trading abroad, could not escape the notice and censure of the experienced statesmen in the highest branch of our national legislature. Indeed, as the speech of the mover of this resolution makes no mention of any other parties to the Hungarian war than the Magyars and the empires of Austria and Russia, it is charitable to him to suppose, that he was entirely ignorant of the existence of the other races, who make up two thirds of the population of Hungary,* and of the causes which brought all these races into a rebellion which the Magyars vainly attempted to crush. The English House of Commons, also, within a few weeks, have given an equally cold and contemptuous reception to a motion made by Lord Dudley Stuart, for the purpose of indicating the extent of the noble mover's sympathy with the Hungarian patriots. This rebuff was the more significant, inasmuch as the Magyar cause in England has been steadily represented as an aristocratic and monarchical one, and the ancient Hungarian constitution as resembling in all its important features that of Great Britain.

The eccentric Walter Savage Landor, in a letter to Lord

*For convenient reference, we subjoin the following enumeration of the races that constitute the population of Hungary, taken from the latest and most authoritative publication of Austrian statistics, - that of Haeufler. The statements of the Bohemian philologist, Safarik, and a Hungarian authority, Fenyes, though not of so recent date, do not alter the proportions.

Dudley Stuart, dated the 18th of October last, and published in the Examiner newspaper, says, speaking of Kossuth, “we plead for the Hungarian defender of venerable institutions, cognate with our own, and bearing a strong family resemblance." In a memorial addressed to Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston in October last, said to have been written by Lord Fitzwilliam, and signed by him and several other peers and members of Parliament, the following language is used, the object of the memorial being to ask the mediation of England in favor of Hungary.

"While so many of the nations of Europe have engaged in revolutionary movements, and have embarked in schemes of doubtful policy and still more doubtful success, it is gratifying to the undersigned to be able to assure your Lordships, that the Hungarians demand nothing but the recognition of ancient rights and the stability and integrity of their ancient constitution. To your Lordships it cannot be unknown that that constitution bears a striking family resemblance to that of our own country. King, Lords, and Commons are as vital parts of the Hungarian as of the British constitution."

From the Examiner newspaper, which has been the chief organ of the Hungarian cause in London, some of the most active Magyars there being in correspondence with it, we take the two following extracts.

"The most current misrepresentation of the Hungarians is, that they are republicans, and that they have proclaimed the republic in such of the Hungarian counties as are in their power, which now comprise almost all the Hungarian territory. This assertion is often unwarily reëchoed by friends of the Hungarians, who, considering that the Queen of England maintains amicable relations with the republic of the United States, with the republic of France, and the republic of Switzerland, are not altogether horrified at the republican appellation. But the real state of the matter is, that the Hungarians are not republicans, and that the republic has not been proclaimed anywhere in Hungary.* The misstatement, it is charitable to suppose, may have its origin simply in a mistranslation of a Hungarian word.” Examiner, June 9, 1849.

"They (the Magyars) fight to maintain a constitution which numbers more than eight centuries of duration, and to support

*The italics are the Examiner's own.

the sanctity of a royal word. They have taken their position upon the inviolability of ancient liberties. Although Austrian intrigues have caused a breach of these liberties, and striven to render of no avail the royal oath sworn solemnly to maintain them, the Hungarians have not hitherto dreamed of proclaiming a republic. In spite of all their victories, it is their wish to retain both the monarchy and the dynasty. They do not desire to change the nature of their institutions, or to rid themselves of the ruling family." Examiner, May 5th, 1849.

These extracts are enough to show what coloring was put upon the Hungarian cause in England, in order to secure the sympathies of a people strongly attached to monarchical and aristocratic institutions. Here in America, and even in the Senate of the United States, with a like purpose of obtaining sympathy, the Hungarians have been audaciously held up as true and devoted republicans. And as if to carry out the principle of gaining the support of every foreign nation by conforming to their prejudices, a large number of Kossuth's fellow fugitives in Turkey, including that formidable Free Companion of the revolutionary cause throughout Europe, General Bem himself, have turned Mohammedans. That the English view of the matter is the only correct one is sufficiently evident from the fact which we before alluded to, that republicanism is not even mentioned in the Hungarian Declaration of Independence; and even the assertion which we have just borrowed from the Examiner, that the Magyars wished "to retain both the monarchy and the dynasty," is fully supported by the following passage from that Declaration. The abdication of Ferdinand, which is referred to in it, took place, be it remembered, early in December, 1848, two months after the war had broken out; and the Declaration itself was not made till the April following.

"A family revolution in the tyrannical reigning house was perpetrated at Olmütz. Ferdinand V. was forced to resign a throne which had been polluted with so much blood and perjury.; and the son of Francis Charles, (who also abdicated his claim to the inheritance,) the youthful archduke, Francis Joseph, caused himself to be proclaimed Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary. But according to the family compact, no one can dispose of the constitutional throne but the Hungarian nation. At this critical moment, the Hungarian nation demanded nothing more

than the maintenance of its laws and institutions, and peace guaranteed by their integrity. Had the assent of the nation to this change in the occupant of the throne been asked in a legal manner, and the young Prince offered to take the customary oath that he would preserve the constitution, the Hungarian nation would not have refused to elect him king in accordance with the treaties extant, and to crown him with St. Stephen's crown, before he had dipped his hands in the blood of the people."

In the "Brief Explanatory Report," recently published at New York, under the name of Governor Ujhazy, it is admitted (p. 5) that, up to the time when the Hungarians regained possession of their capital, Buda-Pesth, in the spring of 1849, "the dispositions of the Diet were made purely in the spirit of a constitutional resistance, and the struggle was, so to speak, carried on in the name of the dethroned Ferdinand, against the young usurper, Franz Joseph." It is asserted, however, that there was a party formed among the members of the Diet, in March, 1849, which had for its object "a separation from Austria, and the founding of a Republic,”. two things which the writer seems to consider as one; for his language in the paragraphs immediately following clearly shows, probably, as the Examiner suggests in a similar case, from the mistranslation of a Hungarian word, as Governor Ujhazy is ignorant of our language, that he thought the Declaration of Independence was the same thing as the establishment of a Republic. He says, for instance," from this decisive epoch onward, the main care of the Hungarian government was to place the administration of the country in the hands of men of purely republican sentiments, who fully approved the Declaration of Independence," in which the name of republic is not once mentioned! We hope the English writer of this pamphlet made no deliberate attempt to obtain an apparent sanction of a statement which the Governor's regard for veracity would not allow him to make. But there is a seeming tergiversation in this passage which we were sorry to notice.

The position of parties in the Hungarian Diet is best explained by Mr. Arthur Frey, in his work published in London, in August, 1849, entitled, "Louis Kossuth, and the Recent History of Hungary." We have not seen this book,

but borrow some extracts from it from the London Athenæum, which says, "the spirit of the work is more than republican; it breathes the hottest aspirations of a party that worship revolution as something like a divine process." Its authority, therefore, will not be disputed by the sympathizers with Kossuth and his party, especially as we are told that the book was drawn up "from reports of the Pesth National Assembly," or Hungarian Diet, with the assistance of Hungarian writers. Mr. Frey says:

"The National Assembly consisted of three parties; -1. A section of the aristocracy, (Magnates,) liberal on the whole, but firmly attached to the Austrian connection; -2. A middle party, including the new ministry, whose watchword was the entire independence of a free Hungary, if possible under an Austrian king, if not, under some other sovereign, or form of sovereignty; 3. An extreme radical or revolutionary party, represented by some thirty members," [the whole number of members being about five hundred.]

The second and third of these parties, we are told, soon came into collision on the question of the Hungarian troops serving in Italy under Radetzky, and, as the radicals maintained, against popular freedom. The Magyar ministers and Diet, the nation being then virtually independent of Austria, were not prepared to refuse their assistance to the emperor in putting down his rebellious subjects in Italy; and so late as May, 1848, we find Kossuth earnestly pleading in the Diet against the recall of these troops, and even promising, on certain conditions, to urge an increase of their number. The only excuse for this act that has ever been offered is, that the troops sent consisted mainly of Croatians and other Slavonians, who, if obliged to fight against liberty in Italy, would be prevented from fighting for their own freedom against the Magyars at home.

From the evidence now cited, it appears very clearly that the war was waged on the part of the Magyars without even a pretence that they were fighting for the establishment of a republic, a form of government which they have constantly disclaimed. We regret that it was thought necessary, in order to create greater sympathy for the unfortunate Hungarian exiles now in this country, to put forth this unfounded and even ridiculous assertion for them, that they were martyrs in