AUSTRIA-HUNGARY. 



47 



question between capital and labor, for it 

 touches the interests and the prejudices of the 

 land-owners. The class of cottagers who are 

 half peasants and half laborers, and who have 

 sunk into abject proletarianism, is increasing. 

 When their useless parcels of ground are ever 

 given up, they do not pass into the hands of 

 the farming class, which is too poor to acquire 

 them, but are added to the estates of great 

 laud-owners or the country-seats of city resi- 

 dents. The effect of overgrown estates, a 

 numerous dependent proletariat, and taxes 

 which bear heavily upon the small farmers, 

 who are already handicapped by an uncertain 

 climate and a dearth of credit facilities, is to 

 perpetuate negligent methods and a stationary 

 routine which leave Austria ill prepared to 

 stand the stress of American competition. 



School Laws. An amendment of the school 

 law was carried in the Reichsrath, which 

 makes some alterations in the system of ele- 

 mentary instruction of a reactionary character, 

 to meet the views of the clerical and feudal- 

 istic elements in the majority of the House of 

 Deputies. The number of days of obligatory 

 attendance can be greatly reduced at the re- 

 quest of a commune. Religious instruction is 

 made a more important branch, and is to be 

 imparted in the faith of the majority of a com- 

 mune. The Poles, who, because they hold the 

 balance of power in the Reichsrath, can usually 

 impose their will on the Government, secured 

 the exemption of Galicia from the provisions 

 of the new school ordinance. 



Hungary. The kingdom of Hungary possess- 

 es an ancient constitution, consisting of funda- 

 mental statutes enacted at various dates since 

 the foundation of the kingdom in the ninth 

 century. The Constitution was abrogated after 

 the rebellion of 1848, restored in 1860, and ex- 

 tended to its ancient limits in 1867, when the 

 national independence of Hungary was finally 

 re-established. The Hungarian Diet consists of 

 an upper chamber, called the House of Mag- 

 nates, and a lower, called the House of Repre- 

 sentatives. The House of Magnates was com- 

 posed in 1882 of 2 royal princes, 50 archbish- 

 ops and bishops of the Roman Catholic and 

 Greek Churches, 672 peers and dignitaries of 

 Hungary and Transylvania, 5 regalists from 

 Transylvania, and 2 deputies of Croatia in all, 

 731 members. The House of Representatives, 

 elected directly by all citizens who pay eight 

 florins in direct taxes, consisted in 1882 of 334 

 deputies from Hungarian districts and towns, 

 75 from Transylvania, 34 delegates from Croa- 

 tia, and 1 from Fiume. 



The executive power is exercised by a respon- 

 sible ministry, composed as follows : President 

 of the Council, Koloman Tisza de Boros-Yeno, 

 who has been chief minister since Feb. 25, 

 1877 ; Minister of Finance, Count Gyula Sza- 

 pary, appointed Dec. 6, 1878; Minister of Na- 

 tional Defense, Count Gedeon Raday, appointed 

 Oct. 10, 1882; Minister ad latus to the King, 

 Baron Bela d'Orczy, appointed Aug. 12, 1879 ; 



Minister of the Interior, Koloman Tisza ; Min- 

 ister of Education and Public Worship, Dr. 

 August de Trefort, appointed Feb. 26, 1877 ; 

 Minister of Justice, Dr. Theodor Pauler, ap- 

 pointed Dec. 6, 1 878 ; Minister of Public Works 

 and Communications, Baron de Kemeny, ap- 

 pointed Oct. 14, 1882; Minister of Agriculture, 

 Industry, and Commerce, Count Szechenyi, ap- 

 pointed Oct. 14, 1882; Minister for Croatia 

 and Slavonia, Count de Bedekovich, appointed 

 Feb. 26, 1877. 



Political Chronicle One of the first acts of 

 the Hungarian Parliament, which met in Octo- 

 ber, 1882, was to remove from the committee 

 of education the elements that opposed making 

 the Magyar tongue the national language of 

 instruction. The chief contest was over the 

 classical and scientific intermediate schools of 

 Transylvania, and the educational supervision 

 of the Evangelical Church in that province. 

 The bill, elaborated in the committee, and car- 

 ried March 17th by a large majority, prepares 

 the way for the substitution of Hungarian for 

 German in these schools, and Roumanian for 

 the intermediate schools in which Roumanian 

 is the language of instruction. It requires all 

 candidates for teachers' positions in the inter- 

 mediate schools of the monarchy to submit to 

 a government examination conducted in the 

 Magyar tongue. Three of the four years of 

 preparatory study may be passed in foreign 

 universities, but the final examination must be 

 passed in a Hungarian university, and requires 

 a literary training in the national language. 



The Ritual Murder Case. A criminal trial which 

 was held in June shows that the antipathy 

 against the Jews in eastern Europe, though 

 springing from economical motives, contains 

 an element of superstitious hatred known else- 

 where only from the legends of the middle 

 ages. In the village of Tisza-Eszlar, a Chris- 

 tian girl, named Esther Solymossy, suddenly 

 disappeared in the spring of 1882. The rumor 

 was started that the Hebrews of the village 

 had murdered her to obtain the blood of a 

 Christian virgin, which, according to the an- 

 cient fable, they mix in their Passover cakes. 

 A malicious petty magistrate, Bary, who had 

 charge of the preliminary examination, influ- 

 enced or suborned a Jewish boy, named Mo- 

 ritz Scharf, to accuse Salomon Schwartz, and 

 some other Jewish butchers, of cutting her 

 throat, and a number of others, among them 

 his own father, of being witnesses and accom- 

 plices in the crime. The girl had been sent to a 

 neighboring village to purchase dye. The last 

 that was seen of her was in the vicinity of the 

 synagogue on her return. The Jews were in 

 the temple that morning trying candidates for 

 the office of butcher to the 'congregation. Mo- 

 ritz Scharf testified that he saw the murder 

 through thekey-hole of the entrance-door. Two 

 women declared that they heard cries and sobs. 

 On this evidence the nccused were brought to 

 trial. The body of a drowned girl was found 

 in the river Theiss three months after Esther 



