READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

A HISTORY OF MODERN EUROPE FROM 1792 TO 1878

CHAPTER XVIII.

EUROPE BEFORE 1848

The characteristic of Continental history during the second quarter of this century is the sense of unrest. The long period of European peace which began in 1815 was not one of internal repose ; the very absence of those engrossing and imperious interests which belong to a time of warfare gave freer play to the feelings of discontent and the vague longings for a better political order which remained behind after the convulsions of the revolutionary epoch and the military rule of Napoleon had passed away. During thirty years of peace the breach had been widening between those Governments which still represented the system of 1815, and the peoples over whom they ruled. Ideas of liberty, awakenings of national sense, were far more widely diffused in Europe than at the time of the revolutionary war. The seed then pre-maturely forced into an atmosphere of storm and reaction had borne its fruit: other growths, fertilised or accelerated by Western Liberalism, but not belonging to the same family, were springing up in unexpected strength, and in regions which had hitherto lain outside the movement of the modern world. New forces antagonistic to Government had come into being, penetrating an area unaffected by the constitutional struggles of the Mediterranean States, or by the weaker political efforts of Germany. In the homes of the Magyar and the Slavic subjects of Austria, so torpid throughout the agitation of an earlier time, the passion of nationality was every hour gaining new might. The older popular causes, vanquished for the moment by one reaction after another, had silently established a far stronger hold on^A men's minds. Working, some in exile and conspiracy, others through such form of political literature as the jealousy of Governments permitted, the leaders of the democratic movement upon the Continent created a power before which the established order at length succumbed. They had not created, nor was it possible under the circumstances that they should create, an order which was capable of taking its place.

Italy, rather than France, forms the central figure in any retrospect of Europe immediately before 1848 in which the larger forces at work are not obscured by those for the moment more prominent. The failure of the insurrection of 1831 had left Austria more visibly than before master over the Italian people even in those provinces in which Austria was not nominally sovereign. It had become clear that no effort after reform could be successful either in the Papal States or in the kingdom of Naples so long as Austria held Lombardy and Venice. The expulsion of the foreigner was therefore not merely the task of those who sought to give the Italian race its separate and independent national existence, it was the task of all who would extinguish oppression and misgovernment in any part of the Italian peninsula. Until the power of Austria was broken, it was vain to take up arms against the tyranny of the Duke of Modena or any other contemptible oppressor. Austria itself had twice taught this lesson; and if the restoration of Neapolitan despotism in 1821 could be justified by the disorderly character of the Government then suppressed, the circumstances attending the restoration of the Pope's authority In 1831 had extinguished Austria's claim to any sort of moral respect; for Metternich himself had united with the other European Courts in declaring the necessity for reforms in the Papal Government, and of these reforms, though a single earnest word from Austria would have enforced their execution, hot one had been carried into effect. Gradually, but with increasing force as each unhappy year passed by, the conviction gained weight among all men of serious thought that the problem to be faced was nothing less than the destruction of the Austrian yoke. Whether proclaimed as an article of faith or veiled in diplomatic reserve, this belief formed the common ground among men whose views on the immediate future of Italy differed in almost every other particular.

Three main currents of opinion to be traced in the ferment of ideas which preceded the Italian revolution of 1848. At a time not rich in intellectual nor in moral power, the most striking figure among those who are justly honoured as the founders of Italian independence is perhaps that of Mazzini. Exiled during nearly the whole of his mature life, a conspirator in the eyes of all Governments, a dreamer in the eyes of the world, Mazzini was a prophet or an evangelist among those whom his influence led to devote themselves to the one cause of their country's regeneration. No firmer faith, no nobler disinterestedness, ever animated the saint or the patriot; and if in Mazzini there was also something of the visionary and the fanatic, the force with which he grasped the two vital conditions of Italian revival—the expulsion of the foreigner and the establishment of a single national Government—proves him to have been a thinker of genuine politick insight. Laying the foundation of his creed deep in the moral nature of man, and constructing upon this basis a fabric not of rights but of duties, he invested the political union with the immediateness, the sanctity, and the beauty of family life, with him, to live, to think, to hope, was to live, to think, to hope for Italy; and the Italy of his ideal was a Republic embracing' every member of the race, purged of the priestcraft and the superstition which had degraded the man to the slave, indebted to itself alone for its independence, and consolidated by the reign of equal law. The rigidity with which Mazzini adhered to his own great project in its completeness, and his impatience with any bargaining away of national rights, excluded him from the work of those practical poli-ticians and men of expedients who in 1859 effected with foreign aid. the first step towards Italian union; but the influence of his teaching and his organisation in preparing his countrymen for independence was immense; and the dynasty which has rendered to United Italy services which Mazzini thought impossible, owes to this great Republican scarcely less than to its ablest friends.

Widely separated from the school of Mazzini in temper and intention was the group of politicians and military' men, belonging mostly to Piedmont, who looked to the sovereign and the army of this State as the one hope of Italy in its struggle against foreign rule. The House of Savoy, though foreign in its origin, was, and had been for centuries, a national dynasty. It was, moreover, by interest and traditional policy, the rival rather than the friend of Austria in Northern Italy. If the fear of revolution had at times brought the Court of Turin into close alliance with Vienna, the connection had but thinly veiled the lasting antagonism of two States which, as neighbours, had habitually sought expansion each at the other's cost. Lombardy, according to the expression of an older time, was the artichoke which the Kings of Piedmont were destined to devour leaf by leaf. Austria, on the other hand, sought extension towards the Alps: it had in 1799 clearly shown its intention of excluding the House of Savoy altogether from the Italian mainland; and the remembrance of this epoch had led the restored dynasty in 1815 to resist the plans of Metternich for establishing a league of all the princes of Italy under Austria's protection. The sovereign, moreover, who after the failure of the constitutional movement of 1821 had mounted the throne surrounded by Austrian bayonets, was no longer alive. Charles Albert of Carignano, who had at that time played so ambiguous a part, and whom Metternich had subsequently endeavoured to exclude from the succession, was on the throne. He had made his peace with absolutism by fighting in Spain against the Cortes in 1823 ; and since his accession to the throne he had rigorously suppressed the agitation of Mazzini’s partizans within his own dominions. But in spite of strong clerical and reactionary influences around him, he had lately shown an independence of spirit in his dealings with Austria which raised him in the estimation of his subjects; and it was believed that his opinions had been deeply affected by the predominance which the idea of national independence was now gaining over that of merely democratic change. If the earlier career of Charles Albert himself cast some doubt upon his personal sincerity, and much more upon his constancy of purpose, there was at least in Piedmont an army thoroughly national in its sentiment, and capable of taking the lead whenever the opportunity should arise for uniting Italy against the foreigner. In no other Italian State was. there an effective military force, or one so little adulterated with foreign elements.

A third current of opinion in these years of hope and of illusion was that represented in the writings of Gioberti, the depicter of a new and glorious Italy, regenerated not by philosophic republicanism or the sword of a temporal monarch, but by the moral force of a reformed and reforming Papacy. The conception of the Catholic Church as a great Liberal power, strange and fantastic as it now appears, was no dream of an isolated Italian enthusiast; it was an idea which, after the French Revolution of 1830, and the establishment of a government at once anti-clerical and anti-democratic, powerfully influenced some of the best minds in France, and found in Montalembert and Lamennais exponents who commanded the ear of Europe. If the corruption of the Papacy had been at once the spiritual and the political death of Italy, its renovation in purity and in strength would be also the resurrection of the Italian people. Other lands had sought, and sought in vain, to work out their problems under the guidance of leaders antagonistic to the Church, and of popular doctrines divorced from religious faith. To Italy belonged the prerogative of spiritual power. By this power, aroused from the torpor of ages, and speaking, as it had once spoken, to the very conscience of mankind, the gates of a glorious future would be thrown open. Conspirators might fret, and politicians scheme, but the day on which the new life of Italy would begin would be that day when the head of the Church, taking his place as chief of a federation of Italian States, should raise the banner of freedom and national right, and princes and people alike should follow the all-inspiring voice.

A monk, ignorant of everything but cloister lore, benighted, tyrannical, the companion in his private life of a few jolly priests and a gossiping barber, was not an alluring emblem of the Church of the future. But in 1846 Pope Gregory XVI, who for the last five years had been engaged in one incessant struggle against insurgents, conspirators, and reformers, and whose prisons were crowded with the best of his subjects, passed away. His successor, Mastai Ferretti, Bishop of Imola, was elected under the title of Pius IX, alter the candidate favoured by Austria had failed to secure the requisite number of votes (June 17). The choice of this kindly and popular prelate was to some extent a tribute to Italian feeling; and for the next eighteen months it appeared as if Gioberti had really dinned the secret of the age. The first act of the new Pope was the publication of a universal amnesty for political offences. The prison doors throughout his dominions were thrown open, and men who had been sentenced to confinement for life returned in exultation to their homes. The act created a profound impression throughout Italy, and each good-humoured utterance of Pius confirmed the belief that great changes were at hand. A wild enthusiasm seized upon Rome. The population abandoned itself to festivals in honour of the Pontiff and of the approaching restoration of Roman liberty. Little was done; not much was actually promised; every-thing was believed. The principle of representative government was discerned in the new Council of State now placed by the side of the College of Cardinals; Reforms expected from a more serious concession was made to popular feeling in the permission given to the citizens of Rome, and afterwards to those of the provinces, to enrol themselves in a civic guard. But the climax of excitement was reached when, in answer to a threatening movement of Austria, occasioned by the growing agitation throughout Central Italy, the Papal Court protested against the action of its late protector. By the Treaties of Vienna Austria had gained the right to garrison the citadel of Ferrara, though this town lay within the Ecclesiastical States. Placing a new interpretation on the expression used in the Treaties, the Austrian Government occupied the town of Ferrara itself (June 17th, 1847). The movement was universally understood to be the preliminary to a new occupation of the Papal States, like that of 1831; and the protests of the Pope against the violation of his territory gave to the controversy a European importance. The English and French fleets appeared at Naples; the King of Sardinia openly announced his intention to take the field against Austria if war should break out. By the efforts of neutral Powers a compromise on the occupation of Ferrara was at length arranged; but the passions which had been excited were not appeased, and the Pope remained in popular imagination the champion of Italian independence against Austria, as well as the apostle of constitutional Government and the rights of the people.

In the meantime the agitation begun in Rome was spreading through the north and the south of the peninsula, and beyond the Sicilian Straits. The centenary of the expulsion of the Austrians from Genoa in December, 1746, was celebrated throughout central Italy with popular demonstrations which gave Austria warning of the storm about to burst upon it. In the south, however, impatience under domestic tyranny was a far more powerful force than the distant hope of national independence. Sicily had never forgotten the separate rights which it had once enjoyed, and the constitution given to it under the auspices of England in 1812. Communications passed between the Sicilian leaders and the opponents of the Bourbon Government on the mainland, and in the autumn of 1847 simultaneous risings took place in Calabria and at Messina. These were repressed without difficulty; but the fire smouldered far and wide, and on the 13th of January, 1848, the population of Palermo rose in revolt. For fourteen days the conflict between the people and the Neapolitan troops continued. The city was bombarded, but in the end the people were victorious, and a provisional government was formed by the leaders of the insurrection. One Sicilian town after another followed the example of the capital, and expelled its Neapolitan garrison. Threatened by revolution in Naples itself, King Ferdinand II, grandson of the despot of 1821, now imitated the policy of his predecessor, and proclaimed a constitution. A Liberal Ministry was formed, but no word was said as to the autonomy claimed by Sicily, and promised, as it would seem, by the leaders of the popular party on the mainland. After the first excitement of success was past, it became clear that the Sicilians were as widely at variance with the newly-formed Government at Naples as with that which they had overthrown.

The insurrection of Palermo gave a new stimulus and imparted more of revolutionary colour to the popular move-ment throughout Italy. Constitutions were granted in Piedmont and Tuscany. In the Austrian provinces national exasperation against the rule of the foreigner grew daily more menacing. Radetzky, the Austrian Commander-in-chief, had long foreseen the impending struggle, and had endeavoured, but not with complete success, to impress his own views upon the imperial Government. Verona had been made the centre of a great system of fortifications, and the strength of the army under Radetzky's command had been considerably increased, but it was not until the eleventh hour that Metternich abandoned the hope of tiding over difficulties by his old system of police and spies, and permitted the establishment of undisguised military rule. In order to injure the finances of Austria, a general resolution had been made by the patriotic societies of Upper Italy to abstain from the use of tobacco, from which the Government drew a large part of its revenue. On the first Sunday in 1848 Austrian officers, smoking in the streets of Milan, were attacked by the people. The troops were called to arms: a conflict took place, and enough blood was shed to give to the tumult the importance of an actual revolt. In Padua and elsewhere similar outbreaks followed. Radetzky issued a general order to his troops, declaring that the Emperor was determined to defend his Italian dominion whether against an external or domestic foe. Martial law was proclaimed; and for a moment, although Piedmont gave signs of throwing itself into the Italian movement, the awe of Austria's military power hushed the rising tempest. A few weeks more revealed to an astonished world the secret that the Austrian State, so great and so formidable in the eyes of friend and foe, was itself on the verge of dissolution.

It was to the absence of all stirring public life, not to any real assimilative power or any high intelligence in administration, that the House of Hapsburg owed, during the eighteenth century, the continued union of Austria, that motley of nations or races which successive conquests, marriages, and treaties had brought under its dominion. The violence of the attack made by the Emperor Joseph upon all provincial rights first re-awakened the slumbering spirit of Hungary; but the national movement of that time, which excited such strong hopes and alarms, had been succeeded by a long period of stagnation, and during the Napoleonic, wars the repression of everything that appealed to any distinctively national spirit had become more avowedly than before the settled principle of the Austrian Court. In 1812 the Hungarian Diet had resisted the financial measures of the Government. The consequence was that, in spite of the law requiring its convocation every three years, the Diet was not again summoned till 1825. During the intermediate period, the Emperor raised taxes and levies by edict alone. Deprived of its constitutional representation, the Hungarian nobility pursued its opposition to the encroach-ments of the Crown in the Sessions of each county. At these assemblies, to which there existed no parallel in the western and more advanced States of the Continent, each resident land-owner who belonged to the very numerous caste of the noblesse was entitled to speak and to vote. Retaining, in addition to the right of free discussion and petition, the appointment of local officials, as well as a considerable share in the actual administration, the Hungarian county - assemblies, handing down a spirit of rough independence from an immemorial past, were probably the hardiest relic of self-government existing in any of the great monarchical States of Europe. Ignorant, often uncouth in their habits, oppressive to their peasantry, and dominated by the spirit of race and caste, the mass of the Magyar nobility had indeed proved as impervious to the humanising influences of the eighteenth century as they had to the solicitations of despotism. The Magnates, or highest order of noblesse, who formed a separate chamber in the Diet, had been to some extent denationalised; they were at once more European in their culture, and more submissive to the Austrian Court. In banishing political discussion from the Diet to the County Sessions, the Emperor's Government had intensified the provincial spirit which it sought to extinguish. Too numerous to be won over by personal inducements, and remote from the imperial agencies which had worked so effectively through the Chamber of Magnates, the lesser nobility of Hungary during these years of absolutism carried the habit of political discussion to their homes, and learnt to baffle the imperial Government by withholding all help and all information from its subordinate agents. Each county-assembly became a little Parliament, and a centre of resistance to the usurpation Of the Crown, The stimulus given to the national spirit by this struggle against unconstitutional rule was seen not less in the vigorous attacks made upon the Government on the re­assembling of the Diet in 1825, than in the demand that Magyar, and not Latin as heretofore, should be the language used in recording the proceedings of the Diet, and in which communications should pass between the Upper and the Lower House.

There lay in this demand for the recognition of the national language the germ of a conflict of race against race which was least of all suspected by those by whom the demand was made. Hungary, as a political unity, comprised, besides the Slavic kingdom of Croatia, wide regions in which the inhabitants were of Slavic or Roumanian race, and where the Magyar was known only as a feudal lord. The district in which the population at large belonged to the Magyar stock did not exceed one-half of the kingdom. For the other races of Hungary, who were probably twice as numerous as them-selves, the Magyars entertained the utmost contempt, attributing to them the moral qualities of the savage, and denying to them the possession of any nationality whatever. In a country combining so many elements ill-blended with one another, and all alike subject to a German Court at Vienna, Latin, as the language of the Church and formerly the language of international communication, had served well as a neutral means of expression in public affairs. There might be Croatian deputies in the Diet who could not speak Magyar; the Magyars could not understand Croatian; both could understand and could without much effort express themselves in the species of Latin which passed muster at Presburg and at Vienna. Yet no freedom of handling could convert a dead language into a living one ; and when the love of country and of ancient right became once more among the Magyars an inspiring passion, it naturally sought a nobler and more spontaneous utterance than dog-latin. Though no law was passed upon the subject in the Parliament in which it was first mooted, speakers in the Diet of 1832 used their mother-tongue ; and when the Viennese Government forbade the publication of the debates, reports were circulated in manu-script through the country by Kossuth, a young deputy, who after the dissolution of the Diet in 1836 paid for his defiance of the Emperor by three years’ imprisonment.

Hungary now seemed to be entering upon an epoch of varied and rapid national development. The barriers which separated it from the Western world were disappearing. The literature, the ideas, the inventions of Western Europe were penetrating its archaic society, and transforming a movement which in its origin had been conservative and aristocratic into one of far-reaching progress and reform. Alone among the opponents of absolute power on the Continent, the Magyars had based their resistance on positive constitutional right, on prescription, and the settled usage of the past; and throughout the conflict with the Crown between 1812 and 1825 legal right was on the side not of the Emperor but of those whom he attempted to coerce. With excellent judgment the Hungarian leaders had during these years abstained from raising any demand for reforms, appreciating the advantage of a purely defensive position in a combat with a Court pledged in the eyes of all Europe, as Austria was, to the defence of legitimate rights. This policy had gained its end; the Emperor, after thirteen years of conflict, had been forced to reconvoke the Diet, and to abandon the hope of effecting a work in which his uncle, Joseph II, had failed. But, the constitution once saved, that narrow and exclusive body of rights for which the nobility had contended no longer satisfied the needs or the conscience of the time. Opinion was moving fast; the claims of the towns and of the rural population were making themselves felt; the agitation that followed the overthrow of the Bourbons in 1830 reached Hungary too, not so much through French influence as through the Polish war of independence, in which the Magyars saw a struggle not unlike their own, enlisting their warmest sympathies for the Polish armies so long as they kept the field, and for the exiles who came among them when the conflict was over. By the side of the old defenders of class-privilege there arose men imbued with the spirit of modern Liberalism. The laws governing the relation of the peasant to his lord, which remained nearly as they had been left by Maria Theresa, were dealt with by the Diet of 1832 in so liberal a spirit that the Austrian Government, formerly of far in advance of Hungarian opinion on this subject, refused its assent to many of the measures passed. Great schemes of social and material improvement also aroused the public hopes in these years. The better minds became conscious of the real aspect of Hungarian life in comparison with that of civilised Europe—of its poverty, its inertia, its boorishness. Extraordinary energy was thrown into the work of advance by Count Szechenyi, a nobleman whose imagination had been fired by Szechenyi the contrast which the busy industry of Great Britain and the practical interests of its higher classes presented to the torpor of his own country. It is to him that Hungary owes the bridge uniting its double capital at Pesth, and that Europe owes the unimpeded navigation of the Danube, which he first rendered possible by the destruction of the rocks known as the Iron Gates at Orsova. Sanguine, lavishly generous, an ardent patriot, Szechenyi endeavoured to arouse men of his own rank, the great and the powerful in Hungary, to the sense of what was due from them to their country as leaders in its industrial development. He was no revolutionist, nor was he an enemy to Austria. A peaceful political future would best have accorded with his own designs for raising Hungary to its due place among nations.

That the Hungarian movement of this time was converted from one of fruitful progress into an embittered political conflict ending in civil war was due, among other causes, to the action of the Austrian Cabinet itself. Wherever constitutional right existed, there Austria saw a natural enemy. The province of Transylvania, containing a mixed population of Magyars, Germans, and Roumanians, had, like Hungary, a Diet of its own, which Diet ought to have been summoned every year. It was, however, not once assembled between 1811 and 1834. In the agitation at length provoked in Transylvania by this disregard of constitutional right, the Magyar element naturally took the lead, and so gained complete ascendancy in the province. When the Diet met in 1834, its language and conduct were defiant in the highest degree. It was speedily dissolved, and the scandal occasioned by its proceedings disturbed the last days of the Emperor Francis, who died in 1835, leaving the throne to his son Ferdinand, an invalid incapable of any serious exertion. It soon appeared that nothing was changed in the principles of the Imperial Government, and that whatever hopes had been formed of the establishment of a freer system under the new reign were delusive. The leader of the Transylvanian Opposition was Count Wesselenyi. himself a Magnate in Hungary, who, after the dissolution of the Diet, betook himself to the Sessions of the Hungarian counties, and there delivered speeches against the Court which led to his being arrested and brought to trial for high treason. His cause was taken up by the Hungarian Diet, as one in which the rights of the local assemblies were involved. The plea of privilege was, however, urged in vain, and the sentence of exile which was passed upon Count Wessetenyi became a new source of contention between the Crown and the Magyar Estates.

The enmity of Government was now a sufficient passport to popular favour. On emerging from his prison under a general amnesty in 1840, Kossuth undertook the direction of a Magyar journal at Pesth, which at once gained an immense influence throughout the country. The spokesman of a new generation, Kossuth represented an entirely different order of ideas from those of the orthodox defenders of the Hungarian Constitution. They had been conservative and aristocratic; he was revolutionary: their weapons had been drawn from the storehouse of Hungarian positive law; his inspiration was from the Liberalism of western Europe. Thus within the national party itself there grew up sections in more or less pronounced antagonism to one another, though all were united by a passionate devotion to Hungary and by an unbounded faith in its future. Szechenyi, and those who with him subordinated political to material ends, regarded Kossuth as a dangerous theorist. Between the more impetuous and the more cautious reformers stood the recognised Parliamentary leaders of the Liberals, among whom Dedk had already given proof of political capacity of no common order. In Kossuth's journal the national problems of the time were discussed both by his opponents and by his friends. Publicity gave greater range as well as greater animation to the conflict of ideas; and the rapid development of opinion during these years was seen in the large and ambitious measures which occupied the Diet of 1843. Electoral and municipal reform, the creation of a code of criminal of law, the introduction of trial by jury, the abolition of the immunity of the nobles from taxation; all these, and similar legislative projects, displayed at once the energy of the time and the influence of western Europe in transforming the political conceptions of the Hungarian nation. Hitherto the forty-three Free Cities had possessed but a single vote in the Diet, as against the sixty-three votes possessed by the Counties. It was now generally admitted that this anomaly could not continue; but inasmuch as civic rights were themselves monopolised by small privileged orders among the townsmen, the problem of constitutional reform carried with it that of a reform of the municipalities. Hungary in short was now face to face with the task of converting its ancient system of the representation of the privileged orders into the modern system of a representation of the nation at large. Arduous at every epoch and in every country, this work was one of almost insuperable difficulty in Hungary, through the close connection with the absolute monarchy of Austria ; through the existence of a body of poor noblesse, numbered at two hundred thousand, who, though strong in patriotic sentiment, bitterly resented any attack upon their own freedom from taxation ; and above all through the variety of races in Hungary, and the attitude assumed by the Magyars, as the dominant nationality, towards the Slavs around them. In proportion as the energy of the Magyars and their confidence in the victory of the national cause mounted high, so rose their disdain of all claims beside their own within the Hungarian kingdom. It was resolved by the Lower Chamber of the Diet of 1843 that no language but Magyar should be permitted in debate, and that at the end of ten years every person not capable of speaking the Magyar language should be excluded from all public employment. The Magnates softened the latter provision by excepting from it the holders of merely local offices in Slavic districts; against the prohibition of Latin in the Diet the Croatians appealed to the Emperor. A rescript arrived from Vienna placing a veto upon the resolution. So violent was the storm excited in the Diet itself by this rescript, and so threatening the language of the national leaders outside, that the Cabinet, after a short interval, revoked its decision, and accepted a compromise which, while establishing Magyar as the official language of the kingdom, and requiring that it should be taught even in Croatian schools, permitted the use of Latin in the Diet for the next six years. In the meantime the Diet had shouted down every speaker who began with the usual Latin' formula, and fighting had taken place in Agram, the Croatian capital, between the national and the Magyar factions!

It was in vain that the effort was made at Presburg to resist all claims but those of one race. The same quickening breath which had stirred the Magyar nation to new life had also passed over the branches of the Slavic family within the Austrian dominions far and near. In Bohemia a revival of interest in the Czech language and movements, which began about 1820, had in the following decade gained a distinctly political character. Societies originally or 'professedly' founded for literary objects had become the centres of a popular movement directed towards the emancipation of the Czech elements in Bohemia from German ascendancy, and the restoration of something of a national character to the institutions of the kingdom. Among the southern Slavs, with whom Hungary was more directly concerned, the national movement first became visible rather later. Its earliest manifestations took, just as in Bohemia, a literary or linguistic form. Projects for the formation of a common language which, under the name of Illyrian, should draw together all the Slavic populations between the Adriatic and the Black Sea, occupied for a while the fancy of the learned ; but the more ambitious part of this design, which had given some umbrage to the Turkish Government, was abandoned in obedience to instructions from Vienna ; and the movement first-gained political im-portance when its scope was limited to the Croatian and Slavonic districts of Hungary, and it was endowed with the distinct task of resisting the imposition of Magyar as an official language. In addition to their representation in the Diet of the Kingdom at Presburg, the Croatian landowners had their own Provincial Diet at Agram. In this they possessed not only a common centre of action, but an organ of communication with the Imperial Government at Vienna, which rendered them some support in their resistance to Magyar pretensions. Later events gave currency to the belief that a conflict of races in Hungary was deliberately stimulated by the Austrian Court in its own interest. But the whole temper and principle of Metternich's rule was opposed to the development of national spirit, whether in one race or another; and the patronage which the Croats appeared at this time to receive at Vienna was probably no more than an instinctive act of conservatism, intended to maintain the balance of interests, and to reduce within the narrowest possible limits such changes as might prove inevitable.

Of all the important measures of reform which were brought before the Hungarian Diet of 1843, one alone had become law. The rest were either rejected by the Chamber of Magnates after passing the Lower House, or were thrown out in the Lower House in spite of the approval of the majority, in consequence of peremptory instructions sent to Presburg by the county­assemblies. The representative of a Hungarian constituency was not free to vote at his discretion ; he was the delegate of the body of nobles which sent him, and was legally bound to give his vote in accordance with the instructions -which he might from time to time receive. However zealous the Legislature itself, it was therefore liable to be paralysed by external pressure as soon as any question was raised which touched the privileges of the noble caste. This was especially the case with all projects involving the expenditure of public revenue. Until the nobles bore their share of taxation it was impossible that Hungary should emerge from a condition of beggarly need; yet, be the inclination of the Diet what it might, it was controlled by bodies of stubborn squires or yeomen in each county, who fully understood their own power, and stoutly forbade the passing of any measure which imposed a share of the public burdens upon themselves. The impossibility of carrying out reforms under existing conditions had7 been demonstrated by the failures of 1843. In order to overcome the obstruction as well of the Magnates as of the county-assemblies, it was necessary that an appeal should be made to the country at large, and that a force of public sentiment should be aroused which should both overmaster the existing array of special interests, and give birth to legislation merging them for the future in a comprehensive system of really national institutions. To this task the Liberal Opposition addressed itself; and although large differences existed within the party, and the action of Kossuth, who now exchanged the career of the journalist for that of the orator, was little fettered by the opinions of his colleagues, the general result did not disap-point the hopes that had been formed. Political associations and clubs took vigorous root in the country. The magic of Kossuth's oratory left every hearer a more patriotic, if not a wiser man; and an awakening passion for the public good seemed for a while to throw all private interests into the shade.

It now became plain to all but the blindest that great changes were inevitable; and at the instance of the more intelligent among the Conservative party in Hungary the Imperial Government resolved to enter the lists with a policy of reform, and, if possible, to wrest the helm from the men who were becoming masters of the nation. In order to secure a majority in the Diet, it was deemed requisite by the Government first to gain a predominant influence in the county-assemblies. As a preliminary step, most of the Lieutenants of counties, to whose high dignity no practical functions attached, were removed from their posts, and superseded by paid administrators, appointed from Vienna. Count Apponyi, one of the most vigorous of the conservative and aristocratic reformers, was placed at the head of the Ministry. In due time the proposals of the Government were made public. They comprised the taxation of the nobles, a reform of the municipalities, modifications in the land-system, and a variety of economic measures intended directly to promote the material development of the country. The latter were framed to some extent on the lines laid down by Szechenyi, who now, in bitter antagonism to Kossuth, accepted office under the Government, and gave to it the prestige of his great name. It remained for the Opposition to place their own counter-proposals before the country. Differences within the party were smoothed over, and a manifesto, drawn up by Deak, gave statesmanlike expression to the aims of the national leaders. Embracing every reform included in the policy of the Government, it added to them others which the Government had not ventured to face, arid gave to the whole the character o£ a vindication of its own rights by the nation, in contrast to a scheme of administrative reform worked out by the officers of the Crown. Thus while it enforced the taxation of the nobles, it claimed for the Diet the right of control over every branch of the national expenditure. It demanded increased liberty for the Press, and an unfettered right of political association ; and finally, while doing homage to the unity of the Crown, it required that the Government of Hungary should be one in direct accord with the national representation in the Diet, and that the habitual effort of the Court of Vienna to place this kingdom on the same footing as the Emperor's non-constitutional provinces should be abandoned. With the rival programmes of the Government and the Opposition before it, the country proceeded to the elections of 1847. Hopefulness and enthusiasm abounded on every side ; and at the close of the year the Diet assembled from which so great a work was expected, and which was destined within so short a time to witness, in storm and revolution, the passing away of the ancient order of Hungarian life.

The directly constitutional problems with which the Diet of Presburg had to deal were peculiar to Hungary itself, and did not exist in the other parts of the Austrian Empire. There were, however, social problems which were not less urgently forcing themselves upon public attention alike in Hungary and in those provinces which 6njoyed no constitutional rights. The chief of these was the condition of the peasant-population. In the greater part of the Austrian dominions, though serfage had long been abolished, society was still based upon the manorial system. The peasant held his land subject to the obligation of labouring on his lord's domain for a certain number of days in the year, and of rendering him other customary services: the manor-court, though checked by the neighbourhood of crown-officers, retained its jurisdiction, and its agents frequently performed duties of police. Hence the proposed extinction of the so-called feudal tie, and the conversion of the semi-dependent cultivator into a freeholder bound only to the payment of a fixed money-charge, or rendered free of all obligation by the surrender of a part of his holding, involved in many districts the institution of new public authorities and a general reorganisation of the minor local powers. From this task the Austrian Government had shrunk in mere lethargy, even when, as in 1835, proposals for change had come from the landowners themselves. The work begun by Maria Theresa and Joseph remained untouched, though thirty years of peace had given abundant opportunity for its completion, and the legislation of Hardenberg in 1810 afforded precedents covering at least part of the field.

At length events occurred which roused the drowsiest heads in Vienna from their slumbers. The party of action among the Polish refugees at Paris had determined to strike another blow for the independence of their country. Instead, however, of repeating the insurrection of Warsaw, it was arranged that the revolt should commence in Prussian and Austrian Poland, and the beginning of the year 1846 was fixed for the uprising. In Prussia the Government crushed the conspirators before a blow could be struck. In Austria, though ample warning was given, the precautions taken were insufficient. General Collin occupied the Free City of Cracow, where the revolutionary committee had its headquarters; but the troops under his command were so weak that he was soon compelled to retreat, and to await the' arrival of reinforcements. Meanwhile the landowners in the district of Tarnow in northern Galicia raised the standard of insurrection, and sought to arm the country. The Ruthenian peasantry, however, among whom they lived, owed all that was tolerable in their condition to the protection of the Austrian crown-officers, and detested the memory of an independent Poland. Instead of following their lords into the field, they gave information of their movements, and asked instructions from the nearest Austrian authorities. They were bidden to seize upon any persons who instigated them to rebellion, and to bring them into the towns. A war of the peasants against the nobles forthwith broke out. Murder, pillage, and incendiary fires brought both the Polish insurrection and its leaders to a miserable end. The Polish nobles, unwilling to acknowledge the humiliating truth that their own peasants were their bitterest enemies, charged the Austrian Government with having set a price on their heads, and with having instigated the peasants to a communistic revolt. Metternich, disgraced by the spectacle of a Jacquerie raging apparently under his own auspices, insisted, in a circular to the European Courts, that the attack of the peasantry upon the nobles had been purely spontaneous, and occasioned by attempts to press certain villagers into the ranks of the rebellion by brute force. But whatever may have been the measure of responsibility incurred by the agents of the Government, an agrarian revolution was undoubtedly in full course in Galicia, and its effects were soon felt in the rest of the Austrian monarchy. The Arcadian contentment of the rural population, which had been the boast, and in some degree the real strength, of Austria, was at an end. Conscious that the problem which it had so long evaded must at length be faced, the Government of Vienna prepared to deal with the conditions of land-tenure by legislation extending over the whole of the Empire. But the courage which was necessary for an adequate solution of the difficulty nowhere existed within the official world, and the Edict which conveyed the last words of the Imperial Government on this vital question contained nothing more than a series of provisions for facilitating voluntary settlements between the peasants and their lords. In the quality of this enactment the Court of Vienna gave the measure, of its own weakness. The opportunity of breaking with traditions of impotence had presented itself and had been lost. Revolution was at the gates; and in the unsatisfied claim of the rural population the Government had handed over to its adversaries a weapon of the greatest power.

In the purely German provinces of Austria there lingered whatever of the spirit of tranquillity was still to be found within the Empire. This, however, was not the case in the districts into which the influence of Vienna, the capital extended. Vienna had of late grown out of its old careless spirit. The home in past years of a population notoriously pleasure-loving, good-humoured, And indifferent to public affairs, it had now taken something of a more serious character. The death of the Emperor Francis, who to the last generation of Viennese had been as fixed a part of the order of things as the river Danube, was not unconnected with this change in the public tone. So long as the old Emperor lived, all thought that was given to political affairs was energy thrown away. By his death not only had the State lost an ultimate controlling power, if dull, yet practised and tenacious, but this loss was palpable to all the world. The void stood bare and unrelieved before the public eye. The notorious imbecility of the Emperor Ferdinand, the barren and antiquated formalism of Metternich and of that entire system which seemed to be incorporated in him, made Government an object of general satire, and in some quarters of rankling contempt. In proportion as the culture and intelligence of the capital exceeded that of other towns, so much the more galling was the pressure of that part of the general system of tutelage which was especially directed against the independence of the mind. The censor-ship was exercised with grotesque stupidity. It was still the, aim of Government to isolate Austria from the ideas and the speculation of other lands, and to shape the intellectual world of the Emperor's subjects into that precise form which tradition prescribed as suitable for the members of a well-regulated State. In poetry, the works of Lord Byron were excluded from circulation, where custom-house officers and market-inspectors chose to enforce the law; in history and political literature, the leading writers of modern times lay under the same ban. Native production was much more effectively controlled. Whoever wrote in a newspaper, or lectured at a University, or published a work of imagination, was expected to deliver himself of something agreeable to the constituted authorities, or was reduced to silence. Far as Vienna fell short of Northern Germany in intellectual activity, the humiliation inflicted on its best elements by this life-destroying surveillance was keenly felt and bitterly resented. More perhaps by its senile warfare against mental freedom than by any acts of direct political repression, the Government ranged against itself the almost unanimous opinion of the educated classes. Its hold on the affection of the capital was gone. Still quiescent, but ready to unite against the Government when opportunity should arrive, there stood, in addition to the unorganised mass of the middle ranks, certain political associations and students’ societies, a vigorous Jewish element, and the usual contingent furnished by poverty and discontent in every great city from among the labouring population. Military force sufficient to keep the capital in subjection was not wanting; but the foresight and the vigour necessary to cope with the first onset of revolution were nowhere to be found among the holders of power.

At Berlin the solid order of Prussian absolutism already shook to its foundation. With King Frederick William III, whose long reign ended in 1840, there departed the half-filial, half spiritless acquiescence of the nation in the denial of the liberties which had been so solemnly promised to it at the epoch of Napoleon's fall. The new Sovereign, Frederick William IV, ascended the throne amid high national hopes. The very contrast which his warm, exuberant nature offered to the silent, reserved disposition of his father pressed the public for a while in his favour. In the more shining personal qualities he far excelled all his im-mediate kindred. His artistic and literary sympathies, his aptitude of mind and readiness of speech, appeared to mark the man of a new age, and encouraged the belief that, in spite of the mediaeval dreams and reactionary theories to which, as prince, he had surrendered himself, he would, as King appreciate the needs of the time, and give to Prussia the free institutions which the nation demanded. The first acts of the new reign were generously conceived. Political offenders were freely pardoned. Men who had suffered for their opinions were restored to their posts in the Universities and the public service, or selected for promotion. But when the King approached the constitutional question, his utterances . were, unsatisfactory. Though undoubtedly in favour of some reform, he gave no sanction to the idea of a really national representation, but seemed rather to seek occasions to condemn it. Other omens of ill import were not wanting. Allying his Government with a narrow school of theologians, the King offended men of independent mind, and transgressed against the best traditions of Prussian administration. The prestige of the new reign was soon exhausted. Those who had believed Frederick William to be a man of genius now denounced him as a vaporous, inflated dilettante; his enthusiasm was seen to indicate nothing in particular; his sonorous commonplaces fell flat on second delivery. Not only in his own kingdom, but in the minor German States, which looked to Prussia as the future leader of a free Germany, the opinion rapidly gained ground that Frederick William IV was to be numbered among the enemies rather than the friends of the good cause.

In the Edicts by which the last King of Prussia had promised his people a Constitution, it had been laid down that the representative body was to spring from the Provincial Estates, and that it was to possess, in addition to its purely consultative functions in legislation, a real power of control over all State loans and over all proposed additions to taxation. The interdependence of the promised Parliament and the Provincial Estates had been seen at the time to endanger the success of Hardenberg's scheme; nevertheless, it was this conception which King Frederick William IV made the very centre of his Constitutional policy. A devotee to the distant past, he spoke of the Provincial Estates, which in their present form had existed only since 1823, as if they were a great national and historic institution which had come down unchanged through centuries. His first experiment was the summoning of a Committee from these bodies to consider certain financial projects with which the Government was occupied (1842). The labours of the Committee were insignificant, nor was its treatment at the hands of the Crown Ministers of a serious character. Frederick William, however, continued to meditate over his plans, and appointed a Commission to examine the project drawn up at his desire by the Cabinet. The agitation in favour of Parliamentary Government became more and more pressing among the educated classes; and at length, in spite of some opposition from his brother, the Prince of Prussia, afterwards Emperor of Germany, the King determined to fulfil his father's promise and to convoke a General Assembly at Berlin. On the 3rd of February, 1847, there appeared a Royal Patent, which summoned all the Provincial Estates to the capital to meet as a United Diet of the Kingdom, The Diet was to be divided into two Chambers, the Upper Chamber including the Royal Princes and highest nobles, the Lower the representatives of the knights, towns, and peasants. The right of legislation was not granted to the Diet; it had, however, the right of presenting petitions on internal affairs. State-loans and new taxes were not, in time of peace, to be raised without its con-sent. No regular interval was fixed for the future meetings of the Diet, and its financial rights were moreover reduced by other provisions, which enacted that a United Committee from the Provincial Estates was to meet every four years for certain definite objects, and that a special Delegation was to sit each year for the transaction of business relating to the National Debt.

The nature of the General Assembly convoked by this Edict, the functions conferred upon it, and the guarantees offered for Representative Government in the future, so little corresponded with the requirements of the nation, that the question was at once raised in Liberal circles whether the concessions thus tendered by the King ought to be accepted or rejected. The doubt which existed as to the disposition of the monarch himself was increased by the speech from the throne at the opening of the Diet (April ii). In a vigorous harangue extending over half an hour, King Frederick William, while he said much that was appropriate to the occasion, denounced the spirit of revolution that was working in the Prussian Press, warned the Deputies that they had been summoned not to advocate political theories, but to protect each the rights of his own order, and declared that no power on earth should induce him to change his natural relation to his people into a constitutional one, or to permit a written sheet of paper to intervene like a second Providence between Prussia and the Almighty. So vehement was the language of the King, and so uncompromising his tone, that the proposal was forth-with made at a private conference that the Deputies should quit Berlin in a body. This extreme course was not adopted; it was determined instead to present an address to the King, laying before him in respectful language the shortcomings in the Patent of February 3rd. In the debate on this address began the Parliamentary history of Prussia. The Liberal majority in the Lower Chamber, anxious to base their cause on some foundation of positive law, treated the Edicts of Frederick William III defining the rights of the future Representative Body as actual statutes of the realm, al-though the late King had never called a Representative Body into existence. From this point of view the functions now given to Committees and Delegations were so much illegally withdrawn from the rights of the Diet. The Government, on the other hand, denied that the Diet possessed any rights or claims whatever beyond those assigned to it by the Patent of February 3rd, to which it owed its origin. In receiving the address of the Chambers, the King, while expressing a desire to see the Constitution further developed, repeated the principle already laid down by his Ministers, and refused to acknowledge any obligation outside those which he had himself created.

When, after a series of debates on the political questions at issue, the actual business of the Session began, the relations between the Government and the Assembly grew worse rather than better. The principal measures submitted were the grant of a State-guarantee to certain land-banks established for the purpose of extinguishing the rent-charges on peasants' holdings, and the issue of a public loan for the construction of railways by the State. Alleging that the former measure was not directly one of taxation, the Government, in laying it before the Diet, declared that they asked only for an opinion, and denied that the Diet possessed any right of decision. Thus challenged, as it were, to make good its claims, the Diet not only declined to assent to this guarantee, but set its veto on the proposed railway-loan. Both projects were in themselves admitted to be to the advantage of the State; their rejection by the Diet was an emphatic vindication of constitutional rights which the Government seemed indisposed to acknowledge. Opposition grew more and more embittered; and when, as a preliminary to the dissolution of the Diet, the King ordered its members to proceed to the election of the Committees and Delegation named in the Edict of February 3rd, an important group declined to take part in the elections, or consented to do so only under reservations, on the ground that the Diet, and that alone, possessed the constitutional control over finance which the King was about to commit to other bodies. Indignant at this protest, the King absented himself from the ceremony which brought the Diet to a close (June 26th). Amid general irritation and resentment the Assembly broke up. Nothing had resulted from its convo-cation but a direct exhibition of the antagonism of purpose existing between the Sovereign and the national representatives. Moderate men were alienated by the doctrines promulgated from the Throne; and an experiment which, if more wisely conducted, might possibly at the eleventh hour have saved all Germany from revolution, left the Monarchy discredited and exposed to the attack of the most violent of its foes.

The train was now laid throughout central Europe; it needed but a flash from Paris to kindle the fire far and wide. That the Crown which Louis Philippe owed to one popular outbreak might be wrested from him by another, had been a thought constantly present not only to the King himself but to foreign observers during the earlier years of his reign. The period of comparative peace by which the first Republican movements after 1830 had been succeeded, the busy working of the Parliamentary system, the keen and successful pursuit of wealth which seemed to have mastered all other impulses in France, had made these fears a thing of the past. The Orleanist Monarchy had taken its place among the accredited institutions of Europe; its chief, aged, but vigorous in mind, looked forward to the future of his dynasty, and occupied himself with plans for extending its influence or its sway beyond the limits of France itself. At one time Louis Philippe had hoped to connect his family by marriage with the Courts of Vienna or Berlin; this project had not met with encouragement ; so much the more eagerly did the King watch for opportunities in another direction, and devise plans for restoring the family­ union between France and Spain which had been established by Louis XIV. and which had so largely influenced the history of Europe down to the overthrow of the Bourbon Monarchy. The Crown of Spain was now held by a young girl; her sister was the next in succession; to make the House of Orleans as powerful at Madrid as it was at Paris seemed under these circumstances no impossible task to a King and a Minister who, in the interests of the dynasty, were prepared to make some sacrifice of honour and good faith.

While the Carlist War was still continuing, Lord Palmerston had convinced himself that Louis Philippe intended to marry the young Queen Isabella, if possible, to one of his sons. Some years later this project was unofficially mentioned by Guizot to the English statesman, who at once caused it to be understood that England would not permit the union. Abandoning this scheme, Louis Philippe then demanded, by a misconstruction of the Treaty of Utrecht, that the Queen's choice of a husband should be limited to the Bourbons of the Spanish or Neapolitan line. To this claim Lord Aberdeen, who had become Foreign Secretary in 1841, declined to give his assent; he stated, however, that no step would be taken by England in antagonism to such marriage, if it should be deemed desirable at Madrid. Louis Philippe now suggested that his youngest son, the Duke of Montpensier, should wed the Infanta Fernanda, sister of the Queen of Spain. On the express understanding that this marriage should not take place until the Queen should herself have been married and have had children, the English Cabinet assented to the proposal. That the marriages should not be simultaneous was treated by both Governments as the very heart and substance of the arrangement, inasmuch as the failure of children by the Queen's marriage would make her sister, or her sister's heir, inheritor of the Throne. This was repeatedly acknowledged by Louis Philippe and his Minister, Guizot, in the course of communications with the British Court which extended over some years. Nevertheless, in 1846, the French Ambassador at Madrid, in conjunction with the Queen's mother, Maria Christina, succeeded in carrying out a plan by which the conditions laid down at London and accepted at Paris were utterly frustrated. Of the Queen's Spanish cousins, there was one, Don Francisco, who was known to be physically unfit for marriage. To this person it was determined by Maria Christina and the French Ambassador that the young Isabella should be united, her sister being simultaneously married to the Duke of Montpensier. So flagrantly was this arrangement in contradiction to the promises made at the Tuileries, that, when intelligence of it arrived at Paris, Louis Philippe declared for a moment that the Ambassador must be disavowed and disgraced. Guizot, however, was of better heart than his master, and asked for delay. In the very crisis of the King's perplexity the return of Lord Palmerston to office, and the mention by him of a Prince of Saxe-Coburg as one of the candidates for the Spanish Queen's hand, afforded Guizot a pretext for declaring that Great Britain had violated its engagements towards the House of Bourbon by promoting the candidature of a Coburg. In reality the British Government had not only taken no part in assisting the candidature of the Coburg Prince, but had directly opposed it. This, however, was urged in vain at the Tuileries. Whatever may have been the original intentions of Louis Philippe or of Guizot, the temptation of securing the probable succession to the Spanish Crown was too strong to be resisted. Preliminaries were pushed forward with the utmost haste, and on the 10th of October, 1846, the marriages of Queen Isabella and her sister, as arranged by the French Ambassador and the Queen-Mother, were simultaneously solemnised at Madrid.

Few intrigues have been more disgraceful than that of the Spanish Marriages; none more futile. The course of history mocked its ulterior purposes; its immediate results were wholly to the injury of the House of Orleans. The cordial understanding between France and Great Britain, which had been revived after the differences of 1840, was now finally shattered, Louis Philippe stood convicted before his people of sacrificing a valuable alliance to purely dynastic ends; his Minister, the austere and sanctimonious Guizot, had to defend himself against charges which would have covered with shame the most hardened man of the world. Thus stripped of its garb of moral superiority, condemned as at once unscrupulous and unpatriotic, the Orleanist Monarchy had to meet the storm of popular discontent which was gathering over France as well as over neighbouring lands. For the lost friendship of England it was necessary to seek a substitute in the support of some Continental Power. Throwing himself into the reactionary policy of the Court of Vienna, Guizot endeavoured to establish a diplomatic concert from which England should be excluded, as France had been in 1840. There were circumstances which gave some countenance to the design. The uncompromising vigour with which Lord Palmerston supported the Liberal movement now becoming so formidable in Italy made every absolute Government in Europe his enemy; and had time been granted, the despotic Courts would possibly have united with France in some more or less open combination against the English Minister. But the moments were now numbered; and ere the projected league could take substance, the whirlwind descended before which Louis Philippe and his Minister were the first to fall.

A demand for the reform of the French Parliamentary system had been made when Guizot was entering upon office in the midst of the Oriental crisis of 1840. It had then been silenced and repressed by all the means at the disposal of the Executive; King Louis Philippe being convinced that with a more democratic Chamber the maintenance of his own policy of peace would be impossible. The demand was now raised again with far greater energy. Although the franchise had been lowered after the Revolution of July, it was still so high that not one person in a hundred and fifty possessed a vote, while the property-qualification which was imposed upon the Deputies themselves excluded from the Chamber all but men of substantial wealth. Moreover, there existed no law prohibiting the holders of administrative posts under the Govern-ment from sitting in the Assembly. The consequence was that more than one-third of the Deputies were either officials who had secured election, or representatives who since their election had accepted from Government appointments of greater or less value. Though Parliamentary talent abounded, it was impossible that a Chamber so composed could be the representative of the nation at large. The narrowness of the franchise, the wealth of the Deputies themselves, made them, in all questions affecting the social condition of the people, a mere club of capitalists; the influence which the Crown exercised through the bestowal of offices converted those who ought to have been its controllers into its dependents, the more so as its patronage was lavished on nominal opponents even more freely than on avowed friends. Against King Louis Philippe the majority in the Chamber had in fact ceased to possess a will of its own. It represented wealth; it represented to some extent the common-sense of France; but on all current matters of dispute it only represented the executive government in another form. So thoroughly had the nation lost all hope in the Assembly during the last years of Louis Philippe, that even the elections had ceased to excite interest. On the other hand, the belief in the general prevalence of corruption was every day receiving new warrant. A series of State-trials disclosed the grossest frauds in every branch of the administration, and proved that political influence was habitually used for purposes of pecuniary gain. Taxed with his tolerance of a system scarcely distinguishable from its abuses, the Minister could only turn to his own nominees in the Chamber and ask them whether they felt themselves corrupted; invited to consider some measure of Parliamentary reform, he scornfully asserted his policy of resistance. Thus, hopeless of obtaining satisfaction either from the Government or from the Chamber itself, the leaders of the Opposition resolved in 1847 to appeal to the country at large; and an agitation for Parliamentary reform, based on the methods employed by O'Connell in Ireland, soon spread through the principal towns of France.

But there were other ideas and other forces active among the labouring population of Paris than those familiar to the politicians of the Assembly. Theories of Socialism, the property of a few thinkers and readers during the earlier years of Louis Philippe's reign, had now sunk deep among the masses, and become, in a rough and easily apprehended form, the creed of the poor. From the time when Napoleon's fall had restored to France its faculty of thought, and, as it were, turned the soldier’s eyes again upon his home, those questionings as to the basis of the social union which had occupied men's minds at an earlier epoch were once more felt and uttered. The problem was still what it had been in the eighteenth century; the answer was that of a later age. Kings, priests, and nobles had been overthrown, but misery still covered the world. In the teaching of Saint-Simon, under the Restoration, religious conceptions blended with a great industrial scheme; in the Utopia of Fourier, produced at the same fruitful period, what-ever was valuable belonged to its suggestions in co-operative production. But whether the doctrine propounded was that of philosopher, or sage, or charlatan, in every case the same leading ideas were visible;—the insufficiency of the individual in isolation, the industrial basis of all social life, the concern of the community, or of its supreme authority, in the organisation of labour. It was naturally in no remote or complex form that the idea of a new social order took possession of the mind of the workman in the faubourgs of Paris. He read in Louis Blanc, the latest and most intelligible of his teachers of the right to labour, of the duty of the State to provide work for its citizens. This was something actual and tangible. For this he was ready upon occasion to take up arms; not for the purpose of extending the franchise to another handful of the Bourgeoisie, or of shifting the profits of government from one set of place-hunters to another. In antagonism to the ruling Minister the Reformers in the Chamber and the Socialists in the streets might for a moment unite their forces: but their ends were irreconcilable, and the allies of today were necessarily the foes of tomorrow.

At the close of the year 1847 the last Parliament of the Orleanist Monarchy assembled. The speech from the Throne, delivered by Louis Philippe himself, denounced in strong terms the agitation for Reform which had been carried on during the preceding months, though this agitation had, on the whole, been the work of the so-called Dynastic Opposition, which, while demanding electoral reform, was sincerely loyal to the Monarchy. The King's words were a challenge; and in the debate on the Address, the challenge was taken up by all ranks of Monarchical Liberals as well as by the small Republican section in the Assembly. The Government, however, was still secure of its majority. Defeated in the votes on the Address, the Opposition determined, by way of protest, to attend a banquet to be held in the Champs Elysees on the 22nd of February by the Reform-party in Western Paris. It was at first desired that by some friendly arrangement with the Government, which had declared the banquet illegal, the possibility of recourse to violence should be avoided. Misunderstandings, however, arose, and the Government finally prohibited the banquet, and made preparations for meeting any disturbance with force of arms. The Deputies, anxious to employ none but legal means of resistance, now resolved not to attend the banquet; on the other hand, the Democratic and. Socialist leaders welcomed a possible opportunity for revolt. On the morning of the 22nd masses of men poured westwards from the workmen's quarter. The city was in confusion all day, and the erection of barricades began. Troops were posted in the streets; no serious attack, how-ever, was made by either side, and at nightfall quiet returned.

On the next morning the National Guard of Paris was called to arms. Throughout the struggle between Louis Philippe and the populace of Paris in the earlier years of his reign, the National Guard, which was drawn principally from the trading classes, had fought steadily for the King. Now, however, it was at one with the Liberal Opposition in the Assembly, and loudly demanded the dismissal of the Ministers. While some of the battalions interposed between the regular troops and the populace and averted a conflict, others proceeded to the Chamber with petitions for Reform. Obstinately as Louis Philippe had hitherto refused all concession, the announcement of the threatened defection of the National Guard at length convinced him that resistance was impossible. He accepted Guizot's resignation, and the Chamber heard from the fallen Minister himself that he had ceased to hold office. Although the King declined for a while to commit the formation of a Ministry to Thiers, the recognised chief of the Opposition, and endeavoured to place a politician more acceptable to himself in office, it was felt that with the fall of Guizot all real resistance to Reform was broken. Nothing more was asked by the Parliamentary Opposition or by the middle-class of Paris. The victory seemed to be won, the crisis at an end. In the western part of the capital congratulation and good-humour succeeded to the fear of conflict. The troops fraternised with the citizens and the National Guard; and when darkness came on, the boulevards were illuminated as if for a national festival.

In the midst, however, of this rejoicing, and while the chiefs of the revolutionary societies, fearing that the opportunity had been lost for striking a blow at the Monarchy, exhorted the defenders of the barricades to maintain their positions, a band of workmen came into conflict, accidentally or of set purpose, with the troops in front of the Foreign Office. A volley was fired, which killed or wounded eighty persons. Placing the dead bodies on a waggon, and carrying them by torchlight through the streets in the workmen's quarter, the insurrectionary leaders called the people to arms. The tocsin sounded throughout the night; on the next morning the populace marched against the Tuileries. In consequence of the fall of the Ministry and the supposed reconciliation of the King with the People, whatever military dispositions had been begun had since been abandoned. At isolated points the troops fought bravely; but there was no systematic defence. Shattered by the strain of the previous days, and dismayed by the indifference of the National Guard when he rode out among them, the King, who at every epoch of his long life had shown such conspicuous courage in the presence of danger, now lost all nerve and all faculty of action. He signed an act of abdication in favour of his grandson, the Count of Paris, and fled. Behind him the victorious mob burst into the Tuileries and devastated it from cellar to roof. The Legislative Chamber, where an attempt was made to proclaim the Count of Paris King, was in its turn invaded. In uproar and tumult a Provisional Government was installed at the Hotel de Ville; and ere the day closed the news went out to Europe that the House of Orleans had ceased to reign, and that the Republic had been proclaimed. It was not over France alone, it was over the Continent at large, that the tide of revolution was breaking.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE MARCH REVOUTION, 1848