"These were also declared by the King to be rebels, but were, nevertheless, like the others, supplied with moneys, arms, and ammunition. The King's commissioned officer and civil servants enlisted bands of robbers in the principality of Servia to strengthen the rebels, and to aid them in massacring the peaceable Hungarian and German inhabitants of the Banat. The command of these rebellious bodies was further intrusted to the rebel leaders of the Croatians."

The war in Hungary, then, on the part of the Magyars, was neither a struggle for national independence, nor an attempt to establish a republic on the wreck of their ancient monarchical and aristocratic institutions. Hungary is the most aristocratic nation in Europe; nowhere else are the distinctions and immunities of the nobles so strongly marked, or the nobles themselves so numerous in comparison with the whole population, or the dividing lines between the privileged and unprivileged classes preserved with so much care. The fourth resolution appended to the Declaration of Independence expressly provides, that "the form of government to be adopted for the future shall be fixed by the Diet of the nation," in both branches of which the representatives of the titled and untitled nobility have a great superiority of numbers, and exercise undisputed control; where, in fact, till within a few years, the third estate, or the commons, were hardly represented at all; and to which, even now, the peasants, who constitute four fifths of the population, do not send a single representative. The resolution goes on to say, that “until this point shall be decided, on the basis of the ancient and received principles which have been recognized for ages, [that is, acknowledging the absolute supremacy of the Magyar race in the country which they conquered, and where they have been lords of the soil and the dominant nation for eight or nine centuries,] the government of the united countries, their possessions and dependencies, shall be conducted on the personal responsibility, and under the obligation to render an account of all his acts, by Louis Kossuth." In short, a temporary dictatorship was established, absolute power being confided, not to a military commander, a course which the pressing exigencies of the war might well have justified, but to a civilian, who was to exercise all the authority which, in a republican insurrection, is usually delegated to a legislative assembly.

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The Croatians and other Sclavonians are not the only people, who, in this singular Declaration of Independence, are denounced as rebels. One of the charges specified in it against the imperial government is, that "the traitorous commander" in Transylvania "stirred up the Wallachian peasants to take arms against their own constitutional rights, and, aided by the rebellious Servian hordes, commenced a war of Vandalism and extinction." Here, as in other passages, this remarkable document bears less resemblance to the declaration of a people who have risen in arms against their rulers to vindicate their liberties, than to a manifesto of those rulers intended to censure and subdue such insurrection. It is an appeal to the ancient institutions of the country; a vindication of the just authority of the governors over the governed; a reproof of rebellion. How the Hungarians could be engaged in a contest at the same time with their hereditary sovereign and with their own rebellious subjects, is the problem which we seek to solve by investigating the former position of the parties in respect to each other, and the circumstances out of which the war arose.

Hungary, with a territory no larger than that of Virginia and North Carolina united, has a population of about ten millions and a half, made up of at least half a dozen distinct races, who speak as many different languages and dialects. Among these, the Magyars, who are the dominant race, and have long owned all the soil and held the whole political power of the country in their hands, number about 4,200,000. The Sclavonians are rather more numerous, but are divided into many distinct tribes, which inhabit different portions of the country, and speak what was originally one language; the several Sclavonic dialects have marked peculiarities, yet do not differ so widely but that the different tribes can understand each other. The Slowacks, who inhabit the north of Hungary, and number about 2,200,000, seem most nearly allied to the Czechs of Bohemia, another Sclavonic tribe who began the recent revolutionary movement in the disjointed empire of Austria. The Rusniaks, a third Sclavonic tribe are 300,000 in number. The inhabitants of Croatia, who are of the Sclavonic race, number about 700,000; and there are as many more of the Servians, of the same descent, who live within the borders of Hungary. Add to the Magyars

and the Sclavonians about one million of Germans, another million of Wallachians, 250,000 Jews, and a few thousand Greeks, Armenians, and Gipsies, and you have the heterogeneous population of Hungary proper. The population of Transylvania, which has long been a dependency of Hungary, and was united with it in the recent war, consists of 260,000 Magyars, 260,000 Szeklers, a rude tribe allied to the Magyars, 250,000 Germans, and 1,300,000 Wallachians. On the Military Frontier, again, there are nearly 700,000 Croats, 200,000 Servians, 200,000 Germans, and 100,000 Wallachians. Taken in its largest sense, therefore, Hungary has a population of about fourteen millions, of whom less than one third are Magyars, rather more than a third are Sclavonians, one sixth are Wallachians, and only one twelfth are Germans. The prevailing languages, of course, are the Magyar, the Sclavonic in all its dialects, the German, and the Wallachian, no one of which has any affinity with another.

There is as great diversity of religious faith, as of language and race, among this singular population. The Wallachians are nearly all of the Greek church, more than half of them, however, being schismatics. Most of the Sclavonians are Romanists, and the Catholic is the established church in Croatia, where no protestant can hold an office under government. The Germans are chiefly Lutherans, and nearly half of the Magyars are Calvinists. The Unitarian is one of the three established churches of Transylvania, having been introduced into that country by a queen of Poland in the sixteenth century; though the Wallachians form nearly two thirds of the population of the duchy, their church, which is the Greek, is only tolerated.

The dominant races, or "sovereign nations," as they call themselves, have labored to render their supremacy as conspicuous as possible; in their ordinary employments and in military service, in the civil, political, and religious institutions of the country, the dividing line between them and the "subject nations" is very broadly marked. This distinction, so universal and conspicuous, having been acknowledged and uncontested for centuries, has prevented any amalgamation of the different races with each other; and thus the Magyars, the Wallachians, the Saxons, and the Sclavonians have lived for ages side by side, each preserving their own language,

religion, occupation, habits, and all their national characteristics as distinct and broadly separated from each other as they were when the fortunes of war and the migrating propensities of their ancestors first brought them in contact, and established them on the same soil. The subject nations, both Wallachian and Sclavonic, are a rude and uneducated people, who have never been able to acquire the languages of their masters, which are fundamentally different from their own; and this circumstance alone has raised an insuperable bar to intercourse between them. They are also, for the most part, of a mild and unambitious disposition, patient and laborious, and firmly attached to the customs of their ancestors. They are the aborigines of the country, the first possessors of the soil upon which the Huns, the Turks, the Magyars, and the Germans have subsequently established themselves by right of conquest. Submission and inferiority have been enforced upon them through so many generations, that they have become the badges of their tribe; and it is only within a few years that the idea of resistance, or the possibility of asserting an equality of rights, has even occurred to them.

Here in America, where emigrants coming to us from all the nations of Europe, and submitting themselves to the crucible of our republican institutions, are fused in the course of one or two generations into one homogeneous mass, different languages, temperaments, habits, and characters, all blending together and disappearing almost as rapidly as the gases sent out from a chemical laboratory are diffused and lost in the great body of the outward atmosphere, we can hardly believe it possible, that, in another country, several distinct races should live side by side, crowded together within a comparatively small territory, and still remain as distinct from each other, and preserve all their original differences as strongly marked, as when circumstances first brought them together centuries ago. But it is so; these broad differences of race exist, and the feelings of rivalry and mutual hostility, which so naturally result from them, must show themselves when once the dominion of the foreign sovereign, the common master who originally held them all in equal subjection and at peace with each other, is withdrawn, and national independence allows full scope for the national tendencies to produce their appropriate effects. Hungary is the eastern outpost

VOL. LXX. NO. 146.

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of civilized Europe; its position made it the first stoppingplace in the migration of those hordes from central Asia, which prostrated the Roman empire in the west, and afterwards so often menaced the independence of the several kingdoms which were established upon its ruins. It was therefore both the earliest and the latest sufferer from these incursions. Attila pitched his tents here before he swept over the fairer regions of Italy and Gaul; in 1526, the last independent king of Hungary was defeated and slain by the Turks in the fatal battle of Mohacz, and the greater part of the country remained subject to the Ottomans for a century and a half, till the heroic John Sobieski accomplished its deliverance. From that time it has remained subject to Austria, its union with this empire being necessary for its protection against the Turks, and essential for the freedom of its communication with western Europe. Its perilous position, and the frequent wars of which it has been the theatre, have kept alive the military spirit of its people, and preserved its military institutions in complete vitality. But its remoteness and isolation have prevented it from sharing in the improvements of modern times; and its institutions, military, civil, and political, are those of the Middle Ages. The Feudal System existed therebut yesterday in full vigor; all the land was held by the nobles on condition of military service, and on failure of direct heirs reverted to the crown. The peasants were serfs attached to the soil, and could bring no suit against their feudal lord except in his own manorial court, where the noble was judge in his own cause. The distance between the vassal and his lord was rendered more broad and impassable by the fact that they belonged to different races, and spoke different languages. The differences of employment and social position contributed to perpetuate the distinctions of race; the Magyars, proud of their noble birth, would follow hardly any profession but that of arms. And they scorned the foot service; a century or two ago, they served as knights and mounted men-at-arms; now, they form the most splendid cavalry in the world, and leave the Croats and other Sclavonians to fill the ranks of the infantry. The Szeklers, the kindred in race of the Magyars, are born soldiers; more rude and uncultivated than their splendid kinsmen in Hungary, they are equally haughty, and more fierce and savage; woe to