The Case of Hungary stated. Manifesto published in the name of the Hungarian Government. By Count LADISLAS TELEKI, Member of the Hungarian Diet. Translated from the French, with prefatory remarks. By H. F. W. BROWNE, B. A. London: Effingham Wilson.

tain regions which contribute minerals to the national wealth. Hungary is copiously watered by noble rivers. The Danube flows through the heart of the country; and the Thiess, the Drave, the Save, and waters of lesser magnitude, give breadth to Duna's mighty flood. The superficial magnitude of the country is estimated at nearly 88,000 square miles.

The kingdom of Hungary is composed of Hungary proper, Sclavonia, Croatia, Transylvania, and the Gränz Comitates, or military frontier. It is subdivided thus:

THE nation which, in political language, | life to supply the deficiencies of those mounwe call Hungary, but comprising many nationalities, is that large tract of country included in the Austrian dominions, extending from the Carpathian Mountains on the north, to the Gulf of Quarnero on the Adriatic and the Turkish frontier; longitudinally, it extends from the Austrian boundary line of Moravia, Lower Austria, Styria, and Illyria on the west; eastward to the Alpine chain which bounds Transylvania. It would seem as if nature had designed it for the separate habitation of a great people. On all sides it is defended by the bulwarks of nature mountain or flood. Nature has been prodigal in the gifts of a rich soil, and of a climate favorable to all productions necessary for the sustentation of man. It is a country prolific in corn and wine; the broad plains. afford luxuriant pasturage for the flocks, and the mountains yield mineral treasures of boundless extent. In the admirable distribution of Providence, the richer soils of the plain yield more than enough of the staff of VOL. XVIII. NO. L.

1

I.-Hungary proper, containing the following districts and population:

1. Hungary west of the Danube; divided into eleven komitats, or counties; population in 1842, 2,109,510. 2. East of the Danube; thirteen counties; population, 2,764,247.

3. West of the Thiess; eleven counties population, 1,789,700.

4. East of the Thiess; twelve counties; | Sclavo-Roman origin, the descendants of the
population, 2,631,600.
Roman colonists who peopled Dacia in the
time of Trajan.

II. Sclavonia; three counties; Syrmia,
Verócz, and Posegan; population, 336,100.
III.-Croatia; three counties; Kreutz, Wa-
radin, and Agram; population, 506,500.
IV. Transylvania; containing:

1. The Hungarian country; eleven coun-
ties; population, 1,279,700.

2. The Szekler country; five cantons; population, 373,000.

3. The Saxon country; nine cantons; population, 446,700; making, with a military force of 9,005, a total of 2,108,405.

V. Five small separate districts; population, 296,100; making, with 66,243 military for the districts, exclusive of Transylvania, a total population of 10,500,000, according to an approximate estimate made in 1842.

The bulk of the population is composed of three races: 1. The Magyars, or Hungarians par excellence. 2. The Sclavonians, or Sclaves, comprising various tribes, as the Slovacs, Croats, Serbs, &c. 3. Germans. The relative proportions are thus stated by M. Fényes: Magyars, 4,812,759; Slovacs, 1,687,256; Germans, 1,273,677; Wallaks, 2,202,542; Croats, 886,079; Raiks, or Raitzes, 828,365; Schocks, 429,868; Wends, 40,864; Ruthenians, 442,903; Bulgarians, 12,000; French, 6,150; Greeks, 5,680; Armenians, 3,798; Montenegrins, 2,830; Clementins, 1,600; Jews, 244,035-12,880,406.*

The chief settlements of the Magyars are the plains west and east of the Danube. The Germans are for the most part of Saxon and Suabian descent, and dwell on the Austrian frontier and the mining districts. The Slovacs, who are supposed to be the oldest settlers, and who came of the Czecs of Bohemia, people the northern districts along with the Ruthenians or Russniaks (from Red Russia,) and the slopes of the Carpathians. The Schocks inhabit Sclavonia; and with the Raitzes, who people that province as well as the district called the Banat, lying between the rivers Danube, Thiess, and Arad and Transylvania, are of the Serbian stock of Sclaves. Many of this race took shelter in Hungary from the persecution of the Turks, and settled in the country. The Croats inhabit the district of Croatia. The Wends are of the Styrian tribe of Sclaves. The Walaques or Wallaks are supposed to be of

* "Statistique du Royaume de Hongrie," par Alexius de Fényes. Three vols., 1843-1844-1845.

The statistics of the religious faith of these populations, according to the tables of 1842, for the whole kingdom, including Transylvania, are these: Roman Catholics, 6,444,418; Greek Church (united,) 1,379,717; (non-united) 2,603,060-3,982,777. Protestants (Lutheran,) 1,014,518; (Calvinists,) 1,949,606 2,964,124; Unitarians, 45,769; Jews, 258,882. To this bird's-eye view of the country it may be interesting to the English reader to add an outline of the history of Hungary, for which information must still be sought in the chronicles of the kingdom.

The history of Hungary is copious in incidents, replete with romance and deeds of chivalry, and affords ample materials for philosophical reflection. We cannot, however, do more than indicate the prominent points necessary to illustrate the origin, progress, and recent liberal development of the Hungarian Constitution. The earliest ac

counts are fabulous and obscure. We know nothing certain prior to the Roman conquest of Pannonia. And from that period till the Magyar settlement, about the close of the ninth century, there is little to arrest the attention of the political inquirer. The Hungarians, in the common desire of mankind to trace their origin to a noted ancestry, have reckoned the conquering Huns of Attila as their ancestors; but ethnology and history alike fail to support the assertion.* The country which we now call Hungary, prior to the period when it received that name, appears, according to the best authorities, to have been successively occupied by the Huns, the Goths, and Gepida, (between the years 489 and 526;) by the Lombards, till 568; and by the far-conquering Abares or Avars. Towards the close of the ninth century, the progenitors of the Magyar or Hungarian nation obtained their first settlement in the country. The received opinion is, that they

*Gibbon has graphically described the Calmuck characteristics of Attila's Huns. The Magyars bear no traces of the personal peculiarities of that race. On the historical point we may quote Gibbon, for the brevity of his summary: Hungary has been successively occupied by three Scythian colonies.1. The Huns of Attila; 2. The Abares, in the sixth century; and 3. The Turks, or Majiars, A. D. 889— the immediate and genuine ancestors of the modern Hungarians, whose connection with the two former is extremely faint and remote."-Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter xxxiv.

Tradition says that seven tribes of these Magyar wanderers, under the conduct of Almus, or of his son Arpad, entered the country near the Thiess, and gradually won settlements in the fertile plain, but that it was ten years before they conquered the country. Whatever may have been the origin of the race and of the Hungarian name, these Magyar warriors had brave notions of liberty; if they enslaved the vanquished, they were yet resolved themselves to live free; they exercised but the right of the sword, which, nine centuries later in the

were of an Asian tribe which wandered westward in search of a better land, from their original settlement to the south of the Black Sea; a learned but fanciful attempt has even been made to trace them to the family of the ancient Egyptians.* As in all attempts to determine the etymology of names, there is much diversity of opinion on the origin of the Hungarian name. Some of the hypotheses are curious. It is said that the Huns of the race of Attila returned to Pannonia in the eighth century, under the leadership of their chieftain Hungar-a word signifying the valiant, or the conqueror; and that, hav-march of civilization, is still the "ultimus ing acquired a settlement, they gave the name of their commander to the land of his conquest. Others affirm that it is but a compound of the national denominations of the two races who had previously peopled the land-the Huns and the Avari. A third legend says, that near the spot where the nomade warriors first encamped, stood a fortification called Hungvar, which they made their stronghold; and that, when they sallied forth on raid or foray, the terrified natives of the plains, as they prepared for defense or fled, warned their brethren that the Hungvarians were coming. In northwestern Hungary there is a town called Unghvar, which gives the name to one of the eleven komitats of the district west of the Thiess. The town is situated on the river Ungh. But there is no bound to the fancy of the etymologist. The comic historian could possibly support an hypothesis as plausible, that the name was not given from the ferocity, but from the voracity of the conquerors.t

* Dr. F. Thomas-Conjecturæ de origine prima sede et linguâ Hungarorum. Buda, 1806.

In Dr. Bowring's interesting specimens of the poetry of the Magyars, there is a translation of a national ballad of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, much admired by the Magyars, and often sung at their festivals-"On the conquest of the Magyar Land." The minstrel sings how their sires, in search of a better land, left their Scythian home, and came to Erdely or Transylvania

"And glorions were their doings then,
Seven bands composed the host;
Seven valiant chieftains led the men,
And each a Var (fort) could boast."

Arpad, "The Magyars' pride," was the leader. In
their wanderings they came on the broad waters of
the Duna or Danube, and much charmed were they
with the fatness of the land. An embassy was sent
to the ruler, the "Lengvel lord," at his court at Vez-
prim. The ambassador cunningly represented that
he had come to learn the people's laws, at which
the Herczeg or Duke expressed much self-satisfac-
tion. The messenger returned to Erdely, with a

ratio regis." The very foundation of their State was laid on the right divine of the people. To concentrate their strength, they chose Arpad as their duke, or leader; and a solemn compact was made between that chief and the heads of the tribes, that the office of chief magistrate should be hereditary to his line, but that the right of the tribes to choose their governor, if they so willed, should never be questioned. It was, in short, a federal aristocracy, or union of clans owing a limited obedience to a superior chief; for there appears to have been an express stipulation made by the heads of the tribes, that the ducal title, on every new accession to the leadership must be solemnly acknowledged by the State, and that a refusal to take certain oaths prescribed, to observe the popular liberties, should be followed by rejection. The fullest liberty of action was reserved by the people, or rather by their chiefs. They promised to yield military

glowing account of his sojourn at the Duke's court. After a council of the chiefs had been held, the messenger was sent back to Vezprim, with a snow-white steed meetly caparisoned,

"With golden bit and saddle rich,"

as a peace-offering to his Grace the Herczeg; and
the messenger craved the boon of a quiet settlement
love of a snow-white steed cost him his ducal do-
in the country for his tribe. Alas! poor Duke-his
minions. The Magyars advanced to the conquest of
the land-

"In those proud wars, the Magyars,
By God upheld, their foemen quelled,
And weighty was their gain.'

The Duke sought oblivion in Duna's flood, and the
Magyar occupied the land which his race still re-
tains. The poet thus triumphantly concludes his

song:

"Of those who gained the Magyar land,
A chief as bold as any

Was Budon, who, when Arpad died,
Was Magyars' Kapitany.

He reared his throne by Duna's banks,
Near Pesth, along the hill;
And Buda's city, fair and rich,
Preserves his memory still."

service to the State, to defend the country | dom; next to them in rank were the king's from internal turmoil and foreign invasion; chief retainers, with the holders of fiefs but, like the militia force of England, they under the princes and prelates, with their could not be compelled to go beyond the principal retainers; the third order of magbounds of the country-a useful check, un- nates consisted of the untitled gentry-the doubtedly, on the ambition of adventurous eidelmen, or primal squirearchy of Hungary, spirits. So long as military skill was requi- all of noble descent. The rest of the people site to keep the Magyars in their new govern- were serfs. The privileged classes were exment, their aristocratical political system ceedingly tenacious of their rights and privicame within the moral sense of the term, leges; they yielded military service to the "the government of the apron, or the best;" State, and pecuniary aid, when admitted by but when more settled times enabled leaders themselves to be requisite ; but the sovereign to serve themselves as well as the State, the could exact no aids from his subjects, withwealthiest became the best, territorial lords out an express vote to that effect in the nathe most excellent of the land, and the aris- tional assembly. The comitia or national tocracy of young Hungary degenerated, council was not a representative body, for step by step, into a plutocracy. Geysa, or all members of the privileged classes attendGeyson, the third in descent from Arpad, ed in person; neither could it be termed a embraced Christianity; and his son Stephen, deliberative assembly, for, accompanied as who attained the dukedom in the year 1000, the magnates were by their retainers, the under the proselyting patronage of the Ro- comitia were sometimes attended by eighty man See, exchanged his coronet for a crown. thousand men. Stephen added Transylvania The diadem consecrated by Pope Sylvester, to the Hungarian kingdom. In the course and by him presented to Hungary's saintly of the next two centuries, Sclavonia, Croatia, king, still exists in the dear regards of the Dalmatia, Bosnia, Servia and Gallicia were nation.* But Holy Church is prudent in successively added to the dominions of the her generosity. When she could patronize crown. monarchs, and bestow rich gifts, she expected a tenfold profit. The enrolment of Hungary in the array of Christendom was no exception. Stephen built churches and monasteries, and endowed rich sees. A new, powerful, and ofttimes most troublesome branch was thus engrafted on the original aristocratic stem of the Constitution. Stephen divided the kingdom into seventy-two komitats or lordships, over each of which he placed a chief. The declining aristocracy of merit, under the genial glow of priestly influence, expanded into a more unbending system of class distinction. Three orders of privileged men were instituted in the kingdom: foremost were the princes, the magnate churchmen, and the barons of the king-establishment of the rudiments of a regular

*The fated stone of Scone, carried off by Edward I. for a coronation-chair for his saintly namesake's chapel at Westminster, was not more devoutly regarded by the Scottish nation, than is Stephen's crown by the Magyars. Joseph II. deeply offended the nation by removing the crown to Vienna. Since it was restored by his successor, it has, till very recently, been preserved with reverent care in the chapel of the palace at Buda. On the advance of the Austrians to attack the capital, in the present war, to save it from the unholy touch of the hands of these Philistines, the crown was taken to Debreczin; and with what a burst of pious horror did the scribes of our oligarchical press narrate that Kossuth had stolen the crown. Peace to their troubled souls! Stephen's crown will probably long outlast his monarchy !

On the death of Stephen without issue, the country for a time lapsed into a state of anarchy; but order was restored by the election of Ladislaus, the representative of a junior branch of the house of Arpad, in 1077. It was during the rule of this prince that Croatia and Sclavonia were added to Hungary.* *The march of social refinement made some progress in softening the rude manners of the martial nobles in the twelfth century; especially toward the close of it, when Belas the Second married a daughter of Henry of France.

In the first quarter of the thirteenth century, we come to a marked and interesting era in Hungarian history-namely, to the

ly-defined constitutional and representative system. In the reign of Andreas the Second, in the year 1223, eight years after the barons of England had compelled John to grant Magna Charta, the magnates of Hungary obtained a similar charter, under the title of the Golden Bull.

The charter, after recognizing the ancient privileges of the nobility, in substance provided that the magnates should sit as heredi

His daughter, the Princess Sophia, married a prince of the house of Hapsburg, the origin of the family connection of the present imperial family with Hungary.

the coronation of Ferdinand V.: "Nos Ferdinandus,

tary legislators in the national diet or as- | Constitution,* and that he shall be invested sembly; and that the inferior nobility, or with all the insignia of royalty. There is untitled gentry, with the body of the clergy, a curious and somewhat anomalous office should be represented by members of their attached and subsidiary to the regal dignity. respective bodies; but all other classes of The Palatin of Hungary discharges the the community were beyond the pale of double functions of viceroy of Hungary citizenship. With the progress of social civilization, there gradually arose a middle class between the nobles and their peasant serfs; and about a century and a half after the Golden Bull was granted, they received a quasi political recognition. In the reign of Sigismund, the representative branch of the legislature was increased by a burgess class, the delegates or deputies from the free towns and royal cities. To trace the exact historical progress and development of the Constitution, would far exceed our alloted space; it is enough to say, that the Constitution of Hungary, under the rule of the imperial dynasty, has been successively recognized and confirmed by the treaties of Vienna, in 1606, and Leutz, in 1647; and by the inaugural diploma of the Emperor Joseph the Second, in 1790. And here it may be convenient to anticipate the course of history, and give a brief sketch of the Hungarian Constitution as it existed down to 1848, when the patriotism of the nation enlarged its boundaries, admitting all classes of the people as free citizens of the commonwealth.

The Constitution may be theoretically described as a mixed form of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy; but practically it was a rigid oligarchy. It had king and lords, with the phantom of a Commons.

The monarchy was limited, and latterly hereditary, in the dynasty chosen by the portion of the nation having legislative power. The person of the king is sacred. He is the executive chief magistrate, by whom all civil appointments are made. He is the temporal head of the Church, appoints to all ecclesiastical dignities, and receives the proceeds of all vacant benefices.* He is the fountain of honor, the head of the army, the arbiter of war or peace; and with him rests the power to call out the Honveds, or national force, to the field; he has also the power to summon and dissolve the States. The Constitution requires that, within six months after his accession, the sovereign shall call together the States of the realm, take the oath of fealty to the

* On failure of heirs, all property in Hungary is ipso facto inherited by the crown.

+ When Ferdinand I., the first prince of the

Hapsburg line, was elected to the throne, he took the following oath, which has been the form of the act of fealty observed by all his successors down to Dei gratiâ Hungariæ, Bohemiæ, Dalmatia, Croatia, Scalvoniæ, &c., Rex Apostolicus, Archi-dux Austriæ, &c. Qua prælibati Regni Hungariæ, et aliorum regnorum, ac partium eidem adnexarum Rex, juGenitricem Virginem Mariam, ac omnes sanctos; ramus per Deum vivum, per ejus Sanctissimam quod ecclesias Dei dominos, prælatos barones, magnates, nobiles, civitates liberas, et omnes regnicolas, in suis immunitatibus et libertatibus, juribus, legibus, privilegiis, ac in antiquis bonis, et approbatis, consuetudinibus, conservabimus, omnibusque justitiam faciemus; Serenissimi quondam Andreæ Regis decreta: (Exclusa tamen et semota Articula 31 ejusdem decreti clausula incipienti: Quod si vero nos, &c., usque ad verba in pertutinum facultatem) observabimus. Fines regni nostri Hungariæ, et quæ ad illud quocunque jure aut titulo pertinent, non abalienabimus, nec minuemus, sed quoad poterimus, augebimus et extendemus, omniaque illa faciemus, quæcunque pro bono publico, honore et incremento omnium statuum, ac totius Regni Hungariæ juste

facere poterimus; sic nos Deus adjuvet et omnes

sancti."

So important is this ceremony deemed by the nation, that it has been customary, during the reign of the King of Hungary, to crown his succesnand I. of Austria, (the fifth Ferdinand of Hungary,) sor as heir presumptive. The late emperor, Ferdiwho abdicated his Imperial throne last year, was crowned King of Hungary some years before the

decease of his father. His abdication has never been

recognized by the Diet of Hungary; he is, therefore, still, de jure, King of Hungary, and his nephew and imperial successor, the "Boy Emperor," is consequently a usurper within the kingdom of Hungary.

The coronation, which takes place at Presburg, is described as a ceremony of great solemnity and splendor. "Like its counterpart among ourselves," says Mr. Gleig, in his interesting account of a tour in Hungary, in 1837, "it is regarded as the ratification of a covenant between the sovereign and the people, and is performed amid much pomp, both religious and civil. The monarch elect, attended by his magnates and councillors, repairs to the cathedral, where the officiating prelate administers to him the customary oaths. He is anointed with the holy oil, and undergoes the usual routine of enrobing and crowning; after which he proceeds on horseback, the states of the realm in his train, to the feet high, which stands just outside the city, and Königsberg. It is a circular mound, perhaps fifty commands an extensivs view over the plain, both eastward and southward. This the king ascends, his nobles and knights, and dignified clergy, being collected in a mass round its base; and as all are on horseback-as their dresses are picturesque, their arms and housings costly, and their port chivalrous in the extreme-the spectacle is, perhaps, as grand