532 INTERNATIONAL LAW 



absence of feudalism. No doubt, infiltrations of feudalism, as 

 prevalent throughout Europe, are to be found in our old institutions, 

 but as an accidental intermixture only, not as their essence and 

 chief feature. That blending of public prerogative with rights be- 

 longing to the sphere of private law, which is the essence of feudal- 

 ism, never prevailed in the organization of our public powers, never 

 broke their action on the nation as a whole. To this early prevalence 

 of public law in the government of the country do we owe not only 

 a superior efficiency, not detrimental to liberty, of our public 

 powers, but in connection with it an early growth of conscious 

 national unity, of patriotism on broad lines, at a time when tribal 

 feeling and feudal allegiance subdivided all European nations into 

 small units which paralyzed each other, and into a corresponding 

 fractional mentality adverse to the very idea of state and to national 

 feeling. But for this happy peculiarity of her old institutions 

 Hungary could never have been able to hold her own against schem- 

 ing neighbors of tenfold her material power. 



In 1686 the Hungarian Crown became hereditary; henceforth, 

 she missed the guarantee contained in free election; but in the 

 mean time some substitute for it had grown up in the institution of 

 coronation and the legislative acts by which that august ceremony 

 is attended. Old laws require the heir to the throne to get himself 

 crowned within six months of his accession and they suspend some 

 important part of his prerogative (we name only his participation 

 in legislative power) till he has done so. But crowned he can be 

 only with the assent, or, to state it more correctly still, through 

 the agency of the national representation, which puts thereon such 

 conditions as it thinks necessary. Every coronation, then, is founded 

 on a new agreement between king and nation, embodied in a docu- 

 ment called " inaugural diploma " and accompanied by a solemn 

 oath of the King to observe the terms of that document and the 

 general enactments of the constitution. By these proceedings the 

 fundamental principle of our institutions, the principle that 

 every power, the prerogative of our Kings included, has its source in 

 the nation, and comes to those in whom it is vested through dele- 

 gation from the nation, is constantly reasserted and held in evidence; 

 it is the nation which crowns the King, under the sanction of God's 

 most holy Majesty; the prerogative of the King, his very title to 

 reign, is blended into one with popular rights and their guarantees; 

 both together, prerogative and people's right, are designated in their 

 joint force and sacredness by the name of " the holy Hungarian 

 Crown," of which every Hungarian citizen is a member, this mem- 

 bership not being a mere metaphor, but implying the great princi- 

 ple that there is no difference as to inviolability and sacredness 

 between the King's exalted prerogative and the poorest subject's 



