THE THREE KINGDOMS.

IT is the remark of quaint old Fuller that this world affordeth no new accidents, but in the same
sense wherein we call it a new moon, which is the old one in another shape, and no other than what had
been formerly. Yet we must admit that, in the new circumstances with which old actions return to us thus
"furbished over," it is often extremely difficult to recognise the past. The circumstance makes the essential
difference.

Hungary has enjoyed a free monarchical constitution for a longer period than any country in Europe,
with the sole exception of England; and has enjoyed it for a longer uninterrupted period than England
herself. During eight centuries there have been but two breaks in her line of kings. John Huniades, a
man of humble origin, was her Gubernator, or Governing President, in the middle of the fifteenth century,
and under that title rallied her entire population to arms. In the middle of the nineteenth century the
same exploit has been again performed, under the same title of Gubernator, by a man of as doubtful lineage
and as unquestionable genius,—Louis Kossuth. But the resemblances are less impressive than the contrasts
in their destiny. Huniades perished after a glorious victory, and Kossuth has been saved after a terrible
defeat; while the power of the Sultan to which the one sacrificed his life, is that to which the other owes
his freedom. Circumstances have altered all. Four centuries ago, men fought for religion where they are
now fighting for civil freedom. The Sultan of that day is what the Czar is to-day. Four centuries have
effectually clipped the claws of the Turk, and have lifted the once wretched vassal of the hordes of Tartary
into the bugbear and scourge of Europe.

"It has been our fate," exclaimed M. Kossuth, in that remarkable speech at Winchester which could
nowhere have been so appropriately spoken as in the most ancient capital of the constitutional monarchy of
England, "to struggle for the liberties of Europe, as once we had struggled for her Christianity." This is
true; and M. Kossuth's exposition of the truth is one that the statesmen of this country should look into
attentively, with whatever feeling they may choose to regard the Hungarian hero himself. Not more
correctly could it be said of the first than of the last "Governor" of Hungary, that the struggle which he led
was not one of faction against faction, of democracy against aristocracy, or of poverty against wealth. As in
the fifteenth century the whole nation rose as one man against the irruption of the followers of Mahomet,
they rose with not less unanimity in the nineteenth against the inroad of as great a barbarism. They went
into the field to defend their constitution against revolutionary despotism, to defend their independence
against foreign invasion. The newly-enfranchised peasantry were not less ardent in the cause than those
who had been for centuries in exclusive possession of the full rights of citizenship. Of those privileged
classes, to their eternal honour be it spoken, it had been the aim for several years before Kossuth became
their leader to extend the full benefits of the constitution to the unprivileged. To wonder that this should
have been deferred so late, and that a nation which possessed the germs of civil freedom before even England
should in their full growth so far have been outstripped by Englishmen, is not simply to forget those
constant wars with the Turks of which Hungary bore the brunt and Europe reaped the advantage, but
also to forget that on the head of the King of Hungary, who was also Emperor of Austria, to use the
striking language of M. Kossuth at Winchester, "two crowns had been laid which never could agree, which
never could be united, the one a constitutional, the other an absolute crown."

The aggression of the Turk repelled, the influence of the Austrian had to be resisted; and in such
circumstances it was no trifling achievement for Hungary merely to maintain unimpaired the vitality of
its system of self-government. Still, while not only chartered liberties but the very habits and traditions
of self-government became gradually lost to every other continental people, the Hungarians maintained
those habits and prescriptive rights through good and evil times; and still, in spite of every disadvantage,
reforms were not lost sight of. Let any one, forgetting even the name of Kossuth or that such a man
has existed, examine the history of the Austrian Empire for the last half century, and he will find it
marked by a series of efforts, on the part of the privileged classes in Hungary to raise up the unprivileged
to their own level, and on the part of the cabinet at Vienna to sink down every class to the level of
the unprivileged. Seeing this, if he be a true conservative, to which side should his instincts lead him?
Should they be with a people defending its ancestral rights, or with a camarilla bent on overthrowing
them? This is the point of view which modern statesmen have overlooked. They have confounded the
Hungarian movement with other resistances to old authority. They have not been able to recognise a
people fighting for the inviolability of ancient liberties, and to support the sanctity of a royal word. Or
they must also have seen, in the success of such a struggle, the only sure and safe guarantee for a continued
maintenance of order and security in the east of Europe.

For what now is Austria? Strange as the remark may sound, her loss in late events has been the
greatest. Her real policy should have been, in the presence of modern changes, to cherish the ancient
constitution which existed in Hungary, to have imparted to her hereditary provinces new institutions
adapted to the age, and to have rallied round her the heterogeneous peoples composing her empire by
the watchwords of self-government, civilisation, and free-trade. She would thus again have incurred
that noble debt which Maria Theresa so eagerly confessed when she declared that she owed her crown