And Bridgeton's rill and pathway lone,
In years to come, when thon, the Wooed,
And thy fond Worshipper are gone,
Each suppliant prayer, each ardent tone,
Each vow the heart could once supply,
Whose every pulse was there thine own,
In many an evening breeze will sigh.
FOOTNOTE:
[29] It was the fanciful opinion of Hume that the purer Divinities of
pagan worship, and the system of the Homeric Olympus, were so
lastingly beautiful, that somewhere or other they must, to this hour,
continue to exist.
AUSTRIA AND HUNGARY.
We have been so much accustomed to regard the Austrian empire as one
German nation, that we sometimes forget of how many separate kingdoms
and principalities it consists, and of how many different and
disunited races its population is composed. It may not, therefore, be
unnecessary to recall attention to the fact that the Austrian
dominions of the last three hundred years--the Austrian empire of our
times--consists of three kingdoms and many minor principalities,
inhabited by five distinct races, whose native tongues are
unintelligible to each other, and who have no common language in which
they can communicate; who are divided by religious differences; who
preserve their distinctive characteristics, customs, and feelings;
whose sentiments are mutually unfriendly, and who are, to this day,
unmixed in blood. The Germans, the Italians, the Majjars or
Hungarians, the Sclaves, and the Wallacks, are distinct and alien
races--without community of origin, of language, of religion, or of
sentiments. Except the memory of triumphs and disasters common to them
all, their allegiance to one sovereign is now, as it was three
centuries ago, the only bond that unites them. Yet, in all the
vicissitudes of fortune--some of them disastrous--which this empire
has survived, these nations and races have held together. The
inference is inevitable--whatever may have been its defects, that form
of government could not have been altogether unfit for its purposes,
which so many different kingdoms and races united to support and
maintain.
It would be a mistake, however, to assume that these various states
were under one form of government. There were almost as many forms of
government as there were principalities; but they were all
monarchical, and one sovereign happened to become the monarch of the
whole. The house of Hapsburg, in which the imperial crown of Germany,
the regal crowns of Hungary, Bohemia, and Lombardy, and the ducal
crowns of Austria, Styria, the Tyrol, and nearly a dozen other
principalities, became hereditary, acquired their possessions, not by
conquest, but by election, succession, or other legitimate titles[30]
recognised by the people. The descendants of Rodolph thus became the
sovereigns of many separate states, each of which retained, as a
matter of right, its own constitution. The sovereign, his chief
advisers, and the principal officers of state at his court, were
usually Germans by birth, or by education and predilection; but the
constitution of each state--the internal administration, and those
parts of the machinery of government with which the people came more
immediately into contact--were their own. In some we find the monarchy
elective, as in Hungary, Bohemia, and Styria; in all we find diets of
representatives or delegates, chosen by certain classes of the people,
without whose concurrence taxes could not be imposed, troops levied,
or legislative measures enacted; and we find municipal institutions
founded on a broad basis of representation. In none of them was the
form of government originally despotic.
To the unquestionable titles by which they acquired their
crowns--titles by which the pride of nation or of race was not
wounded--and to the more or less perfect preservation, in each state,
of its national institutions and privileges--to the enjoyment by each
people of their laws, their language, customs, and prejudices--the
princes of the house of Hapsburg owed the allegiance of subjects who
had little else in common. There, as elsewhere in continental Europe,
the sovereign long continued to encroach upon the rights of his
subjects, and at length usurped an authority not recognised by the
laws of his different possessions, or consistent with the conditions
on which he had received their crowns. These usurpations were
frequently resisted, and not unfrequently by force of arms. Belgium
asserted her independence, and was permanently separated from Austria.
But, in such contests, the sovereign of many separate states had
obvious advantages. His subjects, divided by differences of race,
language, religion, and sentiment, were incapable of combining against
him; and however solicitous each people might be to preserve their own
liberties and privileges, they were not prepared to resist
encroachments on those of a neighbouring people, for whom they had no
friendly feeling. The Austrians and Italians were ready to assert the
emperor's authority in Hungary or Bohemia, the Hungarians and
Bohemians to put down resistance in Lombardy. Even in the same kingdom
the races were not united. In Hungary, the Sclave was sometimes ready
to aid the emperor against the Majjar, the German against the Sclave.
The disunion which was a source of weakness to the empire was a source
of strength to the emperor.
Partly by compulsory changes, effected according to constitutional
forms, partly by undisguised usurpations, in which these forms were
disregarded, the emperors were thus enabled to extend the prerogative
of the crown, to abridge the liberties of their subjects in each of
their possessions, and, in some of them, to subvert the national
institutions.
In the Hereditary States of Austria, the power of the emperor has long
been absolute. The strength of Bohemia was broken, and her spirit
subdued, by the confiscations and proscriptions that followed upon the
defeat of the Protestants, near Prague, in the religious wars of
Frederick II.; and for many years her diet has been subservient.
Lombardy, the prize of contending armies--German, Spanish, and
French--passing from hand to hand, has been regarded as a conquered
country; and, with the forms of a popular representation, has been
governed as an Austrian province. Hungary alone has preserved her
independence and her constitution. But these usurpations were not
always injurious to the great body of the people; on the contrary,
they were often beneficial. In most of these states, a great part of
the population was subject to a dominant class, or nobles, who alone
had a share in the government, or possessed constitutional rights, and
who exercised an arbitrary jurisdiction over the peasants. The crown,
jealous of the power of the aristocracy, afforded the peasants some
protection against the oppressions of their immediate superiors. A
large body of the people in each state, therefore, saw with
satisfaction, or without resentment, the increasing power of the
crown, the abridgment of rights and privileges which armed their
masters with the power to oppress them, and the subversion of a
constitution from which they derived no advantage. If the usurpations
of the crown threatened to alienate the nobles, they promised to
conciliate the humbler classes.
On the other hand, every noble was a soldier. The wars in which the
emperor was engaged, while they forced him occasionally to cultivate
the good-will of the aristocracy, on which he was chiefly dependent
for his military resources, fostered military habits of submission,
and feelings of feudal allegiance to the sovereign. Military service
was the road to distinction--military glory the ruling passion. The
crown was the fountain of honour, to which all who sought it repaired.
A splendid court had its usual attractions; and the nobles of the
different races and nations, rivals for the favour of the prince,
sought to outdo each other in proofs of devotion to his person and
service. Thus it was, that, notwithstanding the usurpations of the
emperor, and the resistance they excited, his foreign enemies
generally found all classes of his subjects united to defend the
dignity of his crown, and the integrity of his dominions.
Still there was nothing to bind together the various parts of this
curious fabric, except the accident of allegiance to one sovereign.
This was but a precarious bond of union; and the imperial government
has, therefore, been unremitting in its efforts to amalgamate the
different parts into one whole. The Germans were but a small minority
of the emperor's subjects, but the imperial government, the growth of
their soil, reflected their mind; and it does not appear to have
entered the Austrian mind to conceive that a more intimate union could
be accomplished in any other way than by extending the institutions of
the Hereditary States to all parts of the empire, and thus ultimately
converting the Italians, the Majjars, and the Sclaves, into Austrian
Germans.
This policy has been eminently unsuccessful in Hungary, where it has
frequently been resisted by force of arms; but its failure is not to
be attributed solely to the freedom of the institutions of that
country, or to the love of independence, and the feelings of
nationality which have been conspicuous in her history. The imperial
government, while it resisted the usurpations of the see of Rome in
secular matters, asserted its spiritual supremacy with unscrupulous
zeal. Every one is acquainted with the history of the Reformation in
Bohemia--its early manifestations, its progress, its unsuccessful
contests, and its suppression by military force, by confiscations and
proscriptions, extending to half the property and the proprietors in
that kingdom; but perhaps it is not so generally known, or remembered,
that the Majjars early embraced the Reformed doctrines of the school
of Calvin, which, even now, when more than half their numbers have
become Roman Catholics, is known in Hungary as "the Majjar faith." The
history of religious persecution, everywhere a chronicle of misery and
crime, has few pages so revolting as that which tells of the
persecutions of the Protestants of Hungary, under her Roman Catholic
kings of the house of Austria. It was in the name of persecuted
Protestantism that resistance to Austrian autocracy was organised; it
was not less in defence of their religion than of their liberties that
the nation took up arms. Yet there was a time when the Majjars, at
least as tenacious of their nationality as any other people in the
empire, might perhaps have been Germanised--had certainly made
considerable advances towards a more intimate union with Austria.
Maria Theresa, assailed without provocation by Prussia--in violation
of justice and of the faith of treaties, by France, Bavaria, Saxony,
Sardinia, and Spain, and aided only by England and the United
Provinces--was in imminent danger of losing the greater part of her
dominions. Guided by the instinct of a woman's heart, and yielding to
its impulse, she set at naught the remonstrances of her Austrian
counsellors, and relied on the loyalty of the Hungarians. Proceeding
to Presburg, she appeared at the meeting of the diet, told the
assembled nobles the difficulties and dangers by which she was
surrounded, and threw herself, her child, and her cause, upon their
generosity. At that appeal every sabre leapt from its scabbard, and
the shout, "Moriamur pro rege nostro, Maria Theresâ!" called all
Hungary to arms. The tide of invasion was rolled back beyond the Alps
and the Rhine, and the empire was saved.
"On avait vu," says Montesquieu, "la maison d'Autriche
travailler sans reláche à opprimer la noblesse Hongroise;
elle ignorait de quel prix elle lui serait un jour. Elle
cherchait chez ces peuples de l'argent, qui n'y était pas;
elle ne voyait pas les hommes, qui y étaient. Lorsque tant de
princes partagaient entre eux ces états, toutes les pièces de
la monarchie, immobiles et sans action, tombaient, pour ainsi
dire, les unes sur les autres. Il n'y avait de vie que dans
cette noblesse, qui s'indigna, oublia tout pour combattre, et
cru qu'il était de sa gloire de périr et de pardonner."
The nobles of Hungary had fallen by thousands; many families had been
ruined; all had been impoverished by a war of seven years, which they
had prosecuted at their private charge; but their queen had not
forgotten how much she owed them. She treated them with a kindness
more gratifying than the highest distinction; acquired their
confidence by confiding in them; taught them to speak the language of
her court; made their residence in her capital agreeable to them;
promoted alliances between the noble families of Hungary and Austria;
obtained from their devotion concessions which her predecessors had
failed to extort by force; and prepared the way for a more intimate
union between two nations which had hitherto regarded each other with
aversion.
M. A. de Gerando has discovered, in the portrait-galleries of the
Hungarian magnates, amusing traces of some of the means by which the
clever empress-queen extended Austrian influence and authority into
Hungary.
"Il est curieux," (he says,) "de voir, dans les châteaux de
Hongrie, les galeries de portraits de famille. Aussi haut que
l'on remonte, ce ne sont d'abord que de graves figures
orientales. Les hommes out la mine heroïque, comme on se
représente ces hardis cavaliers, qui invariablement
finissaient par se faire tuer dans quelque action contre les
Turcs; les femmes sont austères et tristes ainsi qu'elles
devaient l'être en effet. A partir de Marie-Therèse, tout
change et la physionomie et l'expression des personnages. On
voit bien que ceux-là ont paru à la cour de Vienne, et y ont
appris les belles manières. Le contraste est frappant dans le
portrait du magnat qui le premier épousa une Allemande. Le
Hongrois, seul, occupe un coin de la toile. Il est debout,
digne, la main gauche sur la poignée de son sabre recourbée;
la droite tient une masse d'armes. De formidables éperons
sont cloués à ses bottines jaunes. Il porte un long dolman
galonné, et une culotte de hussard brodée d'or. Sur son
épaule est attachée une riche pelisse, ou une peau de tigre.
Sa moustache noire pend à la turque, et de grands cheveux
tombent en boucles sur son cou. Il y a du barbare dans cet
homme-là. Sa femme, assise, en robe de cour, est au milieu du
tableau. Elle règne et elle domine. Près de son fauteuil se
tiennent les enfants, qui ont déjà les yeux bleus et les
lèvres Autrichiennes. Les enfants sont à elle, à elle seule.
Ils sont poudrés comme elle, lui ressemblent, l'entourent, et
lui parlent. Ils parlent l'Allemand, bien entendu."--(Pp.
17-18.)
The son and successor of Maria Theresa, Joseph II., attempted, in his
summary way, by arbitrary edicts promising liberty and equality, to
subvert the constitution of every country he governed, and to extend
to them all one uniform despotic system, founded on that of Austria.
To him Hungary is indebted for the first gleam of religious
toleration; but his hasty and despotic attempts to suppress national
distinctions, national institutions and languages, provoked a fierce
and armed resistance in Hungary, and in other portions of his
dominions, and more than revived all the old aversion to Austria. His
more prudent successor made concessions to the spirit of independence,
and the love of national institutions, which Joseph had so deeply
wounded. Leopold regained the Hungarians; but Belgium, already
alienated in spirit, never again gave her heart to the emperor; and he
never lost sight of the uniformity of system that Maria Theresa had
done so much to promote, and which Joseph, in his haste to accomplish
it, had for the moment made unattainable. From the days of Ferdinand
I. until now, the attempt to assimilate the forms and system of
government, in every part of their possessions, to the more arbitrary
Austrian model, has been steadily pursued throughout the reigns of all
the princes of the house of Hapsburg. These persevering efforts to
extend the power of the crown by subverting national institutions, and
thus to obliterate so many separate nationalities, have aroused for
their defence a spirit that promises to perpetuate them.
Feelings of community of race and language, which had slumbered for
many generations, have been revived with singular intensity. Italy for
the Italians--Germany for the Germans--a new Sclavonic empire for the
western Sclaves--the union of all the Sclave nations under the empire
of the Czar--are cries which have had power to shake thrones, and may
hereafter dismember empires.
The separation between the different members of the Austrian empire,
which the havoc of war could not effect in three centuries, a few
years of peace and prosperity have threatened to accomplish. The
energies that were so long concentrated on war, have now, for more
than thirty years, been directed to the development of intellectual
and material resources. The ambition that sought its gratification in
the field, now seeks to acquire influence in the administration, and
power to sway the opinions of men. The love of national independence,
that repelled foreign aggression, has become a longing for personal
liberty, that refuses to submit to arbitrary power. The road to
distinction no longer leads to the court, but to the popular assembly;
for the rewards conferred by the voice of the people have become more
precious than any honours the sovereign can bestow. The duty of
allegiance to the crown has become a question of reciprocal
obligations, and has ceased to rest upon divine right. The only bond
that held the Austrian empire together has thus been loosened, and the
parts are in danger of falling asunder.
Lombardy, which was united to the German empire nine hundred years
ago, renounced its allegiance, and refused to be Austrian. Bohemia, a
part of the old German empire, inhabited chiefly by a Sclavonic race,
has been dreaming of Pansclavism. Carried away by poetical rhapsodies,
poured forth in profusion by a Lutheran preacher at Pesth, and
calculated, if not designed, to promote foreign influence and
ascendency, she has awoke from her dreams to find herself engaged in a
sanguinary conflict, which was terminated by the bombardment and
submission of her capital. Vienna, after having twice forced her
emperor to fly from his capital, has been taken by storm, and is held
in subjection by a garrison, whose stragglers are nightly thinned by
assassins. Hungary, (to which we propose chiefly to direct our
attention,) whose blood has been shed like water in defence of the
house of Hapsburg--whose chivalry has more than once saved the
empire--whom Napoleon, at the head of a victorious army in Vienna, was
unable to scare, or to seduce from her allegiance to her fugitive
king--whose population is more sincerely attached to monarchy than
perhaps any other people in Europe, except ourselves, is in arms
against the emperor of Austria. All the fierce tribes by which the
Majjars are encircled have been let loose upon them, and, in the name
of the emperor, the atrocities of Gallicia, which chilled Europe with
horror, have been renewed in Pannonia. The army of the Emperor of
Austria has invaded the territories of the King of Hungary, occupies
the capital, ravages the towns and villages, expels and denounces the
constituted authorities of the kingdom, abrogates the laws, and boasts
of its victories over his faithful subjects, as if they had been
anarchists who sought to overturn his throne.
The people of this country have long entertained towards Austria
feelings of kindness and respect. We may smile at her proverbial
slowness; we may marvel at the desperate efforts she has made to stand
still, while every one else was pressing forward; the curiously
graduated system of education, by which she metes out to each class the
modicum of knowledge which all must accept, and none may exceed--her
protective custom-houses, which destroy her commerce--her quarantines
against political contagion, which they cannot exclude--her system of
passports, with all its complications and vexations, and the tedious
formalities of her tardy functionaries,--may sometimes be subjects of
ridicule. But, though the young may have looked with scorn, the more
thoughtful amongst us have looked with complacency on the social repose
and general comfort--on the absence of continual jostling and
struggling in all the roads of life--produced by a system, unsuited to
our national tastes and tempers, no doubt, but which, till a few months
ago, appeared to be in perfect harmony with the character of the
Austrian German. We respect her courage, her constancy in adversity. We
admire the sturdy obstinacy with which she has so often stood up to
fight another round, and has finally triumphed after she appeared to be
beaten. We call to mind the services she rendered to Christian
civilisation in times past. We remember that her interests have
generally concurred with our own--have rarely been opposed to them. We
cannot forget the long and arduous struggles, in which England and
Austria have stood side by side, in defence of the liberties of
nations, or the glorious achievements by which those liberties were
preserved. It is because we would retain unimpaired the feelings which
these recollections inspire, because we consider the power and the
character of Austria essential to the welfare of Europe, that we look
with alarm on the course she has pursued towards Hungary.
The time has not yet come when the whole course of the events
connected with this unnatural contest can be accurately known. The
silence maintained and imposed by Austria may have withheld, or
suppressed, explanations that would justify or palliate much of what
wears a worse than doubtful aspect. But the authentic, information now
accessible to the public cannot fail to cause deep anxiety to all who
care for the reputation of the imperial government--to all who desire
to see monarchy come pure out of the furnace in which it is now being
tried. The desire to enforce its hereditary policy of a uniform
patriarchal system would not justify, in the eyes of Englishmen, an
alliance with anarchy to put down constitutional monarchy in Hungary,
or an attempt to cover, with the blood and dust of civil war, the
departure of the imperial government from solemn engagements entered
into by the emperor.
The nature of the relations by which Hungary is connected with
Austria--the origin and progress of their present quarrel, and the
objects for which the Hungarians are contending--appear to have been
very generally misunderstood, not in this country only, but in a great
part of Europe. Men whom we might expect to find better informed, seem
to imagine that Hungary is an Austrian province in rebellion against
the emperor, and that the origin and tendency of the movement was
republican. The reverse of all this is true. Hungary is not, and never
was, a province of Austria; but has been and is, both _de jure_ and
_de facto_, an independent kingdom. The Emperor of Austria is also
King of Hungary, but, as Emperor of Austria, has neither sovereign
right nor jurisdiction in Hungary. The Hungarians assert, and
apparently with truth, that they took up arms to repel unprovoked
aggression, and to defend their constitutional monarchy as by law
established; that their objects are therefore purely conservative, and
their principles monarchical; and that it is false and calumnious to
accuse them of having contemplated or desired to found a republic--a
form of government foreign to their sentiments, and incompatible with
their social condition.