solemn absurdity, a cruel mystification in
which Austria is cheating herself. He will
end by perceiving that the majority of the
Austrian populations are gravitating
towards foreign centres, and that this
movement, so perilous for the empire, must
necessarily be accelerated by every difficulty
to which its external relations are exposed.
The disasters which those difficulties must
occasion are inevitable. In the midst of
this general tendency towards the dissolution
of the empire, what is the position of
its Hungarian subjects? The Hungarian,
and he only, has no affinity whatsoever
with any foreign race or state. His ambition
and interests cannot range beyond his
present country; and it is only under the
sheltering ægis of his legitimate and
constitutional sovereign that his utmost
desires and traditional destinies can by any
possibility be realised. When the day of
difficulty and danger arrives, and yet once
more I affirm that most assuredly that day
will arrive, the emperor, enlightened by the
disastrous result of mischievous political
experiments, will then, perforce, become
himself the champion of those whose
national existence his majesty's government
now endeavours to extinguish. Our
young monarch will then no longer tolerate
the assassination of that noble nation
with whose loyal co-operation a chivalrous
sovereign may safely dare all difficulties,
and brave the most desperate
circumstances: that recuperative and devoted
race, which on behalf of a prince beloved,
and faithful to his knightly oath, hath ever
been, is now, and ever will be, ready to shed
the last drop of its blood. . . .

"This is what I perceive in the future.
And let me add that, with all the strength
of my being, I confide implicitly in that
Providence which often smites severely
both princes and peoples in punishment of
their faults, but which has never yet
suffered a generous nation to perish utterly,
or an honest prince to remain for ever
intellectually blinded. Sustained by this
conviction, which comes to me from my
faith in God, my decision as founder of
the academy has been firmly taken. If
there be no means of resistance, if we must
absolutely submit to the conditions imposed
upon us, I accept the new statutes, although
there is not one of them which I approve.
I accept them all with the resignation of a
conquered man, whose heart may be wrung
but whose opinion cannot be fettered. At
the same time, however, true to the noble
motto of 'justum ac tenacem propositi
virum,' I hereby solemnly declare that I
shall cease to pay to the academy the
annual interest of the sum dedicated by me
to the foundation of it, the moment in
which the sacrifice of my fortune becomes
liable to employment on behalf of any
other than the great object of its founders,
which has been recognised by the law of
the land, and confirmed by contract
between the nation and its sovereign. When
I am dead my heirs will, I doubt not,
accept and adhere to this declaration. And
if a day should come, when my present fears
are realised, on that day either I or my
successor will most assuredly withdraw all
our contributions from the funds of an
academy which will then have ceased to
fulfil the purpose of its foundation, and
devote those funds to the creation of some
other and worthier national institution."

It was not to be expected that these
periodical protests and criticisms, even
though issued from beneath the sinister
shelter of a lunatic asylum, would long be
tolerated by an administration, which, to
adopt the metaphor of a Polish poet, was
capable of punishing all who ventured
to pick up a pin in the street, because it
knew that, in the hands of the oppressed,
a pin may become a formidable weapon.
Szechenyi was at the same time writing to
the London Times newspaper, vigorous
descriptions of the political condition of
Austria under the administration of Baron
Bach. Whenever one of these letters
appeared in the great English journal, it was
a day of rejoicing at Döbling.

In 1859, the Bach system began to
totter. The predictions of Szechenyi were
already being fulfilled. Not only the
Hungarians, but all the other non-German
population of the empire, had been taught
to execrate the government under which
they were living. The Czechs and Croats
complained that what had been inflicted
on the Magyars by way of punishment was
dealt out to them by way of reward; and
the declaration of war between Austria
and Italy was hailed by all these populations
with a thrill of hope in hearts which
invoked from all parts of the empire the
defeat of the imperial armies. The young
Emperor himself, whose political misfortunes
have been partly due to the generous loyalty
with which he has at all times given fair
play to the policy of incapable ministers,
was at last growing thoroughly disgusted
with the proved sterility and weakness
of the repressive system which had for ten
years been carried out in his name. To re-