256 



AUSTRIAN l.MIMKF. 



AUSTRIAN EMPIRE, (a.) Great dilTicu It y 

 attends an attempt at a statistical survey of the 

 resources of Austria, owing to tin: care taken by 

 the government to conceal official, and especially 

 numerical, details, the betrayal of which is looked 

 upon as a crime only second to high treason. 

 Works, it is true, exist, which profess to give 

 minute information on all subjects connected with 

 the government and the country, but they are either 

 deficient in every important particular, or, from 

 the known strictness of the censorship on this 

 head, exposed to the suspicion of wilful misrepre- 

 sentation. Still, we shall submit to our readers 

 what information we have been able to collect. 



The archduchies of Upper and Lower Austria, 

 Styria, and Tyrol, in which the inhabitants may be 

 considered as exclusively German, contain 3,757,368 

 souls, scattered over a territory of 1710 square 

 geographical miles, giving consequently a popula- 

 tion of 2197 per square mile. This scanty popu- 

 lation is owing to the mountainous nature of these 

 districts, the average quantity of arable land and 

 vineyards in these provinces giving only 1764 square 

 Vienna jock* in the geographical mile. The re- 

 mainder of the surface is mountain, forest, and 

 marsh land. The mountainous districts are, how- 

 ever, by no means wholly unproductive ; rich mines 

 of salt, iron, and copper, are scattered through 

 them, and extensive tracts are used as grazing land ; 

 but it is evident that the population is on the whole 

 not sufficiently numerous either to draw the full 

 advantage from the land, or to assert any political 

 supremacy over the other provinces. The influence 

 of the centralizing system of government and of 

 fashion, which draws the wealthy inhabitants from 

 the provinces to the capital, alone allows Austria 

 to be counted among the Germanic states of Europe. 

 About 2,500,000 Germans are calculated in the 

 other provinces of the empire as colonists, military 

 and civil functionaries, &c. 



The largest portion of the inhabitants of the 

 empire are Sclavonians, who may be classed under 

 four heads : 



Bohemians, Moravians, Silesians - . 5,802,750 



?o\<* - 4,445,000 



Hungarian Solavpnians, including Dalmatia - 4.300,000 



Illyriaiis and Carinthians .... 1,200,000 

 amounting- tog-ether to 18.747,750 souls, or a number nearly 

 equal to the total sum of all the other nations in the empire 

 taken together ; viz. 



Germans 6,200,000 



Hunirarians (Magyars) .... 4,500000 



Italians 4,650,000 



Wallachians - 1,800,000 



*>** 475,000 



Zigeuner (Gypsies) .... no,000 



Total 17,735,000 



The Sclavonian inhabitants, important as their 

 numbers and geographical situation ought to make 

 them, have ever been treated with the least consid- 

 eration by the German rulers. In the present state 

 of the empire they form two distinct and extensive 

 divisions, one to the north and the other to the 

 south of the Danube, between which the Germanic 

 territories lie inclosed in the form of a wedge. 

 The northern Sclavonic mass, including Bohemia, 

 Moravia, Silesia, Gallicia, and the north-west 

 quarter of Hungary, contains a population of about 

 12,500,000 souls, speaking three or at most four 

 dialects of a common language, none of which dif- 

 fers from the other so much as the Danish tongue 



* Equal to 101,518 French hectares. 



does from the High German. A traveller possess- 

 ing a moderate knowledge oi the Bohemian or 

 Polish, which are the only written dialects, can 

 travel with ease and make himself understood in 

 all the other Sclavonic districts. But, though 

 possessing so remarkable a bond of union, and long 

 involved in the common fate of subjection to 

 strangers, there seems never to have existed any- 

 thing like a wish to draw together for mutual sup- 

 port or defence. This may partially be explained 

 by the circumstances in which these 'different coun- 

 tries were at the time of their incorporation into 

 the Austrian empire. The Bohemians had long 

 considered themselves as forming part of the Ger- 

 man empire, and in their rivalry with the other 

 provinces seem to have been in some degree 

 ashamed to assert their nationality. Until lately 

 no Bohemian of the higher classes studied his na- 

 tive tongue, and all were in general flattered by- 

 being taken for Germans. They consequently had 

 but little sympathy with their unpretending 

 brethren, the Slowacks of Hungary, joining in the 

 supercilious but groundless contempt which the 

 Hungarians of Tartar descent express for them.')' 

 The Poles were long too much occupied with the 

 hope of restoring the independence of their country 

 within its former limits, to look beyond the Car- 

 pathians ; and, indeed, it was not until the weight 

 on all was increased, as it has been of late years, 

 and all hope of external help cut off, as it at pre- 

 sent seems to be, that any of the nations in the 

 territories we have alluded to thought of looking 

 upon their neighbours and fellow-sufferers as bro- 

 thers and supporters. 



Within the extent of country we have described, 

 every mountain, every river, every town, every 

 village, bears a Sclavonic name ; a sufficient reason 

 to make strangers, of whatever nation, despair of 

 success in converting the inhabitants into Germans 

 or Hungarians, or in making them assume any 

 foreign language or manners. Many things too 

 have contributed of late to promote a feeling of 

 nationality on an enlarged basis amongst them. 

 All these nations, isolated from the rest of Europe 

 by the Austrian policy, were thrown more upon 

 their own internal resources, which they have con- 

 siderably improved. A natural consequence has 

 been a relative improvement in the state of these 

 different provinces, exactly proportioned to their 

 respective means. In Bohemia, where the average 

 of the population gives 4133 inhabitants to a square 

 geographical mile, and where the soil is much less 

 productive than in Moravia and Gallicia, manufac- 

 tures have been introduced with considerable suc- 

 cess. An interesting work on this subject shows 

 that Bohemia possesses seventy-five glass-houses, 

 of which twenty produce plate-glass; 126 paper- 

 mills ; and a great number of iron, copper, and lead 

 works. The quantity of lead produced by the 

 mines in 1834 was, 1321 tons; of arsenic, 61 tons; 

 of iron there was produced, rough' 11, 027 ton?, ca> 

 9738 tons. The manufacture of percussion 

 for guns and cannon is carried on extensively, 

 65,000,000 caps being produced annually. In the 

 year 1835, 14,000 tons of beet-root were manufac- 

 tured into 7,500 tons of sugar; 120,000 cwt. of 

 flax into linen; 30,000 spinners produced 85,000 

 cwt. of cotton yarn; and 1,400,000 pieces, of from 

 twenty to thirty-five yards, were printed; 80,000 







t The Hnngarian proverb saj-s, 

 Slowack is no man.) 



'Tot nem ember." (Tha 



