the Pope and his advisers. Addresses poured in from every large town in the empire denouncing the Romish pretensions, and expressing sympathy with the Government. In fact the priests defeated their own ends by the extravagance of The about a crisis which a conciliatory policy Gesetz." This bill provided that, in the riage. But the mass of the laity rose up case of children whose parents had died in indignation against the proceedings of without expressing their wishes on the subject, the sons should be brought up in the father's, the daughters in the mother's religion. At the age of fourteen, however, the child was to be allowed to choose for itself. Infidelity was no longer to incapacitate a citizen for inheritance: the their measures, and hastened to bring preaching of infidel, i. e., unchristian, doctrines no longer to constitute a misdemeanour. No citizen was to be compelled to contribute to the services, or to send his child to the schools, of a church to which he did not belong. No priest was to be able to deny the right of burial to a member of another religious sect in cases where either the family claiming the right had a private vault, or where the churchyard was the only one in the parish. This important law, the last clause of which especially put an end to a series of scandals which had for a long time been a disgrace to the country, was passed without difficulty by both Houses. It is now proposed to pass from the field of clerical agitation to a more important and interesting question. The contest between the Pope and Count Beust could have had but one end. The Pope's pretensions were an anachronism, and the struggle only interests us as illustrating one of the main intellectual movements which characterize the age in which we live. It is otherwise with the question at issue between the federalists and the centralists. It is not too much to say that of all the countries on the face of the earth, Austria is the one which at the present moment offers most to the study of the political philosopher. The statesmen now engaged in reconstructing her have few, if any, precedents to fall back on. If they succeed in their enterprise, they will have solved the most dificult problem of practical politics of which the present century has been a witness. In the meantime the bishops had not been idle. Their first attempt was to bring a petition against the three bills to the Kaiser over the heads of the Ministry. Franz Joseph treated this attempt with becoming dignity, by referring the petitioners to his "constitutional advisers." Their next resort was, as might have been expected, to Rome. The Pope determined to make use of all his spiritual weapons, and on the 22nd of June, launched a characteristic allocution at the heads of the Austrian rebels. In this document the three In order to make good this statement a laws in question were denounced as "de- few statistics will be necessary. Cisleistructive, abominable, and damnable." thanian Austria contains a population_of "Therefore," so runs the allocution, "on 19 millions, of which 6 millions are Gerthe strength of our Apostolic authority, mans, while the remaining 11 millions bewe anathematize these laws, in particular long to the Slavonian race. In eight of all such clauses as are directed by the Aus- the Austrian provinces, viz., in Bohemia, trian Government against the rights of the Moravia, Galicia, Krain, Istria, Gorz, Church and we declare the laws by vir- Triest, and Dalmatia, the Slaves constitue of this same authority to be null and tute the large majority of the population. void." Popes have often taken foolish If they were represented in Parliament and impolitic steps, but it remained for according to their numbers, 117 of the 203 Pope Pius IX. openly to urge the subjects members of the Reichsrath would be Slaves, of a Catholic kingdom in the nineteenth the remaining minority of 86 representing century to rebellion against their Govern- the other nationalities. How different the ment. The allocution proved as unsuc- facts of the case are, any one who knows cessful as it was gross. It is true that the anything of Austrian politics can testify. bishops adhered faithfully to the instruc- The question then naturally arises, how is tions of their chief. Riccabona of Trient it that these Slaves possess so little politideclared that any one who submitted to cal significance? The inquiry admits of the May laws was a despiser of the Son of many answers. The cause of their politiGod. Schwarzenberg directed his clergy, cal insignificance is to be traced to a pecuin a pastoral letter to the four Bohemian liar combination of historical, geographibishops, to refuse confession and absolu- cal, ethnological, religious, and social cirtion to any couple joined by a civil mar- cumstances. In the first place, they have : stood almost uniformly in respect of the Italians in Istria and Triest, and in respect of the Germans elsewhere in Austria, in the relation of conquered to conquerors. In the second place, the Slaves are scattered over the face of the empire, the Czechs in the north, the Poles in the east, the Slovenians in the south, and have thus lost the opportunity of political contact. In the third place, they do not all speak the same language nor profess the same religion, the Ruthenians of Galicia e.g., belonging to the Eastern Church. Lastly, they compose for the most part the peasantry of the country, and possess, with the exception of the Poles, no influential middle class and no national nobility. Of the Austrian Slaves, about 5,000,000 are Czechs, 2,320,000 Poles, 3,000,000 Ruthenians, 1,200,000 Slovenians. To be added to these are 600,000 Italians, and a small number of Rumanians in the Bukowina. All these stocks have a distinct individuality of their own, and many of them, as e.g., the Poles and Czechs, have a past history to look back on. The Poles are the people which have identified themselves least with the empire to which they belong. The one thought of the Polish patriot is the restoration of his country to its lost rights. At the same time, they have been treated, at least of late years, with great consideration by the Government, and have never carried their opposition to any extreme length. The tie which binds them to Austria is their hatred of Russia. They know that the disintegration of Austria would probably involve their annexation to the hated Russian, and hence their support can be reckoned on in the most perilous questions of foreign politics. The late President of the Cisleithanian Ministry Graf Potocki, is a Pole; the Polish members are treated very much like the Irish members in our Commons, and are left to decide questions of purely Polish policy for themselves; many politicians hope by a coalition between the Germans and Poles to overbear the opposition of the remaining Slaves. The Czechs, like the Poles, have a certain history of their own. The student of history will remember that Bohemia was originally a settlement of the Marcomanni, a German tribe who migrated there in the 5th century. This Teutonic stock was, however, overflooded towards the close of the same century by a new migration of Slavish tribes, who displaced the original inhabitants in very much the same way as the Saxons displaced the Britons in our own island. The heads of these tribes formed the beginning of the Czechish nobility. The semi-barbarous Slaves who thus obtained a footing in the country were Christianized and civilized by a new influx of German merchants and German clergy. In process of time the prosperity of these settlers and the favour shown to them by the Kings of Bohemia drew down on them the envy of the Czechs, and in the 16th century began that terrible persecution, which, assuming the form of a religious war between the Hussites and Catholics, in reality was a contest between the two races for the supremacy in Bohemia. The Hussites prevailed, and the Czechs were for a long time dominant. Then came the still more terrible days when the sword of the German Kaiser brought retribution for the blood shed by the Hussites, and reinstated Germanism and Catholicism in their ancient place. Since those times until a comparatively late date the Czechs had much right to consider themselves an oppressed race. The policy of persecution, as is almost always the case, gave fresh life and energy to the nationality which it was its purpose to destroy. Long the Czechs bore their sorrows in secret. At last the revolutionary year of 1818 seemed to offer them fresh hopes of liberation from the yoke under which they chafed. Their ambition was to come forward as the leaders of the Austrian Slaves, and to win for themselves, the Slovenians and Croatians, the place in the Austrian constitution to which their numbers entitled them. But the chilling years of Bachian despotism followed, and once more they relapsed, if not into apathy, at least into sullen silence. Then the February constitution once more raised their hopes. In spite of Schmerling's artificial group-system, which procured him a German majority from Bohemia and Moravia, the Czechs took their places in the Reichsrath, hoping, with the help of the Hungarians and Croatians, to be able to offer a successful resistance to the Germans. But the Hungarians and Croatians, as we have seen, refused to appear, and the Czechs, finding themselves in a hopeless minority, left the Reichsrath, never since then to enter it again. Again the Sistirungspolitik of Belcredi raised their hopes. They had secured a majority in the Bohemian and Moravian Landtage, and intended in the extraordinary Parliament to be convoked under that Minister's auspices to enter the campaign against centralism and dualism, reckoning on the support of the Hungarians in their resist ance to the centralists, and on the support tion," of their vague surroundings, and of the Germans in their resistance to the lay bare to view the unlovely realities dualists. Once more they were doomed the race-domination and race-hatred to be disappointed. Count Beust came which they serve to disguise. Still more into power, and, after passing the "Aus- must he be on his guard against such gleich" with Hungary, with the help of a phrases, when under the form of a spurious German majority raised by an unsparing Darwinism, they attempt to assume a philuse of Court influence and the Schmerlin- osophical garb. No more flagrant contragian groups, reduced them again to an vention of Natures's principle of selection impotent minority. They saw the German can be imagined, than a system of perseparty once more victors over the whole cution, which, instead of gradually substiline, and once more retreated to their old tuting higher for lower forms of life, kinposition of dogged resistance. It was in dles in the decaying forms an artificial vain that the December constitution vigour, and so counteracts the process offered them freedom. They refused to eat which it is its aim to further. The proof the feast which they had had no hand in portion of the Czechs to the Germans in preparing. It is not our intention to give Bohemia and Moravia, says Von Helfert, a detailed account of the modes in which is actually greater now, after all the their resistance asserted itself, in the Land- efforts of successive Kaisers and Kantag, in the school, in the press, in the zlers, than it was a century ago. public meeting; it has been deemed sufficient to describe the constitution which was offered them, to attest the discontent with which it was met, and to trace the causes of this discontent. Again it is important not to be misled by those main stumbling-blocks to the formation of an impartial judgment political analogies. To an Englishman the Austrian-German will reply "We repress the One thing must be carefully borne in Czechs on the same principle that you remind by anyone who is really anxious to press the Fenians; holding that their understand the character of this long wishes cannot be gratified without danger quarrel. It does not follow that, because to the general well-being of the empire." the Germans have generally identified To the North-German he will say "The themselves with the party of intellectual possession of a single administrative and and religious progress, this particular legislative system is as much an advantpolitical principle which they advocate is a age for Austria as it is for North-Germore liberal one than that of their oppo- many: if you advocate the suppression nents. The love of domination is apt to of your petty dukedoms and princedoms, obscure the judgment of the most impar- how can you consistently condemn the tial minds, and the German race, wise and abrogation of provincial independence in peaceable as it for the most part is, shares Austria?" The answer that the federalist the common failing. A foreigner in Austria might make to these and similar arguis peculiarly apt to be misled in their re- ments lies on the surface. Unity of adspect. Almost all the literature that he ministration is only so far good as there reads is German, and bears the stamp of exists a unity in the material administhe German ideas. He finds the federal-trated. There can be no universal rule ists allied with the clerical and reactionary laid down in this question. From certain party, he listens to the quaint claims which they prefer on the ground of the "historical" rights of the "kingdom" of Bohemia and the "indefeasible privileges" of the Landtage, he naturally compares the provinces of Austria to the counties, the Landtage to the Municipal Assemblies, of his own country, and decides that the Reichsrath is perfectly right in disallowing such preposterous claims. He is apt to forget that though unity of language and political institutions is an undoubted advantage, the forcible spread of this unity is as undoubted an evil: that freedom is one thing, the forcible propagation even of the freest ideas another. He must strip such phrases as the "Mission of Teutonism," the "superiority of Western civiliza points of view it would no doubt be an advantage for France and Germany to be governed from a single centre; but there are other points of view from which it would be an unquestionable evil. The question to be considered is, whether there exists in the various nationalities of which Austria is composed a sufficient unity of political purpose to justify the maintenance of a central administration. Apart from this argument, there are many who uphold federalism as the means to a more complete and representative centralism; who consider the establishment of a federal system as the only practical method of ridding the Government of the traditions of German supremacy. A central system, say they, should be the tion. It is not very probable that any so radical scheme will be adopted for the present by the Austrian Parliament. And yet the existing state of things is perilous in the extreme, and evidently calls for some heroic remedy. The centralist Ministry, which took office after the passing of the result of the voluntary cohesion of the principles of population and of federapolitical units; the movement which produces it should come from the extremities and not from the centre itself. But under the present régime a movement of this sort is impossible. Give the provinces autonomy and it will not be long before they recognize the advantages of unity. Turning now from the general question" Ausgleich" with Hungary, succumbed at issue between the two parties, let us ask what are the practical claims put forward by the Austrian Slaves and their chief spokesmen the Czechs? They ask first of all for the abolition of the Schmerlingian group-system, the natural and almost necessary result of which would be the election of a Slavish majority to the Reichsrath, and the establishment by this majority of a federal constitution -a constitution indeed which in such an event the Germans would be the first to demand. Then comes the main difficulty. The Germans urge with much force that the Landtage dominated by a Slavish majority would in all probability make a tyrannical use of their new power, and treat the Germans very much worse than the Germans had treated them. Dr. Fischhof proposes to obviate this difficulty in the following manner. Either, he says, the Landtag might be divided into two different chambers for the two prevailing nationalities, and each chamber be given in certain questions a power of vetoing the resolutions of the other: or, the representatives of the two nationalities might debate in common, but vote in separate curies, the sanction of each cury being necessary for the carrying of certain laws. He proposes to restrict the right of separate voting to questions connected with education and language. 66 in the winter of 1869 to the opposition of the Czechs and the Poles. Though commanding a majority in the Reichsrath, they represented the minority of the nation, and their government was an anomaly. Graf Potocki, the Pole, was then appointed Minister-President. His intention was to carry a gradual scheme of federation, beginning with Galicia. But he failed to conciliate the Czechs, who showed no wish to help the Poles to a liberty which they were not sure of securing for themselves afterwards. Hence the Government was left in a hopeless minority, for the German party, with a culpable want of patriotism, refused to support Potocki, and passed in the autumn of 1870 a vote of want of confidence against the Ministry. The Kaiser and Count Beust were involved in an apparently inextricable dilemma. Government by the majority, and government by the minority of the Reichsrath, had both been tried in the balances, and been found wanting. There ensued an interregnum of eight weeks. At last the list of new ministers, which had been kept completely secret till the morning of publication, was published in the "Wiener Zeitung." The list contained the names of a number of hitherto unknown men. Not a single member of the new government had ever sat in the Reichsrath or the Landtag, and two of them were born Czechs. The scheme was ingeniously planned to meet the two main difficulties of the situation the party hostility of the centralists, and the opposition of the Czechs. But the German party, though incapable of governing themselves, seem determined to allow no one else to govern but themselves. The measure of Count Hohenwart, the Minister-President, which proposed to confer a modified liberty of initiative on the Landtage, has lately been rejected in a full house, and matters rest as they were. The tyranny of the majority" in the Reichsrath would be obviated according to his plan still more simply. He would turn the Upper House into a Senate on the American principle. Each province would here have an equal voice. The Lower House would then be no longer chosen indirectly, through the Landtage, but directly by the people themselves, while each Landtag would send an equal number of members to the Upper House. As it happens, in eight of the seventeen provinces of Cisleithania there is a majority of Germans, so that the preponderance What is the remedy for these things? of the Slaves in the Lower House would Government with the present Reichsrath be checked by the almost equal balance of is evidently impossible. To an outside power in the Upper House. The two observer, there appears to be but one Houses would thus to use De Tocque- straightforward policy which would cut ville's words, respectively represent the the knot. Let the Kaiser pass a decree abolishing the group-method of voting, founded empire. At present the relations dissolve the Reichsrath, and trust to the existing between the two courts are the good sense and patriotism of the electors. most amicable, and it seems improbable The result of this would probably be the that Prince Bismarck is meditating any return to Parliament of an autonomist aggressive move. The feeling, too, of the majority, which would help the Govern- German inhabitants of Vienna and the ment to carry a number of measures for principal towns is on the whole distinctly the conciliation of the Slavish populations. averse to the transference of allegiance The latter have at present, in addition from Kaiser Franz Joseph to Kaiser Wilto their parliament grievances, several helm. They have tasted the sweets of grounds of discontent. They complain, liberty, and feel little attraction to the for instance, that the clause of the first iron system of Berlin. On the other hand, State ground-law, enacting the equality it is unquestionable that the dominant of all nationalities and languages in the party in Germany look forward with a eyes of the law, is a mere dead letter. sort of hungry impatience to the time Unlike the remaining clauses of the law, when the black, red, and white flag shall it pronounced nothing but the abstract be planted on the Hofburg of Vienna. It principle, and has not been followed up by is the fashion among these politicians to the definite regulations necessary to make talk of Austria as a hopelessly demoralized it effective. Hence they urge that the country, which nothing less than the rigid Reichsrath was only half-sincere in insert- rule of Prussia could restore to healthy ing it. They ask that the State should life. Indeed, Berlin and Vienna are comcome forward and encourage the founda-plete contrasts: it is no wonder that they tion of universities and high-schools, should fail to understand one another. where the Czechish, Slovenian, Polish, On the one side we see civil absorbed Servian, and Rumanian tongues may be in military life, a feudal aristocracy, an alscientifically studied. At the same time, most Puritanic rigidity of manners; they ask that the judges and other State the other side a sociable bourgeoisie, genofficials should make use in all public ial manners, a free and almost licentious transactions of the language spoken by press. It may be presumed that the time the majority of the population. A nation, has not yet come for the incorporation of says Dr. Fischhof, can only be cultivated the old Kaiser-city in the empire of the and civilized through the medium of its North. Such an incorporation would be own tongue. If you wish to win over the really harmful to the cause of European Slaves to German culture, you will defeat civilization. The Germans of Bohemia your own ends by forcing on them the use and the two Austrias act as a sort of politof a foreign idiom. Prepare the soil first ical rallying-point for the inchoate civilin the only way in which it can be rightly izations which enclose them. It would be prepared, and it will welcome and assimi-a pity if they abandoned this quasi-colonilate for itself the riches of German science and literature. These require no force to recommend them to the world; the employment of force implies a doubt of their intrinsic value. on al task imposed on them. Without them the Czechs, Slovenians, Ruthenians, &c., would be incapable of holding together, and would fall a prey sooner or later to the clutches of Russia. But with their But the Germans are opposed to these help Austria may look forward to a glochanges, and the Kaiser is naturally un-rious future. The Christian populations willing to alienate the sympathies of the lying to the south-east of Hungary are utrace which forms, after all, the backbone terly incapable of governing themselves, of the empire. At the present moment and the task of their political reconstruction especially, the victories of their Northern could be entrusted most properly to Ausbrothers, and the prestige which has gathered round the German name, makes them less than ever inclined to bend the neck to the whims of their semi-barbarous fellow-subjects. Austrian statesmen see only too plainly that the link which binds the German population to the monarchy is but a slight one, and will not bear any excessive strain. It is worth while to consider what are the chances, and what would be the results, of an annexation of the German provinces by the newly tria. But before any such schemes can become possible, she must set her own house in order. To this end a certain amount of self-sacrifice is required on the part of the Germans, and a cheerful cooperation on the part of the remaining nationalities. The main home difficulties which threaten the monarchy have been already described. The dangers which threaten it from without are merely, as it were, the mirror and counterpart of those which threaten it from within. Russia is |