534 INTERNATIONAL LAW 



In almost all states founded in Western Europe by invaders of 

 Teutonic origin, a new race grew out of the fusion between conqueror 

 and conquered, the racial individuality of the latter generally pre- 

 vailing. So the Franks, the Visigoths, the Longobards became 

 Latin in France, Spain, and Italy; the Normans, Latinized in France, 

 became Saxon after the conquest of England. Turkish conquest 

 on the other hand, being founded on theocratic principles, does not 

 tend to racial assimilation; it simply lays a new racial stratum on 

 the old ones, granting the latter a sort of contemptuous toleration, 

 but domineering over them with all the might of religious and poli- 

 tical exclusiveness. Our forefathers adopted neither of these two 

 courses. They kept their own race unaltered, and respected the 

 racial individuality of the conquered as well as of later immigrants; 

 but they absorbed them into political unity by conferring upon the 

 deserving among them all the privileges of a Hungarian freeman, 

 privileges which, on the other hand, were forfeited by many members 

 of the conquering race. By these proceedings - - which remind us 

 of ancient Rome, conferring her citizen right on provincials-- racial 

 difference soon disappeared from public law, every man on our 

 territory being subjected to the same laws, enjoying the same 

 capacities of public life, being equally able to become an active 

 agent in national evolution, but disabled from evolving any sort 

 of particular racial history; being in a word tied to the whole com- 

 munity by every material and moral tie which, in the course of time, 

 engenders feelings of solidarity and union. National unity, the unity 

 of the great political Hungarian nation, was effected on the most 

 liberal base, and towers up to our days in unconquerable height 

 and strength above those abortive attempts to foment discord on 

 the ground of misguided racial instinct, of which you may have heard 

 some rumors even here, among part of our immigrants. From the 

 beginning, then, of the Christian Era in our country, that is, for nine 

 hundred years, the rights of the people have been vested in the 

 whole undividable Hungarian political nation, irrespective of racial 

 distinctions. 



But class divisions and class privileges, Hungary, like all medieval 

 Europe, has certainly known. Still, I can claim a certain kinship 

 to democracy on behalf of our old constitution. 



When medieval Hungarian public law had reached maturity, 

 there was a class of nobiles - - which term would be very inaccu- 

 rately translated into the English word " noblemen " - 1 should 

 rather call them " freemen," or " franchise-men," in whom all public 

 rights were vested. To these the clergy, the members of some other 

 liberal professions, and the burgesses of a great number of towns 

 became assimilated. Access to that privileged class was easy; it 

 numbered many thousand members, whose social status did not 



