544 INTERNATIONAL LAW 



as common good sense required her to do. But as to its binding 

 force this celebrated law is no treaty, like the Pragmatic Sanction, 

 but simply a law like any other law, liable to be abolished or changed 

 at Hungary's uncontrolled pleasure. It is immaterial for the pur- 

 poses of our present investigation that we should certainly think the 

 matter twice over before tampering with that particular law: that 

 is the political aspect of the question; legally the whole machinery 

 of common affairs and common ministries can be destroyed by an 

 independent act of the Hungarian legislature, with which nobody 

 has a right to interfere. Now, I ask, how can institutions which 

 depend in their very existence on the sovereign will of Hungary re- 

 present a power superior to her, or controlling her? They are not 

 even a new tie between Austria and Hungary, for the simple reason 

 that Hungary is not tied by them. Matters are left, then, exactly 

 as they stood after the Pragmatic Sanction; an independent and 

 sovereign Hungarian nation has entered into personal union with 

 Austria, and both countries are bound by solemn compact to assist 

 each other against foreign aggression. 1 



Though this settles the question, let us consider the common 

 institutions in their activity, and let us inquire whether they repre- 

 sent while existing some fragment, at least, of an imperial establish- 

 ment, of that Reichsgedanke which certain Austrian and German 

 authors are striving hard to discover in them; an establishment 

 including both Hungary and Austria, superior to their public powers, 

 and, let us say, provisionally controlling them to a certain extent. 

 What constitutive elements of such an establishment can be found 

 in the machinery set up by the legislation of 1867 ? in what does that 

 fancied empire really consist? 



It has no territory; there is a Hungarian territory and an 

 Austrian terrritory; Austro-Hungarian territory there is none, as has 

 been declared by a resolution of parliament, when dealing with an 

 inaccurately worded international treaty. 



It has no citizens; there are Hungarian citizens and there are 

 Austrian citizens, the rights of the two citizens being not only dis- 

 tinct, but widely different in the legal conditions of acquiring and 

 losing them. 



It has no legislative power; we have seen that even in common 

 affairs legislative acts are expressly reserved to both legislatures; 



1 The author lays no particular stress on the much-debated question whether 

 the union between Austria and Hungary is to be called a personal or a real union, 

 because he considers this as a question of terminology rather than as one of real 

 consequence. In concordance with Fr. Deak he calls it a personal union with 

 an additional covenant of mutual defense, because the principle of the union is 

 merely personal; it is, as we have seen, ipso jure dissolved, when a certain set of 

 persons (the lineage entitled to succession in both countries) becomes extinct. 

 The really important aspact of the question lies in the fundamental juridical 

 fact that the independence and sovereignty of the Kingdom of Hungary remains 

 unimpaired in that union. 



