HUNGARY. 



894 





of this joint committee 1ms boon (rented of in 



M \ (tee p. 77). 

 Aiming tlio bills passed hy liotli Houses of 



ward the olooe of the year wera, tha 



l-ill roirtilating the annual contribution \' Ilun- 



.. .iiiion expenses of tin- empire, 



the bill settling the portion of tin- debt of the 



empire to be borne by Hungary, the Jewish 



emancipation bill, and the treaty of commerce 



\ list ri:i and Hungary. They nil ro- 



! til.- r.'.val sanction iu December. The 

 Jewish (.'mancipation hill was passed unani- 

 mously in the Lower House, and by 64 votes 

 to 4 in the l"ppcr. 



On IK c, m ! vr L' '.Hi i the election of the delegates 

 of the Hungarian Diet to the Representative As- 

 sembly, representing the Austrian empire, took 

 place in huth Houses. The Lower House elected 

 40 and the Upper House 20 members. As the 



.-illation between Hungary and the Aus- 

 trian Government was progressing, many of 

 the prominent exiles of 1849 accepted the new 

 situation, and, when a full amnesty was pro- 

 claimed, returned to their country. Amongtnem 



(ienerals Perczel, Klapka, and Pulszky. 

 Foremost among those who did not approve of 

 i lu- agreement with Austria was Louis Kossuth. 

 In a letter addressed to one of his friends at 

 IVsih, dated February 27th, ho discusses the new 

 situation of Hungary, and says that he has 

 always been of opinion that the laws of 1846 

 would triumph in the end, but that he had not 



11 that the cabinet of Vienna would act 

 with so much celerity and prudence. Kossuth 

 speaks also of the formation of a "Danubian 



deration," and of the necessit/'of leaving 

 the word "liberty" forever inscribed on the 

 banner of Hungary. He declares that he will 

 end his life in a foreign land, and adds: " You 

 know that I cannot and ought not to accept an 

 amnesty. And besides, of what further use 

 : I be? The bitter years of exile have 

 broken my strength." By a number of subse- 

 quent letters which he wrote on the state of 

 Hungary, especially by one he wrote to decline 



i in the Lower Chamber of the Diet to 

 which he had been elected on August 1st, at 

 Waitzen, Kossuth became involved in a vio- 

 lent controversy with Deakand his party. When 

 the controversy in the papers was growing 

 more and more angry, a telegram appeared in 

 i ho Vienna Pretse, stating that Kossuth had 

 had a secret meeting at Dieppe with Count 

 Stalkelberg, the Russian ambassador, and had 



d 50,000f., while an adherent of his was 

 negotiating at Berlin. This provoked an in- 

 dignant reply by telegraph on the part of Kos- 

 suth, and a second more violent letter addressed 

 t> the editor of the Pesti Naplo, the organ of 

 the Dcak party. He asked him how he could 

 for one moment credit such news, which was 

 in flagrant contradiction with Kossuth's whole 



and. in replying to a statement in the 



paper that Kossuth had outlived himself, 



lied the editor himsolf, personally, 



and many others now either ministers or men 



of the majority, with havin;rde-.-rt. d theirflag, 

 and with recanting the idea- which they had 

 one and all uphold in lH}S-'.(!. In reply the 



\'n/i/'> brought forward the 

 :ih in 1S4'.I, authorizing two of tin 

 i-rs to tn-at with tl, i offer 



the crown of Hungary to one of the Romano!)' 

 family, while the man who had stated that. 

 Kossuth had outlived himself retorted that 

 every one is proud of the. past, but it is just 

 because it i> parsed, and circumstances have 

 altered, that thoso who will not recognize facts 

 are no more fit leaders. In the mean time the 

 Hungarian Government took up the matter, 

 and represented further address* * to K< 

 as illegal. This produced a third letter from 

 Kossuth, which is more calm. lie explains the 

 phrase that he thinks the Austrian dynasty in- 

 compatible with Hungarian independence as 

 meaning that as the Austrian dynasty would 

 never reestablish the laws of 1848 in all their 

 purity, and as through these laws alone llun- 

 irarian independence could be secured, there- 

 fore the dynasty was incompatible with Hun- 

 garian independence. He comes down on 

 the ministers, above all the Ministers of the 

 Interior, who forbade the circulation of his 

 "Waitzen letter, and attributes the cause of this 

 course to the fact that he says there Hungary 

 ought not to let herself be seduced into a war 

 with Germany, while the dynasty in Vienna is 

 only thinking to take advantage of the compro- 

 mise with Hungary to regain her position in 

 Germany. He develops his idea that the 

 best ally of Hungary is Germany united under 

 any other dynasty but that which reigns over 

 Hungary, and tries to prove that the compro- 

 mise of Austria and Hungary is an offensive 

 and not a defensive alliance. In the Diet, only 

 the extreme left, which is represented by 15 to 20 

 votes, in a total number of above 300 deputies, 

 shared the views of Kossuth ; but when the 

 Government began judicial proceedings against 

 a deputy for publishing one of Kossuth's letter-, 

 the left generally sympathized with Kossuth 

 rather than with the Government. 



One of the most difficult tasks which the 

 Hungarian Government has to solve, is the reg- 

 ulation of the relations of Hungary and of the 

 dominant race, the Magyars, to the dependencies 

 and other nationalities. A part of this non- 

 Magyar population showed a great opposition 

 to a reunion with the crown of Hungary. 

 This opposition was nowhere so strong as in 

 Croatia. The Slavic party, which was uncon- 

 ditionally opposed to a reunion, advocated an 

 alliance with Russia and a national union with 

 Servia. On the approach of the coronation of 

 the Emperor at Pesth, the organ of that party 

 declared that every Croat who should attend 

 the coronation was a traitor to his country. 

 The deputation which was chosen by the I'iot 

 to represent the country at Pesth was instruct- 

 ed to demand the maintenance of the int. 

 of Croatia and the incorporation of Dalmatia, 

 the abolition of the system which at present 



