AUSTEIA. 



61 



shall none the less persevere in the way we have be- 

 gun. While we shall continue to maintain intact the 

 rights of the State and respect for the laws, we shall 

 allow the Church to enjoy in peace the liberties which 

 our laws secure to her'; and we shall endeavor to ob- 

 serve, in the mutual relations between Church and 

 State, a spirit of conciliation and equity, which I 

 hope will be reciprocal. Your excellency will be 

 pleased to make yourself the faithful organ of these 

 sentiments, and m doing so you will only conform 

 to the views of the Emperor, our august master. 



Tho Czechs, who, as may be seen from the 

 above table of nationalities, constitute a major- 

 ity of the total population of Bohemia and 

 Moravia, kept up an active agitation for consoli- 

 dating their nationality, and for securing the 

 control of these two provinces. Most of the 

 leaders of the national party even went so far 

 as to demand a repeal of the union of Bohemia 

 and Moravia with the cis-Leithan part of the 

 empire, and the establishment of an equal de- 

 gree of independence for the lands of the Bohe- 

 mian crown as that which has been conceded 

 to Hungary. The Czech deputies to ihe Iteichs- 

 rath declined to take any part in its delibera- 

 tions. A number of excited mass-meetings 

 stirred up the national spirit. At an open-air 

 meeting, held at the foot of the Eip Mountain, 

 at which, according to the Czech journals, there 

 were 20,000 people present, the wishes of the 

 nation were thus expressed : 



" We wish to be as prosperous and free in our own 

 country as our fathers have been ; we wish the once free 

 Czecn people to be again master of its destinies, and 

 alone to decide on all its affairs together with its 

 crowned King. We wish no laws to be valid in Bohe- 

 mia but such as are prepared by the Bohemian Diet 

 and sanctioned by the crowned Bohemian King, that 

 no taxes be raised or men levied for the army except 

 by the constitutional direction of the Bohemian King 

 and Diet." 



In order to give effect to these views, it was 

 agreed that steps should be taken for the dis- 

 solution, as early as possible, of the present 

 Bohemian Diet, and the election of another on 

 the principle of universal suffrage, which should 

 be directed to prepare a constitution for Bohe- 

 mia similar to that enjoyed by Hungary; the 

 establishment of a great political society "on a 

 national and democratic basis; ''the publica- 

 tion of a journal representing democratic prin- 

 ciples, and the election of a committee of twen- 

 ty-five trustworthy persons for the purpose of 

 making the necessary preparations for these 

 measures. 



At Prague and other places serious riots took 

 place, at which excesses were committed 

 against Germ an institutions. The Government, 

 accordingly, deemed it necessary (for the first 

 time since its appointment) to suspend the 

 usual securities for the liberties of the individ- 

 ual citizens in Prague and its vicinity, namely 

 Surichow and Karolinenthal. 



The provincial Diets of cis-Leithania were all 

 opened on August 22d. Important action was 

 taken by some of them. The Lower Austrian 

 Diet adopted a petition to the Reichsrath pray- 

 ing it to abolish the present system of indirect 

 elections to the Keichsrath, and to introduce 



(with the consent of the respective Diets) a 

 system of direct elections. The Diet declares 

 its wish to resign its present electoral rights in 

 favor of its constituents. As it is known that 

 several of the Diets, especially the Galician one, 

 are as strongly in favor of indirect elections as 

 the Lower Austrian is in favor of direct ones, 

 it is proposed to make the change a permissive 

 one, so that each province may decide for it- 

 self how it will conduct its elections to the 

 Eeichsrath. 



The Galician Diet before it adjourned passed 

 a bill abolishing the disabilities of the Jews in 

 municipal and communal affairs. These dis- 

 abilities consisted mainly in this that the law, 

 as it was, required that in every commune and 

 municipality at least two-thirds of the town 

 fathers should be Christians. As, in many Gali- 

 cian townships, the Jewish population is a 

 majority of the whole number of inhabitants, 

 this provision was complained of by the Jews 

 as a grievance. The parties opposed to this 

 measure were the Catholic party, the peasant 

 members, and the Ruthenian faction. 



The Tyrolese Diet refused to amend its school 

 legislation in such a manner as to bring it into 

 harmony with the provisions of the school law, 

 passed by the Keichsrath at its last session. 

 This is the only Diet in the purely German 

 provinces where the liberal and ministerial 

 party are in a minority, and where the Conser- 

 vative or Catholic party is in a majority. The 

 majority of this Diet passed an amended law, 

 according to which the bishops wiH have un- 

 divided control over the common schools of 

 Tyrol. 



In January the Emperor appointed the Arch- 

 duke Albrecht commander of the Austrian 

 military forces, and imposed upon him the duty 

 of inspecting the army, of organizing it in a 

 manner fit to take the field, and of submitting 

 the requisite proposals on the subject to .the 

 Ministry of War. 



According to a report of M. Mahy, director 

 of the Austrian telegraphs, the extent of tele- 

 graphs in the cis-Leithan countries is 1,913 Ger- 

 man miles, with 4,61V miles of wire, besides 

 1,253 miles of lines used for railway signals. 

 In the course of 1867 seventeen new offices and 

 forty-six auxiliary stations were opened, and, 

 in all, 858 were at work at the end of the year. 

 Those in Hungary are 135 in number. In June, 

 1867, a treaty was concluded with Turkey, and 

 in September five others with Switzerland, in 

 virtue of which a great portion of th English 

 correspondence with India has been diverted 

 to the Austrian lines. In the year 1867, 2,217,- 

 929 dispatches were sent off from the cis-Lei- 

 than offices, producing a receipt of 1,512,922 

 florins. The whole revenue of the telegraphs 

 for that year was 2,330,000 florins, and the ex- 

 pense 2,200,000. 



A new commercial treaty was concluded 

 with the Zollverein. Each party renounces all 

 power of imposing any prohibition on the ex- 

 port, import, or transit of goods between their 



