we should have detected him. His conver-being ignorant, slothful, uncivilized and poor. sation, though not that of an Austrian, be- The House of Hapsburg, with the treachertrays the Austrian tendencies and views ous, unscrupulous cunning which it calls which are general in a country so dependent policy, tried to weaken her by fomenting on her as Bavaria. His bias shows itself antipathies of religion, and station and race. strongly when he talks of an Austrian na- By setting Protestants against Catholics, tionality. There is no Austrian nation, un- peasants against nobles, Germans against less we give that name to the millions that Czechs, and Croats, Wallachians, and Serbs inhabit the Archduchies. Austria is not against Magyars. Such was the state of even, what Metternich called Italy, a geo- things when the revolution of 1848 paragraphical term. It is a personal term. It lyzed the imperial power. Hungary demeans merely the House of Hapsburg. manded and obtained a ministry of her We are apt, in England, to undervalue own. In doing so she acted lawfully: the loss which that house sustained in 1806 whether prudently is another question. The by surrendering the crown of Germany. Emperor fled to Inspruck, and from thence The moral weight and dignity possessed by secretly instigated Jellachich, the Ban of an emperor of Germany, the patron of the Croatia, to rebel against the central HunChurch, the successor of the Caesars, kept garian Government. Then followed a train together the heterogeneous elements which of events, unhappily notorious-the civil had coalesced under the sceptre of the Arch- war between the Magyars and the Croats, duke of Austria. It was predicted at the the detection of the Emperor's treachery, time, and the prophecy has been fulfilled, the murder of its instruments, Lamberg at that the abdication of Francis the Second Pesth, and Latour in Vienna, the revolt of would be more mischievous at home than Vienna, and its suppression by Windiabroad. The means by which the House of schgrätz and Jellachich, the invasion of Hapsburg acquired these curiously tessel- Hungary by the imperial forces, fresh from lated dominions made very difficult their the re-conquest of the capital, the premierconsolidation into a homogeneous empire. ship of Schwartzenberg, the abdication of His various kingdoms, dukedoms, coun- Ferdinand, and the accession of Francis ties and principalities stand towards the Joseph. Archduke of Austria in the relation in His proclamation was a remarkable docuwhich Hanover stood towards the king of ment. Convinced,' he said, 'of the necesEngland. They are the subjects of an ab- sity of free institutions, and of the equality sentee sovereign, of a sovereign in many of all citizens before the law, and of their cases ignorant of their language, and in equally partaking in the legislation of the almost all, unacquainted with their opinions, country, ready to share his power with the their habits, and even their institutions. representatives of the people, he hoped to Most of them have been acquired by mar- unite all the countries and tribes of the riage; the two most important kingdoms, monarchy into one integral state.' Three Hungary and Bohemia, each committed the months after he proposed to perform these strange folly of electing as their ruler a engagements by the constitution of the 4th foreign monarch, nearly absolute in his own country, trusting to their own free constitutions, and to his oath, that he would respect those constitutions. As might have been foretold, the subsequent history of Hungary and of Bohemia, as long as she had a history, has been one long contest between the people, resolved to preserve their freedom, and their king, resolved to destroy it. of March, 1849, a constitution which, in the words of its promulgator, was 'a spontaneous gift from the imperial power, to the people of the one and indivisible empire of Austria, of the rights and liberties which had been promised by his uncle and himself." If this constitution had been accepted by the people, and adhered to by the sovereign, Austria would have become a constitutional Bohemia lost hers in the Thirty Years' state, with far more real liberty than is now War. With it perished her religion, her enjoyed by any portion of Germany. It prosperity, her wealth, her intelligence, granted liberty of the press, it abolished almost her civilisation. Hungary retained serfdom, it opened every public office to her liberty until 1849. She retained it by every citizen, it created an imperial diet clinging to her old aristocratic cumbrous composed of two houses, each selected by feudalism by rejecting every innovation, the people, each sitting for five years, and though it might be an improvement in itself, each having the power of proposing laws, which tended to assimilate her to the other and it gave to these elected houses the kingdoms ruled by the foreign emperor whole control of the raising and of the exwhom she had the misfortune to have for penditure of the public revenue. her king. She retained it at the price of Such a constitution was far more demo population, they had a vast, an almost unlimited career of prosperity and happiness opened to them as Austrians, if they would consent to forget that they were Magyars. say, the Bukovina, Dalmatia, Croatia, and Sclavonia,) to be one indivisible independent state. It further declared 'the perjured House of Hapsburg to have forfeited the throne, and to be excluded, deposed, and banished.' cratic than that of England but the Austrian leges and institutions which had been preGovernment, in its usual fashion, promul- served by their ancestors during centuries, gated its democracy as an act of absolute humiliating as it was to descend from a despotic authority. It detached from Hun- kingdom to a province, and still more humigary, Croatia, Sclavonia, Dalmatia, and liating, to be stripped of large territories of Transylvania, it declared that the old con- which they have been sovereigns from times stitution in Hungary should be preserved almost immemorial, yet that, as the largest only so far as it agreed with the new one, and most important member of a great conit promised new constitutions to the remain- stitutional empire, an empire of which the ing provinces, and declared their existing natural resources are such that nothing but constitutions ["Ständische Verfasungen"] tolerable government is necessary to enable void. A more audacious coup d'état was it to double in a few years its wealth and its never perpetrated by the most unprincipled usurper. It was as if William the Fourth had issued a new constitution for the united indivisible empire of Hanover, composed of the crown-lands of Hanover, Scotland, Ireland, They ought, we repeat, to have seen and and England, the principality of Wales, the to have felt all this: but those who expected duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster, and the them to do so, can have known little of hutown of Berwick-on-Tweed; had separated man nature, at least of human nature as it from England, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, exists in a proud, high-spirited, ignorant, and Lancashire; had enacted that the affairs unreflecting, semi-barbarous people. The of the empire of Hanover should be admin- new constitution was proclaimed on the 4th istered by two houses of Parliament chosen of March. On the 14th of April, the Hunin each crown-land according to its popula- garian Chamber declared Hungary and tion, holding its sittings at Zell, and had Transylvania, with all the countries and declared void any parts of the existing Bri- provinces appertaining thereto, (that is to tish constitution and laws which might be inconsistent with the new arrangement. What were the ordinances of Charles the Tenth, or the Dixhuit Brumaire of NapoLeon, or the coup d'état of his nephew compared to this? The constitution of Hungary was as binding, was as ancient, was as We will not follow the lamentable story independent of royal authority, and was as of the war. If any of our readers have formuch cherished by the Hungarians as our gotten it they are to be envied. The war own; and in wealth, population, and extent, suspended the new Austrian constitution: Hungary is almost as superior to the Aus- the subjugation of Hungary destroyed it. trian Archduchies as England is to Hanover. It is probable, indeed, that the young EmAnd yet we think that the Hungarians peror's 'conviction of the necessity of free ought to have submitted. They ought to institutions,' and 'his readiness to share his have perceived that six millions of Magyars, power with the representatives of the peoeven with the assistance of Transylvania, ple,' were the result of the terror which the would be unable permanently to resist the events of 1848 inspired into every royal whole remainder of the Austrian empire. mind, and wore away as the excesses of the That even if this were possible, Russia liberal party made free institutions odious would stretch out her gigantic hand, and by or contemptible, and the blind adherence of the same effort crush a revolutionary neigh- the army to the Crown made them avoidable. bor and degrade a dangerous rival. They From that time Hungary has been treated ought to have seen that assuming their inde- as a conquered nation; her constitution has pendence to be achieved, it could not be been abolished, her municipal institutions lasting. That a Hungarian kingdom or re- have been destroyed. She is administered public, containing at most a population of by Germans who know nothing and care eight millions, for they could not hope to be nothing about her laws, her habits, or even joined by the Sclavonic races, surrounded her language; and she feels this treatment by great military monarchs, all rapacious as such insults and injuries would be felt by and unscrupulous, could not long stand us. We strongly suspect that the peasants alone, but must, within a few years, be parti- who, as F. tells us, travelled miles to kneel tioned between several robbers, or absorbed before their Emperor, travelled and knelt by one. And lastly, they ought to have felt that, bitter as was the sacrifice of laws and privi under the influence of the police and the threat of the stick. We believe that very few of the inhabitants of Hungary acknow ledge Francis Joseph as their lawful sove- everything else is heterogeneous in her emreign, or the German officials by whom he pire, the army forms a separate and uniform governs them as their lawful superiors. caste, governed by one law, ruled by one They pay the taxes that are imposed on authority, animated by one spirit, welded them, and submit to the decisions of the together, in short, into one mass. If Russia civil and criminal courts that are established was to invade Hungary, and the nobles were among them, and obey the arbitrary police mad enough to take part with her, an event to which, in common with the other nations of which we cannot deny the probability, which have the misfortune to be under the we do not believe that Austria could raise Austrian rule, they are subjected, but they the peasants against them, or that she would pay, and submit, and obey under compul- gain much if she could. The nobles and sion. A proof of the general unpopularity the Russians would very soon put down a of Austria was given a short time ago, on jacquerie. the occasion of a census of Hungary, in The only mode by which Austria can conwhich the population was classified according vert Hungary from a danger into a support, to the races to which each person professed is one of which the success is infallible, but to belong. More than eleven millions re- which we do not believe that the youth, to turned themselves as Magyars. As it is whose prejudices, passions, and inexperience, well known that the real Magyars do not Providence, in its inscrutable decrees, seems amount to six millions, the remaining five to have abandoned the destinies of millions millions must have usurped the title. An of beings, probably wiser and better than usurpation which can be accounted for only himself, will have the good sense or the moral by their antipathy to Austria, and their courage to adopt. It is to cease to be an desire to disclaim, in the strongest possible usurper-to adopt a system of lawful gomanner, all connection with her. vernment. To restore the old constitution of Hungary, to swear, as all his predecessors have done, to maintain it, and, as all his predecessors have done, unwillingly, we admit, but actually, to keep his oath. We are inclined to think that both P. and F., the other German interlocutor, exaggerate the advantages derived by Austria from the popularity of her communistic principles among the lowest classes, and The other constitutions which Francis under-rate her danger from the terror and Joseph, at an age at which, if he had been disgust with which she is looked on by a an English boy, he might have been still in large portion of her educated subjects. The his sixth form at Eton, and, if he had been attempt to manage a large disaffected but a German boy in a private station, could uneducated majority by means of a small not have done any act affecting his property, well educated minority, has often been thought fit by a mere expression of his will made, and always with success. It was thus that a handful of Spartans kept down ten times their number of Helots. It was thus that for a couple of centuries, England governed Ireland; that in the United States, the South governs her vast slave population; and that the Mussulmans, and, after them, the English, have ruled India. The uneducated can furnish physical force, but they do not know how to use it, they cannot combine, they cannot trust one another; they do not know how to follow up success, and they are dissipated in despair by the to cancel, were less active and living than that of Hungary, but still were loved as memorials of ancient independence, and as the means of future improvement. Their abolition spread through all the educated classes in the German territories of Austria, formerly the most loyal portion of her dominions, deep and natural disaffection. Galicia, Lombardy, and Venetia, had not the same grievance to complain of; for, never having enjoyed, since they became Austrian, real constitutions, they could not be robbed of them. But the insolent wickedness of their seizure has kept them for the last half For these very reasons, the converse at- century in a state of chronic conspiracy tempt, the attempt to coerce the educated against the robber who calls himself their portion of society by means of the unedu- sovereign. This has not rendered misgocated, has always failed. Its success, when vernment, to the degree in which it has exit has had any, as it had in France in 1792, isted in all of them, inevitable, but it has and over a large portion of the continent in rendered good government impossible. No 1848, has been temporary, and has always people can be well governed against their been followed by the decisive and perma-will. The Italians complain that the Italian nent triumph of the superior classes. regiments are sent to serve in Hungary, and first reverse. It is not by means of the people that Aus- that Lombardy and the Terra Firma are tria keeps down her disaffected upper classes, kept down by Germans; but how is it pos but by her army of 470,000 men. While sible to entrust the defence of the govern ment to troops that are avowedly disaffected? They complain that the public offices are filled with foreigners, but can Austria fill them with her enemies? 3000 men. This would have been absurdCount Revel proposed that 10,000 men should be allowed to go as volunteers. 'I think,' said the King, 'that, if we are to act, we should do it more decidedly.' Balbo's We have always been anxious to hear the opinions of able and moderate Italians on the invasion of Lombardy in 1848. Many believe that it was forced on Charles Albert The general misgovernment of the Aus- by the threat of insurrection. The Cabinet trian dominions, which has prevented their Council, at which it was decided on, has coalescing into one great nation, has encour- been described to us by one who took part aged the barbarous feeling of separate na- in it. It was held on the evening of the tionality, which is becoming the curse of 20th of March, 1848, in a room of the paEurope. The tendency of events during the lace overlooking the Piazza del Castello. last 1000 years, has been towards the fusion The Piedmontese constitution was then sixof numerous small states into a few large teen days old, it had been proclaimed on ones. This fusion has been partly the ef- the 8th. Balbo had been four days prime fect and partly the cause of improved civili- minister. News of the insurrection at Misation. If England were divided into a lan had been brought in the morning, and heptarchy, or even if England, Wales, Scot-deputies had arrived, imploring assistance, land, and Ireland, were four independent and announcing their intention, if refused, nations, the different races would always be to apply to France. The Piazza was filling fighting one another commercially or physi- rapidly with a mob, new to freedom, intoxically. To this fusion the feeling of separate cated with its excitement, shouting out imnationality is opposed. Its ultimate effect precations against Austrians, Jesuits, and would be to split the composite frame of tyrants, and crying, Viva il ré! in a manevery European sovereignty into hostile ner which shewed that they meant Viva la fragments. Its immediate tendency is to Republica. The Milanese had asked for make the central sovereign fear his subjects, and the subjects hate their sovereign. But when fusion is brought about, or rather attempted to be brought about, not by the impartial justice and confidence by which France assimilated her Flemish and Ger- mind had been made up in favour of the man provinces, but by usurpation, violence, war. He believed that the consequence of and treachery, our sympathies are turned in refusing the aid to Milan, would be not favour of those who resist, though we may merely the calamity of a French interventhink their resistance, like that of Poland in tion, but a republic in Genoa, and probably 1830, that of Lombardy and Venice in 1848, in Turin. The King's words and manner and that of Hungary in 1849, ruinous to shewed Balbo that they thought together. themselves, and dangerous to Europe. He looked round the table, and, without alWe must add, that the absence of a com-luding to Revel's proposition, said, 'Sire, I mon nationality, among its other evils, ren- believe that we are all agreed that we ought ders the Austrian empire peculiarly liable to act, as your Majesty has expressed it, deto foreign intervention. We do not believe cidedly, and that the Minister of War ought that the most unscrupulous of the French immediately to take measures to move forparties, not even the Legitimists or the ward the disposable part of the army; and Rouges, would ccept the assistance of a I think that it may be advisable that your foreigner against their political enemies. Majesty's resolution should be instantly There is scarcely a province in Austria that communicated to the people.' 'By all does not deplore it. Neither Hungary, nor means,' said the King; and I hope that Galicia, nor Lombardy, nor Venetia, nor you will all dine with me.' The windows even Bohemia, looks on the Vienna Govern- were thrown open, and from the balcony ment as a national one, or on Francis Joseph the ministers proclaimed to the crowd beas its natural sovereign. What the central low that the army had been ordered to government calls an insurrection, the province calls a war, and it considers its foreign supporters, not as strangers interfering in its domestic quarrels, but as allies against a foreign enemy. march to the Milanese frontier. It was. thus, in a council that did not last ten minutes, in which a declaration of war and an invitation to dinner were included in one sentence, and almost at the dictation of a metropolitan mob, that a measure was adoptThe next conversation introduces a re-ed on which the fate of the Kingdom of Sarmarkable interlocutor, the ex-dictator of dinia seemed to depend. Venice, Signor Manin, one of the wisest and honestest, and therefore one of the most moderate, of the Italian patriots. D-12 VOL. XXII. But the invasion of Lombardy, though it appeared to be the sudden result of unforeseen events, was an attempt which had long been revolved in Charles Albert's mind. I have been a blessing, but certainly it was 'May 13. 'We talked of the dangers to which Aus- "What," I said, "has been politically the gain and loss in the Venetian territories ??? "The faults of France," said Manin, were perhaps given to her to enable her to The scale of evil," answered Manin, perform her mission. Her great duty, the "has much preponderated, especially among purpose for which she appears to me to have the lower classes. The Venetian noble has been made so strong, was to abolish feuda- always been oppressed. He was as much lism. Until 1789, the natural equality of the slave of the Council of Ten, as he is now mankind was a religious and a philosophical, of the Austrian police. Still he had the but not a political, doctrine. France has compensation of feeling that he was himself the merit of having made it a principle of one of the governing body; he had a much action." higher compensation in feeling that he was "The proclamation of equality," I said, one of the principal members of an illustri"the abolition of privilege, the levelling of ous community that had been great and the little aristocracies, some sovereign, some glorious for more than a thousand years. noble, some commercial, and some munici- It must be owned, however, that there was pal, which formerly overspread Europe, may in Venice little of individual liberty or of |