For a moment after her Italian misfortunes Austria assumed a kindly
mien towards her Slavs. In the manifesto of July 15, 1859, which made
public the treaty of peace, the Emperor promised "immediate
modifications in the laws and in the administration." Bach, the German
reactionary, was succeeded by Goluchowski, and in April 1861 Ivan
Mazurani['c] became the Croat Chancellor at Vienna, with educational,
legal and religious affairs included in the sphere of his office. The
incorporation with Dalmatia was not granted then, but was promised. A
letter was, however, sent to Mamula, the governor of Dalmatia,
ordering him to create a majority hostile to the Emperor's letter of
December 5, 1860, in which he had invited the two provinces to send
their delegate to a conference at which the union would be discussed.
The shrill protests of the German party were successful; for the next
few years the Slavs were being pushed into their pit and then helped
half-way out again. Schmerling, the German, would evolve an electoral
system by which the Parliament must always have a German majority;
Francis Deak, the Hungarian, would make excellent proposals that too
often suffered shipwreck through no fault of his, he would manage to
pass liberal legislation which remained in after years upon the
statute book and was exhibited by Magyars to appreciative foreigners.
The general tendency of those years after the Italian disaster was
unfavourable to the Slav. In southern Hungary the Serbian duchy was
dissolved, despite their protests, after an existence of eleven years.
But as Francis Joseph was no longer able to bestow caresses on the
recreant Italians he transferred his love to the Dalmatian
autonomists, who now began to call themselves the Italian party. It
is probable that he smiled on these 21/2 per cent. of the province,
not only because of his family traditions, his leaning towards Italian
art and the hope against hope that he would once more some day rule in
Italy, where he had his numerous well-wishers among the clergy and the
rural population--it is possible that he was gracious to the
autonomist Dalmatian party because they were a brake upon the national
sentiments. Until 1866 the whole administration was conducted in the
language of the 21/2 per cent. In that year the Ministers of Justice
and of the Interior decided to ask officials who thenceforward entered
the Dalmatian service to have some sort of knowledge of the Illyrian
language. In 1869 these Ministers permitted the Dalmatian communities
to correspond in their own language with the tribunals and the
administrative authorities; while in 1887 the administrative
authorities and the tribunals were ordered to reply in Serbo-Croat to
the local bodies who used that language. The autonomist party may not
appeal to us and apparently it did not appeal to Nicolo Tommaseo. From
wherever he is he must be looking on with interest at a controversy
between two Italian writers who both published books on Dalmatia in
1915 and who bear witness--Mr. Cippico to the truth that Tommaseo was
an autonomist and Mr. Prezzolini to the truth that he was not. "The
theory of Tommaseo," says Mr. Cippico, "desires an autonomous Dalmatia
between the mountains and the sea." "Go to!" says Mr. Prezzolini.
"Have the kindness to read what the man writes. Here is a passage:
'Whatever one may say about it, it will not be Croatia, a poor
country, lacking in civilization, _but the opulent Slav provinces
subject to Turkey_ and morally less in subjection than Croatia, which,
when they and Dalmatia are united, will make her wealthy and the
mother of civilization and wealth. Destiny therefore lays it down that
Dalmatia in the days to come shall be the friend and not the subject
of Italy.' Tommaseo showed in 1848 what he thought of such a
subjection. 'In 1848,' he writes, 'I could have raised the whole of
Dalmatia with the help of an Italian colonel who with his men had
offered to dislodge the German governor of Zadar, but I refused; I
refused, because I foresaw.' And just as he was opposed to the union
with Italy, so likewise was he opposed to autonomy. You spoke of
mountains and the sea. Permit me to direct your attention to some
lines of his:
'Ne piu tre il monte e il mar, povero lembo
Di terra e poche iznude isole sparte,
O Patria mia, sarai; ma la rinata
Serbia (guerniera mano e mite spirto)
E quanti campi, all' italo sorriso
Nati, impaluda l'ottoman letargo,
Teco una vita ed un voler faranno....'
This one would translate as follows: 'Thou shalt no longer be, O my
country, a poor stretch of land between the mountains and the sea,
with some bare scattered islands; but Serbia reborn, that is now
sicklied o'er with Turkish lethargy, shall make one life and one
desire with thee and with all these fields that sprung into being
under an Italian smile.' If you really think that this proves that
Tommaseo contemplated a harmonious coexistence in Dalmatia of the two
countries, Serbia and Italy, then I beg you to read the passage once
again." This Mr. Antonio Cippico, by the way, is a native of Dalmatia
with most Italian sympathies; another Cippico from Dalmatia, a cousin
of his, has for years been a well-known litterateur in Belgrade, and
according to him the great majority of the Cippico family are of his
way of thinking.