548 INTERNATIONAL LAW 



Unhappily this is not the case. In former times the unification 

 of its domains (Hungary included) into one empire has been the 

 constant aim of the dynasty. That aim could never be obtained, 

 owing to the firmness with which our forefathers insisted on their 

 independence; but wherever they failed to keep a close watch, 

 wherever prerogative could escape their control and find an opening, 

 some fragmentary appearance of such a unified empire was called 

 into existence. This could be achieved with the greatest ease in 

 foreign affairs, the administration of which was almost entirely 

 left to the King's discretion, and to some extent in army questions, 

 where much debatable ground existed, and still exists, between 

 prerogative and the rights of parliament. Of these opportunities 

 the dynasty availed itself to the largest extent; while forced to reckon 

 with the idea of Hungarian independence. at home, it gave an entirely 

 pan-Austrian character to diplomacy and to all foreign action. That 

 lasted for two centuries at least, and fixed the impressions of foreign 

 opinion in a direction which can be modified only through impres- 

 sions of an opposite kind working on her for a considerable time. 

 Unhappily, not even now can we point to a complete concord between 

 what falls in the eyes of foreigners and what the relations between 

 Hungary and Austria legally are. A wholesale reform of those mis- 

 leading forms in foreign (and to some extent military) matters has 

 not yet been effected, though it has begun and will no doubt be 

 completed in a time the length of which depends on the degree of 

 forbearance with which the nation thinks fit to tolerate these last 

 comparatively trifling but obstinate remnants of bad times. Why 

 there should be such remnants at all, which can do no possible good 

 to any one or to any cause, but only serve to irritate and to prevent 

 the growth of perfect confidence and harmony, it is not my business 

 to inquire here, where public law and not politics is my object. 



But anxious as I am to keep to that distinction, I must still conclude 

 with an allusion at least to the political side of my question. I should 

 not like to be misunderstood. My strong insistence, my whole 

 country's strong insistence, on her national independence, does not 

 in the least imply a will or a wish to break away from Austria. 

 We mean to keep faith to the reigning dynasty ; no nation in its 

 dominions is more absolutely reliable in that respect; we mean loyally 

 to fulfill our compact of mutual defense with Austria; in a word, 

 what our forefathers agreed to as being obligations freely accepted 

 by Hungary, we mean to adhere to, as honest men should. All we 

 want is that equal faith should be kept with us, that those equally 

 binding enactments of the Pragmatic Sanction, which make Hungary 

 secure of her independence as a sovereign nation, as a kingdom, nulli 

 olio regno vel populo subditum, as the law of 1791 puts it, should be 

 fulfilled with equal loyalty. 



