been quite enthusiastic on the subject, and, having declared Kossuth the champion of liberty, the apostle of humanity, a second Messiah, come to break the power of tyrants, and to redeem the human race from bondage, have been ready to respond to his appeal, and to force their government into a war with both Austria and Russia in his behalf.

Kossuth, in all his speeches that we have read, in all his reasonings, quietly assumes as the basis of his arguments what he knows perfectly well is false, and the mass of his American sympathizers take his statements as true, without having any clear or just conception of the real merits of the question. Four years ago Hungary, to the great body of our people, even our educated people, was as much a terra incognita as the interior of Africa. Very few of them had any knowledge of its inhabitants, its domestic institutions, or its relations to the Austrian empire. Italian refugees and French liberals had prejudiced them against Austria, and prepared them to believe that any party opposed to her must be in the right. When, therefore, they heard Hungary had revolted and taken up arms against her, they took it for granted that the Hungarian cause was a good cause, and deserving the sympathy of every American citizen, and every friend of liberty throughout the world.

But Kossuth knows perfectly well that Hungary had no ground of complaint against the Austrian government. That Hungary had not developed her resources, that she had not kept pace with the industrial progress of the age. that she had to suffer very serious evils, very many things that needed reforming, is most true and undeniable; but all this was due, not to the Austrian government, but to the obstinacy and folly of her own diet, or local parliament. The imperial government labored constantly to persuade the local parliament to introduce the reforms which in the process of time and change of circumstances had become necessary, but always without success, and there was not a grievance complained of, not a reform needed, that the Hungarian parliament was not competent to redress or to introduce, if it had been so disposed. This fact should never be overlooked or forgotten, for it renders the opposition to Austria wholly unjustifiable.

Moreover, the immediate causes of the war with the imperial government were not the grievances that required. redress, but desire for national independence on the one

hand, and on the other the determination of the Magyars to subject to Magyar rule the non-Magyar races of Hungary, or rather of Croatia, Sclavonia, Transylvania, &c., in a general way reckoned as parts of Hungary, but not within the limits of Hungary proper, civil or geographical. The pretext for hostilities was, that the imperial government would not aid the Magyars in reducing these non-Magyar races, that is, would not aid in stripping the empire of a number of her provinces, and give them to the Magyars, to render the kingdom they proposed to declare independent powerful enough to defend itself. If the imperial government consented to let Hungary separate herself from the empire, and become independent, it could not be expected to add to her proper dominions other provinces, or to refrain from efforts to confine the independent kingdom within the limits of Hungary proper. The demand of the Magyars was itself unreasonable, and they had no right to feel aggrieved that it was not complied with, or that the imperial government aided Croatia, Selavonia, and Transylvania to maintain their independence of Hungary, and their loyalty to the empire. Even assuming Hungary, which, however was not the case, to have been recognized as independent of the empire, this would have been no cause of war on the part of Hungary. A state has a right to defend its loyal provinces, and in fact the war of the Magyars on the Croats, who adhered to the empire, was itself a war on the empire, and of itself justified the imperial government, and would have done so even assuming Hungary to have been independent, in making war on Hungary. The revolt of the Magyars had no justification, and their war upon the empire was aggressive, and in all respects unjustifiable. Under any point of view, then, from which we choose to consider the Magyar cause, it is essentially a bad cause, with which no friend of freedom or of justice could, understanding it, sympathize.*

*We are not sure that this is sufficiently clear to all our readers. Hungary is sometimes spoken of as including Croatia, Sclavonia, and Transylvania, and sometimes as excluding them. Geographically it includes them, politically it in some respects did, and in some respects did not, include them. These states inhabited chiefly by Sclavonians and Roumans, were distinct from the Hungarian state, but were for certain purposes of administration joined to the kingdom of Hungary, and dependent on the Hungarian crown. Yet they had a civil organization of their own, and diets of their own, at least Croatia had a diet, distinct from the

But Kossuth and his friends misrepresent the relation which subsisted between Hungary and the empire. Certainly Hungary was distinct from and independent of the duchy of Austria, but to assert it to have been independent of the Austrian empire or state, and connected with it only by the accidental union of the crown of each in the same person, is to assert a palpable falsehood. Hungary was an integral part of the Austrian state, as much so as the duchy of Austria itself. Austria aside from Hungary, Bohemia, Galicia, Croatia, Selavonia, Transylvania, Dalmatia, the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, &c., is not an empire, but a dukedom, and these kingdoms and provinces, in forming in union with the duchy of Austria the Austrian empire,

Magyar diet, which is meant whenever mention is made of the Hungarian diet.

While Magyar Hungary, or Hungary in its restricted political sense, remained united to the empire, those provinces in some sense held from the empire, if we understand it, through the Hungarian crown. In consequence of this fact, when the Magyar kingdom obtained, in March, 1848. from the concessions of the good, but weak and terrified, Emperor Ferdinand, an independent ministry, the Magyar government claimed these provinces as a part of the Hungarian state, and demanded their submission to the new independent ministry. As the concession of that independent ministry was a virtual separation of Hungary from the empire, and threatened to be soon even a formal one, and to render Magyar Hungary in all respects an independent kingdom, the effect of this de mand would have been, if complied with, to sever Croatia, Sclavonia, and Transylvania from the Austrian empire, and to make them provinces of the independent Magyar kingdom, and to subject the Sclavonians and Roumans to the Magyars, their bitter enemies and hereditary oppressors. The Croats, who were impatient of their quasi-dependence on Hungary even while Hungary was united to the empire, could not entertain the thought of being dependent on her as an independent kingdom. They preferred being united to Austria, and holding immediately from the emperor, to being subjected to the Magyars, no longer united to Austria. They consequently, under the lead of their noble chief, the Ban Jellachich, refused to submit to the Magyar ministry. The ministry took up arms to compel them to submit but were defeated by Jellachich. They then applied to the imperial government to use its authority to compel them to submit, and to put down what Kossuth calls "the Servian insurrection." The imperial government, if its action has not been misrepresented, counting on the loyalty of the Magyars, and trusting that they would still remain united to the Austrian state, appears to have been at first disposed to listen to their request; but as soon as it was clearly manifest that the Magyars were to be satisfied with nothing but absolute independence of the empire, it refused, and approved the Ban Jellachich.

Here we get at once at the immediate causes of the war of the Hun garian ministry under Kossuth against the empire. The Magyar diet had so alienated the affections of the non-Magyar provinces of the geographical kingdom of Hungary, that they would not consent to belong to the political kingdom of Hungary, if independent of Austria, and

are not regarded in law as subjected to that duchy, and dependent on it. They are, in reference to it, independent states, as the several states of our Union are, in relation to each other, independent states. The empire of Austria is a federative, or, as some term it, a composite state. The members or components, taken separately, are mutually independent, and have each their local institutions and administrations; but in their composition, federation, or union, they form one state, just as the states composing our Union are one state in their federative character. The relation of Hungary to the empire was substantially the relation of Massachusetts to the federal government of the American Union; and she had no more right to secede from the empire,

governed by the Magyar nobility. The Magyar ministry undertook to force them into submission, and, failing, called upon the empire, from which it was separating and wished to separate them, to assist it. The imperial government, after a brief hesitation, refused its assistance, and even extended its protection to the non-Magyar provinces. Then the Kossuth ministry turned against the Austrian state, fomented the new red-republican revolution in Vienna of October, 1848, and marched its troops to the aid of the insurgents, with the hope of securing Magyar independence and the subjection of the Croats and non-Magyar races, under the walls of Vienna, by the ruin of the Austrian monarchy. They were defeated, as everybody knows, by the noble Prince Windischgrätz, and obliged to retreat across the Danube, followed by the Austrian army. Now the sole pretext of this hostility against Austria was, that the imperial government would not aid the Magyars to reduce the nonMagyar races to subjection to the Magyar ministry, and thus aid in strengthening the Magyar kingdom, resolved to become independent, by divesting the empire of Croatia, Sclavonia, and Transylvania, and giving them to that kingdom. The baseness of the Magyar ministry has been disguised by the common mistake of confounding these non-Magyar states with the Magyar state of Hungary proper, or Hungary in its restricted political sense, and by not regarding the fact that the non-Magyar states were not struggling for independence of the empire, but for independence of an independent Magyar Hungary. They were loyal to the empire, but would not consent to make part of a Magyar kingdom independent of the empire. They were bound to the Magyar kingdom only as that kingdom was indissolubly united to the Austrian state, and consequently owed it no obedience when it ceased to be so united. The attempt on the part of the Magyar ministry to subject them was a wanton invasion of their rights, gross usurpation, and an outrage upon com mon justice, which would have amply justified Austria in making war on that ministry, even if it had been the ministry of an absolutely independent state. The defence of Austria and of the Croats is triumphant, and one must be wholly blinded by the revolutionary mania of the times, not to see that Kossuth and his party were wanton aggressors, and under every conceivable point of view in both law and justice deserving of condemnation and the utter reprobation of mankind. Not only the men were bad, but their cause was bad, and we have just as little sympathy with those who condemn Kossuth, and yet approve his cause, as we have with those who make Kossuth their fetich.

and declare herself independent, than Massachusetts has to secede from the Union, and declare herself a complete and independent state. The union of Hungary to the empire had received the assent of the Hungarian diet, and therefore of Hungary herself, and she could not dissolve it without a breach of faith, or treason to the empire. However independent of Austria Hungary might have been in her local civil administration, she was not separately from the empire an independent state. She was not in herself what the authorities call a complete state; which is evident from the fact, that she had no ambassadors at foreign courts, and could maintain diplomatic relations with no foreign power. In all external or foreign relations she was merged in the Austrian state. She could declare herself, therefore, independent of the Austrian empire only by an act of rebellion, and justify herself in doing so only on those grounds, if such grounds there are, which justify revolution. She had, as we have seen, no such grounds to allege, for she really had no grievance to complain of against the imperial government.

Hungary at war with the empire was then simply the rebel at war with his sovereign, and every sovereign has the indefeasible right to reduce the rebel to his allegiance. It makes no difference here whether the sovereignty is lodged in an emperor or in a president, in a king or in a congress; the sovereignty and its rights and prerogatives are always the same. In the case before us the emperor represented the sovereignty of the state, the sovereign state, and had therefore the right to reduce Hungary to her obedience, and consequently the right to invoke the aid, if he saw proper, of Russia, or any other friendly power, in doing it, and the power invoked had the right, if it saw proper, to grant the aid solicited. No man who knows any thing of the meaning of the word state, or of international law, or has the least glimmering of common sense, can deny this.

But, if this be so, no nation, unless in a clear case of selfdefence, can have the least right to intervene to prevent the power called upon from granting the aid invoked. Here is a point to which we wish to call the attention of our readers. Those of our statesmen who have opposed Kossuth's demand for intervention against intervention, have done so on the ground that such intervention would be impolitic, and contrary to our interests as a nation. This is no doubt true, but we would oppose it on higher grounds, -on the ground that we have no right to intervene in the