Austria has some special characteristic, which creates a peculiar difficulty for the Austrian Government. Venetia and Gallicia have the memory of old nationalities; Hungary has a passion for political liberty, and a tenacious adherence to an ancient constitution. This constitution was preserved, and it was always cherished by the Magyars, but during the latter part of the last century and the first year of this century, there was a lull in the spirit of independence which Hungary displayed towards Austria. It is true that at all times the Hungarians defended their constitution; and when Joseph II., in order to carry out some of his schemes of ambitious benevolence, attempted to set it aside, the Hungarians were aroused into so effective a resistance, that in the last year of his life he had to abandon his project, and his successor swore to keep the old constitution intact. Still, however, there was not the same jealousy of Austria. The Hungarians espoused heartily the cause of Austria in the great European wars that occupied Austria almost incessantly from the accession

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Maria Theresa until the Peace of Vienna was concluded; and fellowship in arms at a great crisis suspends political discord. Then, again, many of the leading Magyars were attracted to the Court,and liked to live in the sunshine of Vienna. Accordingly, things went on very smoothly between the two countries; and if Austria stretched the law a little, and usurped more power than the Constitution warranted, no one complained. after the peace, restored leisure sufficed for the calm examination of their political position, and as the Hungarians watched the system which Metternich was building up in the Empire and along its frontiers, a spirit of opposition began to show itself. The Diet was called together in 1825, and all was not even then as it could be wished. But ten years later the Diet of 1835 showed evident signs of preparing for a totally new order of things. Hungary began to insist

on its legal rights. A new temper had sprung up. The nobles were learning to make everything national their first care. Under the leadership of Count Szechenyi, one of the greatest benefactors any country ever had to boast of, the material wealth of Hungary began to be developed. Steam navigation was started on the Danube; English horses were imported, and English agriculture was imitated. The nation was taught to make itself rich at the same time that it made itself free. The Government took the alarm, and by political prosecutions and declining to let the Diet sit, got on with apparent ease, until the approach of revolution obliged Austria not only to permit a liberal Diet to be called together, and pass many liberal measures, but to allow a separate Ministry for Hungary to be formed. Secretly, however, resolving to put an end to a state of things so opposed to Austrian traditions, it brought up the Slaves to overawe the Diet, and then came the Hungarian war, which was as amply justified on the part of the Hungarians as it was marvellously successful until Russia was called in.

The old Hungarian constitution had its faults, but Englishmen know that what gives a constitution value is not its freedom from theoretical imperfections, but its being prized by those who enjoy its privileges. The political liberties of Hungary were a part of the life of the free Hungarian. They were never out of his thoughts; they gave him confidence in himself, an intense patriotism, a determination to maintain at all hazards what he was so proud of. mass of the inhabitants of Hungary, although excluded from constitutional privileges, were quite as much at case under the Hungarian constitution, and quite as interested in its preservation, as the mass of the English people when they were excluded from all political life in England was attached to the English constitution. Except that in Hungary the franchise depended on birth and in England

The

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on property, the relation of the enfranchised to those excluded from the franchise was much the same in both countries. When we say that Englishmen have always clung fondly to their constitution, we mean that the enfranchised classes and those on whom they could immediately act, clung fondly to it. So in Hungary the enfranchised considered their constitution their chief glory, and were always ready to fight for it. The vast bulk of the unenfranchised were ready to go with their leaders. Directly new spirit and new hopes came upon the Hungarians with advancing cultivation and increasing enterprise, constitutional life began to gain new vigour too. In judging of the present position of Hungary, the first thing to remember is, that all its activity, all its attention to the development of its resources, all its improvement of the relation of one class to another, have been bound up with its devotion to its constitution. A Hungarian cannot grow by halves. His attachment to his political liberties grows with his growth. It is not attachment to political liberty in general or to the political liberty of other people. It is attachment to his one special hereditary ancient constitution. This may show a sad want of universality of mind, but it is exactly the feeling that prevailed in England, and the prevalence of which made English liberty a reality.

Thirty years ago, at the time when Szechenyi and Wesselenyi were waking Hungary and Transylvania to new hopes and a wider ambition, the order of things as established in Hungary had two great defects. All political power, privileges, and liberties were confined to the nobles, who nominally paid no taxes; and in the next place, the peasant had many causes of reasonable complaint. The magnates, who answered nearly to our peers, were almost all Catholics, and deriving their position from the Crown, and being attached to Vienna and the gaieties of the Court, were, with few exceptions, content to let things go on as they

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were. The Chamber of Deputies was elected by the nobles. By a noble was meant a person having hereditary political privileges. The bulk of them were in no better position than the English yeomen of a century or two ago, if in so good a one. The upper portion held the place of the English gentry, and the great majority of these nobles were Protestants. In ancient times the nobles were excused, or perhaps to speak more accurately, excused themselves, taxation, on the ground that every noble was bound to serve his sovereign in arms. By giving the peasant who was taxed a partial interest in the land, and by a tariff of about sixty per cent. on foreign imports, the Austrian Government managed to tax the nobles indirectly. But still the equalization of taxation, and an extension of the franchise, were imperative in Hungary. The Urbarium of Maria Theresa had released the peasant from his obligation to stay on the soil where he was born, and had created an imperfect copyhold tenure; but still his legal position was far from secure, and he was still under the necessity of yielding his lord a hundred days of personal service in the year. Partly in 1835, and partly in 1847-8, the Hungarians corrected these defects themselves. New electoral laws were passed, the nobles agreed to pay taxes, the peasant had a full ownership given him, on equitable conditions in his land, and the corvée was abolished. The Hungarians, it should always be remembered, showed not only a profound attachment to their Constitution, but a capacity to alter and expand it in accordance with the wants and views of modern times.

War was forced on Hungary, and by the aid of Russia the liberty of Hungary was annihilated. The Hungarians saw not only their old Constitution subverted, fetters placed on their mental growth, and the most serious impediments thrown in the way of their advance in material prosperity, but they also saw all that was worst and most hateful to them in the Aus

trian Government more rampant than ever. It was not only the cruelty of Austria that repelled them for timid Governments are always cruel when victorious-but it was the heartiness with which Austria threw herself into the policy of reaction, and the zeal with which she identified herself with Ultramontanism. In the hour of prosperity Austria carried to the last extreme the system of hushing all disobedience in the uniform stillness of political death. In the hour of their great adversity the Hungarians were drawn together more closely, thought more of their liberties than ever, learnt wisdom and patience. At last the tide turned. Frightened by the defeats of Magenta and Solferino, and trembling at the growing liberties of Italy and Germany, Austria invoked Hungary to abandon its old constitution and liberties, and help her to work a new constitution at Vienna.

The Hungarians neither accepted nor refused the offer to send deputies to Vienna. They could only act through the forms and according to the tenor of their own Constitution. They were determined to abide in everything by the strict letter of the law. They would acknowledge no existing political body except their own Diet; and if any agreement was to be come to between Hungary and Austria, the Diet must first resume its legal powers, and the King of Hungary must first be crowned and take the ancient coronation oath, pledging him to uphold the freedom and independence of Hungary. At first the Austrian Cabinet tried to play with them. The Diet was a real constitutional Diet; the King was willing to be crowned. But when it was found that Hungary meant something more by a constitution than words, and insisted on all her

political liberties being recognised and guaranteed, Austria drew back, and M. von Schmerling ended all hopes of union with Hungary, and all hopes of free government in Austria, by declaring that the Hungarian Constitution was absolutely forfeited and gone, and that Hungary was a conquered country, without any rights except what the Emperor chose to give her.

Thus Austria and Hungary once more stand face to face before Europe, Austria drifting every day more and more into the one feeble hope of repressing all life in her dependencies by a dexterous use of military force; Hungary asserting the majesty of the law, inspired with life and hope, united in itself, and showing to the world the difference between a paper constitution and a real historical one. How long this state of things may last no one can tell, but it is difficult to see that any of the uses that Austria once served are now fulfilled by her. She no longer maintains the balance of power, for her divisions and weakness are the greatest of all encouragements to France and Russia. She no longer upholds political ideas superior to those current in her dependencies; for Hungary has done her utmost to reject the Concordat which Austria has tried to impose on all her subjects. She no longer furnishes a race of princes and statesmen superior personally to the leaders of her provinces; for no prince or statesman at Vienna is fit for a moment to be compared to M. Deak. The only service we can ever expect from her is that she may last just long enough to prevent the consolidation of Italy, the union of Germany, and the establishment of an independent Hungary being accomplished before everything is ripe for their accomplishment.

of displeasure from our fellow creatures or from the Ruler of the Universe, along with whatever we may have of sympathy or affection for them, or of love and awe of Him, inclining us to do his will independently of selfish consequences. There is evidently no reason why all these motives for observance should not attach themselves to the utilitarian morality, as completely and as powerfully as to any other. Indeed, those of them which refer to our fellow creatures are sure to do so, in proportion to the amount of general intelligence; for, whether there be any other ground of moral obligation than the general happiness or not, men do desire happiness; and however imperfect may be their own practice, they desire and commend all conduct in others towards themselves, by which they think their happiness is promoted. With regard to the religious motive, if men believe, as most profess to do, in the goodness of God, those who think that conduciveness to the general happiness is the essence, or even only the criterion of good, must necessarily believe that it is also that which God approves. The whole force therefore of external reward and punishment, whether physical or moral, and whether proceeding from God or from our fellow men, together with all that the capacities of human nature admit, of disinterested devotion to either, become available to enforce the utilitarian morality, in proportion as that morality is recognised; and the more powerfully, the more the appliances of education and general cultivation are bent to the purpose.

So far as to external sanctions. The internal sanction of duty, whatever our standard of duty may be, is one and the same-a feeling in our own mind; a pain, more or less intense, attendant on violation of duty, which in properly cultivated moral natures rises, in the more serious cases, into shrinking from it as an impossibility. This feeling, when disinterested, and connecting itself with the pure

idea of duty, and not with some particular form of it, or with any of the merely accessory circumstances, is the' essence of Conscience; though in that complex phenomenon as it actually exists, the simple fact is in general all encrusted over with collateral associations, derived from sympathy, from love, and still more from fear; from all the forms of religious feeling; from the recollections of childhood and of all our past life; from self-esteem, desire of the esteem of others, and occasionally even self-abasement. This extreme complication is, I apprehend, the origin of the sort of mystical character which, by a tendency of the human mind of which there are many other examples, is apt to be attributed to the idea of moral obligation, and which leads people to believe that the idea cannot possibly attach itself to any other objects than those which, by a supposed mysterious law, are found in our present experience to excite it. Its binding force, however, consists in the existence of a mass of feeling which must be broken through in order to do what violates our standard of right, and which, if we do nevertheless violate that standard, will probably have to be encountered afterwards in the form of remorse. Whatever theory we have of the nature or origin of conscience, this is what essentially constitutes it.

The ultimate sanction, therefore, of all morality (external motives apart) being a subjective feeling in our own minds, I see nothing embarrassing to those whose standard is utility, in the question, what is the sanction of that particular standard? We may answer, the same as of all other moral standards-the conscientious feelings of mankind. Undoubtedly this sanction has no binding efficacy on those who do not possess the feelings it appeals to; but neither will these persons be more obedient to any other moral principle than to the utilitarian one. On them morality of any kind has no hold but through the external sanctions.