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From the Examiner, 25th Aug.
DEFEAT OF THE HUNGARIANS.

We have on former occasions pointed out the advantages that would have accrued to Europe, and to England in particular, from the victory of the Hungarians, and the maintenance of Hungarian independence. A market would have been opened that would go far to compensate for any diminution of trade in other parts of Europe. A firm barrier against Muscovite aggression would have been established. And a rational constitutional government would have existed in the east of Europe, as a model for neighboring nations.

essence of Russian rule. The beaurocratic system of Austria, Prussia, and France, has shown itself as lamentably insufficient to provide for the wants, as to prevent the disturbances, of the respective populations. In Austria, some years ago, no less than 140,000 officials were employed to govern a population of 21,000,000. In other words, about one man out of every 150 individuals was a permanent policeman, besides extra hands employed on special occasions; and the number was daily increasing. In France, Louis Philippe supposed he should always be able to buy over his political adversaries by the creation of fresh places of honor and emolument. Even in Prussia, where the system shows itself under the most fa

men of education and intelligence, it was a univer sal complaint that all individual energy had been annihilated, and the welfare of the country sacrificed to routine and paper formulas. But the inefficiency of the system has become thoroughly evident, from the events of the last and the present year; and the real means of governing which the great continental powers at present depend upon, are bayonets and cannon, and the command, by means of a forced conscription, over the population who are to be trained to use those bayonets and cannon against their fellow-citizens.

But we must now contemplate the reverse of the picture. Hungary, it is to be feared, must succumb in the struggle. Could she, as a prac-vorable aspect, and where the officials are at least tically independent state, have had but a few years to develop her enormous material resources, we should have entertained no fears for the result. We should have had full confidence in her being able to cope, single-handed, with any forces that might have been brought against her by the confederated despots of Europe. But as it is, she has been taken by surprise, and forced into a contest for which she was not prepared. At its commencement she was without an army, without generals, and without arms; and, worse than all, her seaports were in the hands of her enemies. What Hungary has accomplished under these disadvantages, what a determined and energetic resistance she has opposed to the united forces of two empires, affords ample evidence of the internal resources, moral and material, which she possesses; and shows how firm a barrier she would have constituted against northern aggression, and how apt a guardian she would have been of western civilization. But the odds against her were such as history has not yet recorded. The Muscovite czar hoped to crush, at one blow, the Hungarian nation and all principles of freedom on the continent; and for this great end, like a desperate gamester, he has played his last stake. Already were his last reserves the barbarous and uncouth tribes of the Asiatic steppes, armed not with the musket, but with the bow and arrow, Kirgises, Baschkirs, and Calmucks-on their march towards the devoted country. "A fire devoureth before them, and behind them a flame burneth; the land is as the Garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness." Must we add, "Yea, and nothing shall escape them."

Such is the system now predominant. It stands out in all its naked deformity. It is no less the instrument of a President of a republic than of an Autocrat of all the Russias. We, in this fortunate country, find some difficulty in realizing to ourselves the exact state of things that is understood by a state of siege. Accustomed as we are to the equable rule of law, we can hardly picture to ourselves the arbitrariness and brutality of martial sway. We perfectly agree with the Times, in an article of Monday last, that "the control of armed power and military authority is a bad substitute for established laws and civil justice;" but we cannot admit that "in many parts of Europe the armies alone have saved society, and saved whatever remains of freedom." The evils of seditious turbulence are at the worst but transitory; those of military despotism are permanent and enduring. They are destructive not merely of freedom for the moment, but all hopes of freedom hereafter. but, in point of fact, on which side has terrorism been found? What excesses have anywhere been committed by the people at all comparable to the Meanwhile, civilized Europe determined to main- atrocities of Haynau, or even to the Prussian exetain the attitude of an "impartial spectator," and to cutions by court-martial? On this subject we have look calmly on while the Hungarians were fight- valuable testimony in the accounts that have from ing no less for the liberties of Europe than for time to time appeared in moderate German papers; their own. But let the Hungarians now be com- and above all in that Diary of Auerbach concernpletely crushed, let the great principle of rational ing the events of last October at Vienna, of which self-government once be thoroughly put down, and a translation was recently published, enabling the the system of military despotism predominant over English reader to form a correct opinion concernthe greater portion of the continent, and lately re-ing the present condition and future prospects of inforced by the government of Louis Napoleon, will Central Europe. Auerbach is not at all disposed take root and flourish with more luxuriant growth to believe that armies "have alone saved society, than ever. This is, and always has been, the very and saved whatever remains of freedom." His re

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flections on the closing of the diet after the capture of Vienna by Prince Windischgrätz are of a different character.

that a nation is permitted, as little as an individual, to violate duties with impunity; and that for the one, as for the other, a day of retribution, it may be late or it may be early, will assuredly arrive.

From the Spectator, 25 Aug. HUNGARY-CANADA-WEST INDIES-INDIA.

The diet closed by the troops! all the boasted liberty of the people is illusory and an empty cheat, so long as the soldiery are held in constant readiness to cut short the debates with violence at any moment. In all the movements in Germany, therefore, the chief object of attack is the military power. HUNGARY Succumbs to Russia. The war is at We have been, and are still, kept in thraldom by an end; and, for the moment, a thorough frustrathis power. Notwithstanding all the professions of attachment and good faith, of the common inter- tion appears to have finished the revolutionary ests of the people and the princes, the power of the movement of 1848. Reaction, more or less proprinces is still supported by bayonets, and the pop-nounced, is everywhere in the ascendant-in ular spirit is everywhere subjected and kept under Rome, Paris, Prussia, Hungary; in every quarby force of arms.- -The state has abandoned ter. But the nature, objects, and prospects of the its proper centre of gravity in the diet, and trans-reaction, are not clearly to be descried. We only ferred it to the army. The struggle will now beknow that they vary in every quarter. gin anew.

pointed, and he makes his submission to Prince
Paskiewicz. Russia is the conquering "media-
tor" between Austria and the kingdom which was
maintaining its old constitutional forms with the
sword. A letter in the Times, on
66 the common
sense of the Hungarian question"—in which an
attempt is made, with considerable effect, to show
that the Hungarian claim to independence by pre-
scription is vitiated by the Turkish occupation—
looks so much like a “feeler," that it would not
be surprising if Lord Palmerston were to put forth
a suggestion for absorbing Hungary into Austria,
with some guarantees for respect to her national-
ity, and for constitutional freedom under a feder-
ation like that drawn up by Count Stadion.
Meanwhile, the unconquered Magyars have been
conquered and have yielded. So much for "spir-
ited protests," or succors from Notting Hill and
Marylebone.

From letters published by the Austrian papers Pending that sure recommencement of the strug- as the intercepted correspondence of Kossuth with gle, we shall have an opportunity of observing how | Bem, it appears that the Magyars had for some far the new theory of foreign policy adopted by a time been reduced to the greatest straits, especlarge section of the mercantile classes in this coun- ially for the want of money. At last Kossuth is try, and their oracles the Times and Lord Aber-induced to resign the dictatorship; Görgey is apdeen, is a sound one; whether, as they assert, England ought to hold herself aloof, whatever infractions of international law may be committed by other states, and not even to raise her voice in remonstrance, lest she should incur the hostility of some powerful sovereign. We shall learn by experience (may the lesson not be taught too late!) whether the traditionary policy of England, which watched with a keen eye and upheld with a firm hand the balance of power in Europe-the policy of Cromwell, of William the Third, and of Chatham-is, as we are informed by these modern luminaries, an unnecessary interference in affairs which do not concern us, and an excess of precaution against imaginary dangers from which our insular position already sufficiently protects us. For our own part, we may perhaps, until this new-fangled doctrine shall have been confirmed by experience, be permitted to entertain some doubts respecting it. We may question whether, even on a mere calcn- One report is momentous if true-Russia is to lation of profit and loss, the balance would not have be paid for her services by the cession of an Ausbeen in favor of a system which should have en- trian port in the Mediterranean ! Such a gift couraged the establishment of constitutional gov- could not be regarded by Western Europe with inernments and opposed the extension of restrictive difference. Not only would Russia have "turned" tariffs, the usual concomitants of despotic rule ; | Turkey and the Sclavonian provinces on which she which should have maintained the dignity of Eng-casts so greedy an eye, but the great representative land, even at the risk of a depression of some eighths per cent. in the funds; and by which she would have discharged the duty in our judgment imposed by Providence on those to whom power is entrusted, the duty of watching over, advocating Italy is, and may well be alarmed. Reaction and enforcing the rights of the weak. It may be is rampant in Rome; where the Pope's commisthat the conquest of Hungary, and the establish- sioners are playing such antics as cannot fail to ment of Russian predominance in the east of Eu- keep open the memories of the shortlived repubrope, will not be followed immediately by the lic. Radetzky moves towards Venice; whose closing of the Bosphorus to British commerce; it continued holding out is a marvel. Mazzini sits may be that Hamburg will not share the fate of in council at Geneva, watching events. Hope Cracow; and that an European war will not be rests in the fact that absolutism, though partially produced by an attempt on the part of Austria, sup- restored, is really weak and worn out-too far ported by Russian bayonets, to reestablish her superannuated to be even discreet. But if Rus supremacy in Germany. But we must not forget | sia, the champion of absolutism, were established

of old absolutism would thus have established an outpost in the most important part of Europe. What will she please to have next? a port on the Atlantic-on the coast of France or Spain?

in the Adriatic, the old spirit of tyranny, however enter it on terms merely dictated by Upper Canantiquated and insane, would be strengthened with ada. a barbaric strength, and the work of the last two centuries at least would have to be done over again. It cannot be. If for no other reason, France will have to retrace the steps of her policy in Italy. And our own diplomatists should understand what they are doing.

Meanwhile, the Peace Society has assembled in convention at Paris, to preach the efficacy of moral resistance and the virtue of arbitration. Good things, which have been advocated long, especially since the Christian dispensation, as yet so little obeyed, which enjoined men to think less of Judaic forms, and to "love one another." The commandment to do no murder is still defied, both on a small and on a large scale; and we still require the police to defend us, both on a small and on a large scale. M. Victor Hugo's able but rhetorical sermon is only a few pages added to whole libraries of such literature. The acutest of the pacificators, like Mr. Cobden and the Archbishop of Paris, only give a qualified adhesion. If, however, the Peace Society has some new and substantive doctrine, some influence by which it can supersede the use of war, let it be tried on the spot; let the society ask France, into whose capital it is so politely welcomed, to withdraw the most gratuitous and vain of all warlike expeditions, that to Rome; let it ask Russia and Austria to waive their victory over the Hungarians; let it ask Russia to forego an outpost on the Mediterranean, needless if peace and arbitration are to rule the world.

The West Indian colonies exhibit a continuance of the same discontented not to say disaffected spirit which is growing habitual to them. In British Guiana, Mr. Barkly maintained his tone of quiet firmness, but had not escaped a severe lecture from the Combined Court; and his partial "reform" is met by a cry for a total change in the constitution of the colony, with two chambers, one wholly elective.

In India, Gholab Singh has excited such grave suspicions of his fealty, that Lord Dalhousie has demanded the surrender of all his guns; he replies, that his soldiers won't let them be given up, but that the British may come and take them. The worst of it is, that this pretext is probably true; for in the Sikh territories the soldiery really dictate, except while their chiefs keep the lead by superior ambition and energy. Sikh chiefs must let their soldiers fight, and it is quite possible that Gholab Singh cannot be true to his British allegiance if he would-quite as possible that he has no great wish to be so, if he can play the traitor with safety or probability of advantage. Of course, he will be put down-in spite of the Peace Society!

The trial of Moolraj, Dewan of Moultan, for complicity in the murder of Lieutenant Anderson and Mr. Agnew, has the same political element in a form which may become peculiarly interesting. His defence implies that he was acting under the compulsion of terror, taking the part he did in fear of his soldiery. This is one more of many circumstances which indicate the necessity of effectually breaking up and dispersing a military power that too much resembles the Prætorian bands or the Mamelukes, a military force independent of any soil or political bonds, acting solely for its own military interests.

COLONIAL POLICY.

TRADITION says that Queen Mary died of grief for the loss of Calais: how would Queen Victoria take the loss of her colonies? Such a result is not impossible. On the first blush of the thing it does seem incredible that this mighty empire,

66

The advices from the British dependencies are not hopeful for the permanence of tranquillity and concord. In Canada, the British League has completed its session, and has sent home a manifesto, the sum of which is, that the "British" party in Canada regretfully hankers after commercial protection in the tariff of the English customs, and to counteract the "factious" operations of the French Canadians desires a confederation of the Provinces in British North America. In what respect such a measure could materially benefit the colonies, is not very clear. By the analogy of the neighboring Union, the Colonial Congress would have jurisdiction over customs, navigation, waste upon which the sun never sets," should go to lands, the composition of the central legislature, pieces, and signalize the commencement of its and some other matters, which would all, no downward career by imitating the dismemberdoubt, be modified by the peculiarities of the col- ment of the Spanish and Portuguese empires; but onies and their relation to this country; but in such things have been, and England herself has any case the pride of the "British" party would lost one colonial dominion. The idea of indepenbe solaced, because they would become the lead-dence is becoming familiarized to colonists in ing section of an immense British majority in the various quarters; and several English statesmen, central Parliament, instead of being a minority in actuated by indifference or the fatalism of official the Parliament of United Canada. That is prob- routine, studiously and avowedly contemplate the ably the paramount object of the British League. ultimate separation of the colonies. The "old Invited to join the league, New Brunswick has English" notion of maintaining the integrity of astutely established a league of its own, to cor- the empire has succumbed before the philosophy respond with the other and watch New Bruns- of the Manchester school, which can respect nothwick interests. The Atlantic Province seems noting that is not vindicated by the direct profit and averse from federation, but equally disinclined to loss account in a money value.

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people of England to the "dismemberment of the empire," we do not foresee.

To improve the colonial relation, therefore, is the alternative that ought to be earnestly considered. Some broad principles, possessing unity in themselves, but capable of diverse application, should be settled. It seems quite possible to do that. To limit and define the matters which must be reserved for the imperial authority, is the first

Thus there is no influence opposed to the disintegrating process which is at work in the colonies themselves. It is not to be denied that in all directions the ties are considerably loosened. The Orange party of Canada West is making an organized demand for commercial protection and a federal union of the provinces as a means of overwhelming the Franco-Canadian majority: but whatever may come of that movement, annexation" will be the policy of the opposition in Can- essential-sovereignty, foreign relations, ubiquity ada: if federation answer the purpose of the Orangemen, the Franco-Canadians and British liberals will look to overcome it by annexation; if federation fail the Orangemen, they will look to annexation; material interest points to annexation; the official trifling with the colony converts loyal regard into vexation and dislike; the seclusion of Lord Elgin, apparently in fear of popular outrage, brings the monarchy which he represents into contempt. The Canadians have poor inducements to loyalty. The Cape of Good Hope is so exasperated by being mocked with a pretence of free institutions and a reality of convictism, forced upon the colony by a breach of faith, that it would do little to defend itself against the occupation of any foreign power let Canada break loose, and the Cape would not long remain bound. The Australians have the advantages of distance from the metropolis, great activity, and cultivated political ideas let Australia see the North American federation break loose, and the Australasian federation would soon be independent. And all our other colonies gone, would the aggrieved and injured West Indies alone remain faithful?

In one sense, three alternatives appear to exhaust the prospect of eventualities: to continue as we are; to commence the work of separation by the annexation of Canada to the American Union; to supersede the motives to such annexation by improving the relation of the colonies to the United Kingdom.

To continue as we are is manifestly impossible. In most of our colonies there are grievances wholly unsettled, provoking new exasperations, and inflicting a continuance of material injury; it is so with the fast and loose free-trade policy exercised towards Canada; the political and penal treatment of the Cape; the treatment of the labor question in the West Indies. In all those colonies the sense of injury is too material, and too exasperating, while in all of them the intellectual activity is too great to permit a passive sufferance of the actual policy. Some of our present rulers avowedly contemplate dismemberment we tell them that it is not distant; we tell Queen Victoria that her reign may see it begun.

Separation, beginning with North American annexation, is not only possible, but highly probable, considering the motives already mentioned, and the official indifferentism. But how it would be possible to maintain the rank of England in the scale of nations when she had been stripped of her colonies, or how whig optimists and Manchester economists could reconcile the sovereign and

and inviolability of British citizenship. All other matters may be safely surrendered to the colonies, to govern according to local knowledge and the varying necessities of varying latitudes. Under the present system, federation can do nothing for the colonies which they cannot attain separately; but it might greatly facilitate a reformed organization of the colonial empire. Every group must, in some degree, acquire its own nationality: in character, the West Indian, the North American, the South African, and the Australian, differ as much from each other as they do from the homekeeping Englishman. That distinct nationality ought to be respected in the spirit as well as the letter of the new colonial constitution. By bringing to bear upon the government of the colonies grouped into federations all the resources of the empire, it would be possible to excite stronger sympathies than ever-ambition for official promotion, the more attractive if it were carried through an ascending scale; love of honors, the greater if they were recognized at home; affection for the monarchy, if that were reciprocally represented in every part of the colony by colonists, and accessible to the colonists by deputy in the metropolis.

This policy would scarcely be an innovation; it would only be to extend to our colonies proper the spirit of a policy already pursued towards foreign dependencies like the Ionian Islands and India. And we have, it is alleged, even in the present cabinet, a statesman susceptible of development to any exaltation of statesmanship. Here then is a task for him as a compensation for setting Europe by the ears, he may restore our colonial relations and consolidate the integrity of the empire-which is now imperilled by the very colleague that declined to sit in council with one reputed so destructive !-Ibid.

From the Examiner, 25 August. THE COMMON SENSE OF THE HUNGARIAN

QUESTION.

Ir is a gallant and noble thing to trample upon a fallen nation. We may expect that the reverses of the Hungarian arms will be followed up by attacks upon the Hungarian character. Already this has been begun by the writer of an article in Thursday's Times, headed as above. The writer professes to have resided on various occasions in Hungary, and to have carefully studied Hungarian history and political geography. If this is the case he has done so to little purpose.

He says,

the ultra Magyars wished to drive | render that independence a nullity. Of course, as the Croats and Tschechs by force into a foreign long as the house of Hapsburg could send Hunnationality;" and proceeds to assert, that "the unjustifiably violent methods used by them are indisputable. The flogging of peasantry that refused the change of language in public worship; the innumerable cases of forcible interference between parent and child, in the matter of education; the refusal of the Magyar censors to allow the Tschechs any newspaper whatever, in their mother tongue; are all too incontestable to be effaced from the page of history."

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garian regiments to Italy, and garrison Hungary with Bohemian and Italian troops, her independence was in a most precarious condition. The Hungarians were fully justified in demanding a separate ministry of war, without which there could be no permanent security for their liberties. Such was the opinion of that great man, Count Szechenyi, whose name has been pressed into the service of absolutism in a way that he would be the first to repudiate if Providence should be pleased to restore his faculties, and who himself took office, by the side of Kossuth, in a constitutional ministry formed upon those principles.

The curious ascending scale of civilization in rural Hungary, according to this writer's views, is one that will hardly bear the test of inquiry. It must be indeed a very strange taste that would prefer the condition of the military frontier to that

Now it happens that there are no Tschechs in Hungary. The writer, doubtless, means the Slovacks, who belong to the same great Slave branch as the Tschechs of Bohemia. But, letting this pass, we may ask why, instead of vague charges, he does not produce at least one single fact bearing upon these charges. Such similar accusations as have been made in German papers have been invariably refuted. As for Magyar censorship, the notion of any part of civil Hungary. In most parts of of such a thing is most ridiculous. The censorship in Hungary was in the hands of the government, and consequently anti-Magyar; and it was always the policy of that government to fan the jealousies which existed in Hungary, as they do everywhere else, between races speaking a different language.

It is false to date the occupation of the greater part of Hungary by the Turks from the battle of Mohacs. After that battle, Solyman withdrew without occupying a single village of the realm. Whatever he and his successors acquired, was gained from sovereigns of the house of Hapsburg. After Austria had been saved by Sobieski, the Austrian arms made progress in Hungary, and gradually the Hungarian kingdom was reëxtended to its present limits; but Hungary could never, according to any maxim of national law, have been considered a conquered province by the house of Hapsburg. The election of each Hapsburg sovereign was accompanied by a solemn oath on his part to respect the liberties and independence of the realm; and when, in 1687, the crown was rendered hereditary in that family, (consequently after the time from which the writer of the letter dates the commencement of the constitution in Hungary,) an equally solemn oath was taken to the same effect by the heir Joseph I., who was crowned in the lifetime of his father Leopold; and has been repeated by every one of the hereditary sovereigns since that time, with the exception of Joseph II.—who is, therefore, always counted an usurper.

the Banat there are local advantages which will account for its flourishing condition, without seeking any such cause as that of its having been longest under imperial civil administration. But villages could be pointed out in the Banat as wretched as any that are to be found in any other part of Hungary; and villages could also be named in other parts of Hungary that would do credit to the Banat. With regard to passable roads and bridges, smiling villages and neat cottages, the best-informed travellers have been able to discover them in Hungary without ascending the Save, Drave, or Danube, into Styria, Austria, and the Tyrol.

If the Hungarian reform bills were passed only at the eleventh hour, it was solely because, since 1832, they have met with a most determined resistance on the part of the Austrian government. The present war in Hungary cannot be said, according to any known and familiar application of language, to have begun in preventing a repeal of the union; for no union ever existed except according to this newly-fangled, far-fetched, de facto interpretation. But a union did exist, and had existed for eight centuries, between Hungary and Croatia, which the house of Hapsburg attempted by the most perfidious means to dissolve.

As for the supposition that Austria will introduce any system but that of absolutism, it is too childish to be worth answering. The essence of the Austrian system of government is to govern by a complicated mechanism of salaried officials. The charter of Count Stadion makes no provision for any real self-government, and can only be forced upon But it seems that Austria “rendered Hungary the various peoples that inhabit the Austrian terde jure an independent kingdom, but de facto mar-ritories at the point of the bayonet.

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ried to Austria, by the imperial and royal armies The fruits of the great crime of the annihilation forming one corps under the War Office of Vien- of Hungarian independence will be reaped by Rusna. This the writer of the article asserts; and does not perceive that by so doing he shows, in its strongest colors, the perfidy of the house of Hapsburg. For 165 years, according to this calculation, the house of Hapsburg admitted by solemn oaths the de jure independence of Hungary, while she was doing all in her power de facto to

sia. The Austrian emperor is henceforth the vassal of the czar, dependent upon Russian bayonets for protection against his subjects. Russia will bide her time. She will wait till the fruit is ripe, and the provinces fall first under her influence, and then under her dominion. The last barrier is swept away between Russia and Turkey.

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