ed their demands. They likewise declared that the Protestant religion should be maintained in the country; that the proceedings of the Diet held at Presburg in 1687 were illegal and contrary to the written law of Hungary; that they must be annulled, and the ancient liberty to choose their king, whenever a vacancy occurred, restored to the peo

the Diet no troops should garrison the country but those of Hungary; and that all offices of trust should be filled by Hungarians, unless the Diet specially declared that signal service to the State entitled foreigners to reward. The members of the council themselves solemnly swore to observe these resolutions, and to treat as criminals and traitors to their country all who should abandon the confederation, or enter into any separate treaty with the Imperial court.

cipal terms, that notwithstanding the result | down their arms, until they had first obtainof the pretended Diet of Presburg in 1687, the Hungarian nation should exercise their ancient liberty of choosing their king after the death of Joseph, and that meanwhile he should take a new oath of fealty to the constitution; that Catholics and Protestants should enjoy equal religious liberty; that a general amnesty should be granted to all who had been in arms against Austria; free-ple; that without the express permission of dom of commerce and from taxes, except those imposed by the States; that three months after the ratification of the proposed treaty, a general Diet should be held to determine the laws of the nation, and to restore those which had been arbitrarily abrogated; that a Diet should be triennially, or oftener if necessary, convened to deliberate on the affairs of the nation; and that the Diet should nominate one or two deputies to reside at Vienna in the capacity of counsellors of the King of Hungary, to assist in the administration of affairs concerning the kingdom. A mediation ensued on the part of Great Britain and the States-General of Holland, respectively represented by Mr. Stepney and the Count Rechteren. The emperor-king was desirous to draw his troops from Hungary, in order to employ them against France and Spain, and a meeting of plenipotentiaries was accordingly held at Chemnitz, in Upper Hungary. The Imperialists, however, in insisting that Tekeli should relinquish his rank as Prince of Transylvania, prevented the conclusion of the treaty.

The war still continued, and the insurgents increased in numbers as well as in the earnestness of their demands. Joseph convoked a Diet at Presburg in 1708, but the result only tended to show him the firm resolve the nation had made to resist the Imperial despotism. The patriots were beaten at Trentschin, but on the other hand, General Heisler was obliged to raise the seige of Neuhausel. The struggle proceeded, and by the end of 1710 the insurgents lost, with but one considerable exception, all the positions they had gained. In 1711 Joseph died, and during the interregnum of six months, when the Meantime, in 1705, the Emperor Leopold dowager Empress Eleonora Magdalen adwent to the great judgment-bar of kings and ministered power in all the hereditary States, tyrants. His son, Joseph I. of Hungary, be- a pacification was accomplished. By the came Emperor of Germany. Joseph made treaty of Zaturar on the 29th of April, 1711, an offer of peace to the Hungarian insur-all the property confiscated during the trougents, in which he proposed to restore confiscated Protestant property; to convoke a general Diet, at which all grievances should be stated in writing; that the liberties, privileges, and prerogatives of the nation should be established and confirmed, in as far as they did not interfere with the hereditary succession to the crown; the convocation of Diets triennially; an examination of the claims of the Prince Rakoczy and the other patriot leaders; a general amnesty; and, lastly, that, within five months, the Hungarians should lay down their arms, on penalty of losing all benefit under the treaty. But the leaders were not so easily to be persuaded to place themselves at the mercy of a faithless court. A grand council of the patriot Hungarians was held, when it was resolved that they should on no pretense lay

bles was restored to the lawful owners; the Protestants had accorded to them liberty of worship and conscience, and a confirmation was made of all the national liberties and privileges.

Charles III. (Charles VI. of Germany) succeeded his father. Of the events of this reign it is unnecessary here to speak, more than of the Pragmatic Sanction of 13th April, 1713, by which Charles regulated the order of Austrian succession in favor of malesfailing whom, females; and in failure of both, to the Archduchesses, daughters of the Emperor Joseph, to the Queen of Portugal, and to the other daughters of Joseph, and their descendants in perpetuity. The Diet accepted this line of succession; and on the death of Charles, his daughter, the famous Maria Theresa, married to Francis of Lor

city representatives; and that, if political terms are to be taken according to electoral and non-electoral proportions, was essentially oligarchical. But all discussion on this point is precluded by the statistics of the case; for of the persons either having influence in, or an electoral influence on the Hungarian Diet, the aggregate hardly exceeded 200,000 souls

bearing arms, must arm for local defense. In peace the emperor has, therefore, always at his disposal 30,000 admirably disciplined infantry, which by a mere order from the War Department may be increased to 60,000, without seriously affecting the defense of the border. The men cultivate the soil, and once a week assume the garb and arms of soldiers, and are splendidly drilled into companies.-about the number composing the electoral Once a month they are exercised in battalion. Along the whole of the frontier, a regular chain of posts is established night and day, on a system of as rigid observation as if an enemy were in front. Each county is governed by colonels, majors, captains, lieutenants, sergeant-majors, sergeants, and corporals, who each has his department of office allotted to him; and to such perfection is the supervision carried, that the most private affairs of every man are known and registered. Civil and judicial functions are performed by the chiefs. In short, it is a military colony, governed with Spartan discipline and severity-an institution, the sole end and purpose of which was, and is, to train a race of soldiers for the service of the Imperial State. These men know no duty but services to the emperor; no law but obedience to the commands of their military superiors.*

Up to this point we have been detailing the successions and transactions of kings and nobles; let us now see what has been the condition, political and social, of the great mass of the people. That the legislative constitution was essentially aristocratical, must have been apparent to the reader in our brief statement of its composition. The Upper Table was entirely noble in its elements, either by birth in its laity, or position in the ecclesiastical dignitaries. In the Lower Table noble birth prevailed, for the members for the komitats were the representatives of an inferior, because an untitled nobility, and of their order or class.t The only democratic element in the legislature was the burghal or

*The curious reader is referred, for complete information as to the details of the system, to the work of Marshal Marmont, who was governor in the Southern Sclavonian district during the occupation of the country by Napoleon.

"Of these (the county constituency) very many are, in point of fact, mere peasants, whom the misfortunes or imprudence of their ancestors have reduced to poverty; but all must have noble blood in their veins, for it is an honorable descent, and not the possession of lands or houses which entitles a man to exercise the elective franchise in Hungary.

colleges of France under Louis Philippe. Two hundred thousand males alone enjoyed the liberties, rights, and privileges of the Hungarian constitution; all other classes and conditions of men were beyond the pale of citizenship. Political duties they had abundantly allotted to them in the exclusive payment of the taxes of the State, and in the military service of the Honved when an "insurrection" or general muster was required for the defense of the country; but political rights they had none; not even in the sense attached to the unmeaning phrase of a "virtual representation," beyond a limited protection by the common law of the land.

When we come to look at the more social aspect of the position of the people, we are compelled to admit that the peasant class— the great bulk of the population-were socially and politically in serfdom. The Hungarian peasantry corresponded in some respects to the second class of Roman slaves— the adscripti, or adscriptii-who were bound to perpetual service in cultivating a particular field or farm, and who were rather slaves to that farm than to the owner of it; so that he could not transfer his right in them without alienating the farm to which they were astricted or bound. In some respects, also, they corresponded to the ancient naviti, or bondsmen of Scotland.* The

mittees deal with the poor voters in boroughs. There is prodigious feasting at the castle-there is no end of magnanimous declarations-no lack of brilliant and spirit-stirring speeches; under the influence of which, and of the wine and strong drinks that accompany them, the pauper eidelman becomes a hero in his own eyes. But alas! political gratitude is not more enduring in Hungary than elsewhere. The crisis has its course, and the scion of a glorious race -the representative of a family which followed Almus to the Thiess, and gave the coronet to Arpadgoes back to his hovel, and his daily toil, and his filth, and his wretchedness, there to chew the cud of bitter fancy, till the return of an electioneering season shall call him forth once more to act a part upon the stage of life."-Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary visited in 1837. By the Reverend G. R. Gleig, M. A., Chaplain to the Royal Hospital, Chelsea; vol. ii. p. 408.

Such nobles are of course controlled and manpoor aged by their wealthier neighbors, who, when the season of an election comes round, deal with them *See Reg. Maj., ii. c. 12, s. 45; quoted in "Erskine's pretty much as our own candidates and their com- | Inst.," ii. c. 2, s. 60.

Rev. Mr. Gleig's account of his visit to Hungary in 1837, an impartial and unpretending work, contains several graphic sketches of Hungarian manners, so life-like, that one regrets that pen so competent for the task had not entered more fully into the subject. Mr. Gleig's tour was limited to an excursion in the Carpathian district of the northwestern corner; to a brief sojourn in the ancient and modern capitals; to a voyage down the Danube to Semlin; and to a rapid ride thence along the military frontier, through Sclavonia and Croatia to Hungary's sole seaport, Fiume. But as he journeyed as a pedestrian in the north, with keen and intelligent observation, he had many opportunities of obtaining information; and his pictures are acknowledged to be faithful. One or two extracts from his work will convey some notion of the politico-social position of the people down to the radical changes in the Hungarian constitution made by the Diet in 1847-48.

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ment, into his manner of exercising which no human being ever took the trouble to inquire. Accordingly, you still find, as an appendage to each manimplements of torture; while the rod was as freesion, a prison with its bolts and chains and other ly applied to the backs of delinquents, real or imaginary, as ever the whip made acquaintance with the persons of our own negroes in a West Indian sugar-field."

In his descriptions of the domestic arrangements of a Hungarian country gentleman, which Mr. Gleig aptly compares to those of the Highland laird of half a century ago, there are some traits worthy of note. The eidelman, or "squire," was surrounded by an endless number of retainers, who each, according to his ability, contributed country produce, not as good-will offerings, but as the feudal perquisites which the chief claimed:

"The precise amount, either of labor or of tribute, which the land-owner might exact from his serfs or peasants, was never fixed by any pretext, either of law or custom, till 1764. It was then that Maria Theresa published her Urbarium, a mere royal proclamation, to which the Diet never gave its sanction, but which, being adopted as a standard of justice, has ever since obtained universal observance. Accordingly, a full farm is now estimated to contain twenty-five acres of ara

"The people, properly so called," says Mr. Gleig, writing in 1838, "the peasants who cultivate the soil, the mechanics who construct the dwellings, the artisans who fabricate the household utensils, the wearing apparel, the carriages, the ships, the machinery, these are precisely in the condition of Gurth and Wamba, in Sir Wal-ble land, and of grass as much as a man shall be ter Scott's romance of Ivanhoe. In the rural districts, every man whom you meet, provided he be neither a noble nor a soldier, belongs to somebody. He has no rights of his own. He is a portion of another man's chattels; he is bought and sold with the land, as if he were a horse or an ox. On him, too, all the common burdens of the State are thrown. If the parliament vote an increase of the taxes, it is from the peasants that these taxes are wrung; for the lord takes care, though he himself pay immediately, that he shall be indemnified by the deduction which he makes from his serf's allowances. It is the same spirit which provides that the peasantry who make the roads, and, by the labor of their hands, keep them in repair, shall be the only class of persons of whom toll is anywhere exacted. An eidelman in his chariot passes free through every barrier; a poor peasant's wagon is stopped at each, till the full amount of mout, as it is called, has been settled. But this is not all. Till the year 1835, each landed proprietor possessed over his peasantry an almost unlimited power of punish*In the astricted sense mentioned in the text.

There was one exemption to the general exception of the nobility from taxation, and it marked, in an odd way, the connection of the Church with the State in Hungary. The church militant, or rather the prelates, as the possessors of the sees, were taxed to support the principal fortresses of the kingdom. Imagine Harry of Exeter being compelled to pay annually a tenth of his episcopal revenue for the repair of the Tower!

able to mow in twelve days. For this the tenant pays annually a ninth of his whole produce, as well as of all lambs, kids, and bees, which he may rear upon his farm, two chickens, two capons, twelve eggs, and half a pound of butter. Moreover, he is bound to furnish to his landlord during the year an hundred and eleven days' labor with a pair of hands, as well as one day's service in every week with a wagon and four horses. Then again, when the proprietor marries, or a child is born to him, or his son takes a wife, or a new incumbent is inducted, a donation of poultry, or corn, or some other species of produce becomes due; while, to sum up all, the peasant's whole property, should he die without natural heirs, is immediately seized upon by his landlord. On the other hand, a peasant once put in possession of a farm, becomes almost as much a fixture there as if the land were his own freehold. If he leave sons behind him, they succeed to the occupancy, of course sharing it among them till it is split into mere shreds, and uniting their means to make good the tribute that is due, and without a faithful discharge of which they are liable to punishment. All the serfs on a land-owner's property are not, however, farmers. There are multitudes who inhabit cottages only, and who find a subsistence, as well as they can, from their gardens and their labor. Each of these pays to the land-owner one florin, or two shillings yearly, as the rent of his cottage, and eighteen days' labor in the fields. During the remaining three hundred and forty-seven days he is paid for his exertions. But though every

The forstban is another privilege enjoyed by all nobles and government functionaries, that is, of impressing the horses of the peasantry in travelling. They are paid, it is true; but the system is most vexatious during the operations of harvest. The villages and habitations of the peasantry, especially amongst the Sclavonian population of the highlands, are squalid and unhealthy. The habits of the peasant are gregarious. In the fertile plains one vast tract of golden corn is bounded only by the horizon, and the weary traveller may journey far in fields of bounteous plenty, ere he is cheered by sight of human habitation. At remote intervals there are peasant towns-cities of hovels with serf citizens, varying from three to thirty thousand souls. There they herd together during the winter, till seed-time calls them forth to the labor of husbandry, when they squat in rude huts till harvest-home. This gregarious practice had its origin in the fierce times when the great plains were ravaged by invading Turks. What was begun as necessity, has continued from the choice of a class too degraded, perhaps, to seek out even physical means of elevating their social state, or too poor and powerless to effect a change. But in the bounty of Providence, and in the march of liberal ideas, there is much hope, even for the peasant-serf of Hungary's broad plains. It would seem that the feudal rule in Croatia is even more severe than in the palatinate; for some years ago, what threatened to be a fierce servile war was only put down by an overpowering military force. However, all attempts to draw distinctions in vassalage must be shadowy, for Mr. Gleig tells us that, in the household of the Princebishop of Kreutz, he saw men and women with logs and chains upon their ankles. It seems astonishing, under such an unequal distribution of power, and with slavery as a domestic institution, how the nobility succeeded so long in maintaining the integrity of their political constitution. It can only,

we think, be attributed to the incessant engagement in foreign and domestic wars, and in a strong feeling of nationality in antago

nism to Austria, and to the incessant attempts of that house to subdue the nation; for Magyar and Sclave forgot their antipathies of race in the necessity for union against the common enemy of both.

Of the social and territorial position of the Hungarian aristocracy, it may be interesting to say a word or two. We have no data on which to determine the proprietary division of the soil; but it was, up to 1847, very much smaller than the electoral constituency. Some of the nobility possess enormous territory, and plain country gentlemen are the owners of whole komitats. In as far as an

abundant produce of corn, and wine, and
flocks, the land-owners are rich exceedingly;
but from the want of markets and good
communications for export, they cannot be
termed wealthy in the commercial sense.
The nobles are exceedingly fond of grand
equipages, equipments, and other forms of
aristocratic display; and to procure the ready
money necessary for the indulgence of that
taste, they make great sacrifices at the shrine
of the Hebrew Mammon.* The Sidonias,
great and small, are indeed almost the only
capitalists in Hungary. Mr. Gleig gives
some curious instances of the money power
they possess over the needy nobility, and
incidentally notices some striking peculiarities
in the system of land tenure.
of the Caucasian does not tend to mitigate
the vassalage of the astricted races. The
Hungarian land-owner enjoyed the undisputed
right of sovereignty within his own domain.
No one could open an inn or public-house
except by permission of the great man. Nor
could any man introduce alcoholic liquors
without the lord's permission. Temperance
is not a peasant virtue among the Sclaves,
and here was a valuable and meet monopoly
for the money-loving sons of Israel.

The influence

"Accordingly, the Jew, when applied to for a loan, invariably stipulates with the needy eidelman for the exclusive privilege of tenanting the inns upon his estate, and of retailing wine and spirits to his people. Once established, however, in the enjoyment of these rights, and he holds both lord and vassal at his mercy. The former dare not move, lest the loan, with difficulty obtained, should be demanded back again; while the latter, a slave to his appetite, may be either won to anything, or deterred from it, by the promise of a dram, or the refusal even to sell it. So far the power of the Jew is felt, and so far his privileges extend, but they go no farther. A Jew cannot, for example,

*Prince Esterhazy's diamond-gemmed jacket was a nine days' wonder in the kingdom of Cockaigne, some years ago.