some of the smaller counties a few families control the whole administrative machine, most of the offices being held either by their own members or their dutiful dependants. Instances of good and able men rising from the ranks are by no means unknown in Hungary ; but they, too, are due not to the system, but to the influence exerted by some enlightened and powerful individual.

As we have seen, it is quite misleading to describe the Hun­garian system of county government as representative in any true sense of the word, since the elected members of assembly only represent a single class of the population, and are in any case outnumbered by permanent and official unelected mem­bers. The same is true of the communal assemblies, in which only half the members are elected, while the other half consists of the chief taxpayers of the commune, and the local officials, who also sit, thus possess in effect a casting vote. These officials — the judge and vice-judge, two jurymen, the notary, the director of the Board of Orphans, and the communal doctor — are " elected " in the communal assembly; but the right of nominating candidates for the first two and the last two (i.e. the most important) of these offices, is vested in the president of the assembly, who is the főszolgabíró (Oberstuhl­richter), in other words the chief executive official of the dis­trict.[17] As votes may only be recorded in favour of " candi­dates," it is a mere farce to speak of their " election." In the case of boroughs, the right of nominating candidates lies with a committee, composed of the vice-sheriff as chairman, two members nominated by him, and two members elected by the council. Thus in either case the appointments are bound to rest in the hands of a devoted instrument of the central government, and the " election " of any non-Magyar save a renegade is a physical impossibility.

The reforms introduced by Coloman Tisza, half-hearted as they were, have broken down the old defences of county autonomy; and just as the fortresses of Vauban and Eugene can no longer resist the terrors of modern artillery, so the county assemblies cannot hold out indefinitely against the onslaughts of a resolute central government. They retain, it is true, the power to withhold taxes and recruits which have not been legally voted by Parliament[18]; but with these two exceptions the ancient jus resistendi has been restricted to a bare right of making " representations." If after considera­tion the Minister sees fit to repeat his order, it must be obeyed without delay; while a ministerial order which purports to defend " the endangered interests of the State," can only be contested through the medium of Parliament.

The power thus possessed by the Minister of the Interior to enforce his wishes in the teeth of local opinion, is found specially useful against the nationalities, and is reinforced by the right of appeal which belongs to each individual member of a county assembly, and which in the case of refractory counties — for instance those with a Saxon majority — makes it possible to overrule any decision of a county assembly. Either the Minister decides upon such an appeal, or the High Sheriff makes a representation against the decision, without either the appeal or the representation being submitted to the assembly ; and the Minister then revokes the decision and enjoins the exact opposite ! When in 1876 Parliament recog­nized the Saxon University's right to control its own property,[19] its decisions remained subject to the sanction of the Minister, and this has sometimes been given to resolutions which were passed by a minority of two Roumanian members against the joint protest of all the Saxons. For instance, in 1878 the county assembly of Hermannstadt decided to build a county house, but on the appeal of several of its members the Minis­ter annulled this decision. A subsequent resolution of the assembly to purchase a building for the purpose was ignored by the Minister for eighteen months, and then annulled on the appeal of a single member. He then ordered the assembly to build a county house, and prescribed its site, and the pro­tests of the assembly against this illegality were unavailing.[20] Again, on January 26, 1878, the finance committee of the Saxon University proposed to prohibit the high sheriff from using as his official dwelling a house belonging to the Uni­versity ; the latter, however, declared himself to be respon­sible only to the King and to the Minister, and forbade the discussion of this proposal.[21] The petition of a certain indi­vidual for a grant of 500 florins was rejected by nineteen members of the University on grounds of economy, but favoured by one member, who appealed to the Minister ; the latter then assigned the money from the funds of the University, thus making a laughing stock of even the scanty remnants of its autonomy.

In the same way a decree of July 14, 1877, forced the Uni­versity to make an annual grant of 2,000 florins to the titular Saxon Count, though this ran directly counter to its own wishes.[22] The Count was at the same time empowered " to have the affairs of the central administration of the University carried out according to his direction " ; in other words, the Government through its nominee assumed the right not only of inspection but also of absolute control. When the Univer­sity protested, Tisza issued a new order (October 5, 1877), enjoining them to incorporate the original order in their statutes. When the committee of the assembly wished to submit a report on the incident, Wächter, the […] Sheriff, declared that he would not allow its discussion, […] that the assembly must adopt unquestioningly the ruling of the Minister. In spite of protests, he then moved its adoption and added that he would declare it carried if there were but a single vote in its favour. Two Roumanians voted for its adoption, and the sixteen Saxons present against it, where­upon Wächter announced the adoption of the Ministerial order " as a decree of the University." On November 19, 1877, a further decree was published to the following effect: " The fact that the alterations in the statutes indicated in my decrees have been carried out not by the majority but by the minority, does not in the slightest degree weaken the legality of these changes; for since the majority by its illegal action volun­tarily abdicated the execution of the privileges which the law confers upon it, it has thereby of its own accord handed over to .the minority the lawful right of representation in the Assembly!"[23]

This same Wächter, at the election of a vice-sheriff for the county of Hermannstadt (Szeben), declared beforehand that he would not recognize the validity of the election of any man save August Senor. One hundred and fifty votes were re­corded, and of these only twenty-seven for Senor ; yet Wächter declared the latter elected and swore him in without delay. On appeal to headquarters, Tisza endorsed Wächter's action, and in due course Parliament confirmed the Premier's decision.[24]

The growing power acquired by the Minister of the Interior to override local opinion, makes it all the more unpardonable that the clauses of the Law of Nationalities relating to the linguistic proficiency of officials, should have been so entirely neglected. Knowledge of the local language is not one of the qualifications required of county officials, and even to-day there are still many szólgabirós who can speak no language save Magyar.[25] In December, 1907, Count Andrássy found it necessary to issue a circular insisting that all officials who come into close contact with the people, shall acquire a thorough knowledge of the local idiom ; but it is to be feared that this circular will merely be shelved, like so many of its fellows.

The "Asiatic" conditions of Hungarian administration are, in the opinion of the well informed " Mercator,"[26] not due solely to the manner in which the local officials are at present appointed ; "for the financial administration, with its state officials, is quite as bad as the political." But far worse even than the repeated scandals among treasury officials, is the treatment to which the peasantry are subjected at the hands of local notaries. These officials often exercise an almost despotic power within the bounds of their narrow kingdom, and as the schedules of taxation are in most counties drawn up in the Magyar language only,[27] those non-Magyars who do not know the language of state (and they form the vast majority) are entirely at their mercy. It must not be supposed that these schedules are easily understood, for quite apart from the terrors of Magyar official phraseology, the num­ber of items which they contain[28] makes it hard for an edu­cated man, still harder for a peasant, to satisfy himself that he is not being overcharged. In many a village the notary and the Jew are the only persons able to explain to the un­fortunate peasant the meaning of these mysterious documents, and needless to Say, the information is not volunteered for nothing, and is not always strictly correct. Besides, it is by no means unusual to find a notary who knows no language save Magyar appointed to a Slav or Roumanian district, in which case explanations are rendered almost impossible. The peasant is then obliged to spend a couple of days in visiting the nearest town, in order to discover what a particular notice requires of him ; and before his work permits him to leave, the specified time may already have elapsed.

Thus it is hardly too much to say that the Magyar autho­rities show less respect for the languages of the nationalities than does an army of occupation for that of a conquered country ; and where so little consideration is shown, it is ridiculous to expect enthusiastic loyalty on the part of the victims. Before passing from this subject, I propose to cite three typical instances of the manner in which linguistic rights are respected in local government; in each case I have simply translated the report given by the Pester Lloyd, which was for a whole generation the official organ of the Liberal Party and its interpreter to the foreign public.

(1)  July, 1894. — " In the interests of the language of state, Count Joseph Zichy, then High Sheriff of Pressburg county, in October of last year brought forward a motion in the county assembly, by which all communes within the county of Press­burg should be bound in their internal administration, in all official acts, in issuing certificates, etc., to use the Hungarian[29] language only, as being the language of state. In this sitting Dr. J. Derer, the Pansláv advocate of Malaczka, rose amid general disturbance and protested against this resolution, which he described as illegal. Amid great excitement, the motion of the permanent committee in favour of its acceptance was carried. Dr. Derer hereupon moved a minority vote against this. In his appeal to the Minister of the Interior he referred to Law XLIV. of 1868, §§ 20 and 22, which lay down that the communes can themselves prescribe their own official language. The decision of the Minister, Mr. Hicronymi, has now been published ; he rejected the appeal on the ground that the vice-sheriff is justified in endeavouring within his sphere of action in the communes under him, to secure a wider currency for the Hungarian language of state. Naturally the Pan-slavs (die Herren Panslaven) are, according to the Press­burg Zeitung, scarcely edified at the effect of their appeal."[30]

(2)  December, 1907. — " The town of Zombor summoned a meeting of town council for to-day, in order to decide upon the offers for the lease of the town rates. The permanent committee recommended the acceptance of the offers of a Budapest firm. No decision, however, was arrived at owing to an incident. George Nikolics, member of the town council, put forward a motion in the Serb language and spoke in its favour in the same language. High-sheriff Charles Fernbach, together with the Chief Fiscal Sigismund Turszky, and the councillor Gregory Buday, endeavoured to persuade Nikolics, who had formerlyibeen captain of police and has a complete mas­tery of the Hungarian language, to bring forward his motion in Hungarian. Nikolics, however, declined to do this, on the ground that he had a legal right to speak Serb. The high-sheriff then rejected the motion, closed the sitting amid great uproar and withdrew, accompanied by the applause of mem­bers of the assembly."[31]

(3) January, 1908. — " On the loth inst. in the sitting of the communal assembly of Miava, the retired postmaster and nationalist agitator, Samu Jurenka, declared that he would only pass the minutes, if they were drawn up in the Slovak language as well. The chief szólgabiró protested against this irregular and unpatriotic attitude ; he described Jurenka's declaration as ' instigation,' adding the warning that if a simi­lar attitude were again adopted, the legal sphere of the county assembly would be suspended, since the Hungarian authorities would under no circumstances tolerate that the action of legal corporations should be misused for Pansláv propaganda and incitement."[32]

It would be an insult to the intelligence of my readers, to comment upon these incidents.

I have endeavoured to show how greatly the local administra­tion of Hungary stands in need of reform, and it is permissible to hope that this may speedily follow the introduction of universal suffrage. The redistribution of the counties, their adjustment to the ethnical conditions of the country and to its judicial divisions ; the democratization of the county assemblies by a wide extension of the franchise ; the reform of the present system of appointment of county officials, and their appointment for life ; the appointment of non-Magyars to local offices in districts where the population is non-Magyar ; the strict enforcement of those provisions of the Law of Na­tionalities which deal with the use of non-Magyar languages in the administration and with the linguistic proficiency of local officials ; the introduction of severe checks upon corrup­tion and inefficiency — these are only the most important features of a far-reaching programme of administrative re­organization, which alone can assure to Hungary progress and tranquillity in the future. Without administrative reform the racial question in Hungary can never be solved, and indeed it is not even possible to take the first steps towards a solution. Nor will these steps be taken until the Magyars realize that, in the words of one of their noblest writers,[33] "a vexatious administration rouses more antipathy than the most cruel depotism."