other symptoms, showed that a change of system was in contemplation. Of the new Ministers who were gathered under the wing of Count Mensdorff-Pouilly, whose importance is not in connexion with the internal affairs of the Empire, Count Belcredi became Minister of the Interior for all the provinces not linked with the Crown of Hungary. Of Italian descent, he has property in Moravia, has been Statthalter of Bohemia, and is favourably known as a good administrator, averse to the 'Zopf' of the old bureaucratic system; Count Larisch, a nobleman of good intentions, but by no means a Gladstone, as a weekly contemporary has described him, took charge of the Finances; while George von Majlath, an extremely able man and a good patriot, became Chancellor of Hungary. The name, however, which has been chiefly mentioned in connexion with the overthrow of the Schmerling policy, is that of Count Maurice Esterhazy, who has been in the Government ever since the retirement of Baron Vay, and this name, it must be admitted, associated as it is in the minds of many with intrigue and Jesuitry, has been anything but a tower of strength to his colleagues.

The overthrow of the Schmerling policy was finally announced to the Empire by the imperial manifesto of the 20th September 1865. Whether we agree or disagree with the views which dictated it, it is difficult to read that document without feeling that the intentions of those who framed it were honest. By it the Emperor declares his intention of falling back upon the Diploma of 20th October 1860, suspending the effect of the Patent of the 26th February 1861, with all its consequences. In fact, he admits, in effect, that the system of centralization by which M. Schmerling had attempted to work out and to modify the ideas of the October Diploma, had been an utter failure, and that upon the foundation of that Diploma a new system must be erected, carrying out its ideas without any modification, at least in a Centralist sense.

The effect produced upon public opinion in Vienna by this proclamation was of course very great; and those who, like the writer of this paper, chanced to be upon the spot, heard the most diverse opinions. The situation,' said one, is as triste as possible. The Ministry stands alone, and has really no party, except in Hungary. Why do you come here at present?' said a second; 'you can learn nothing now. All that was has disappeared, and nothing has been put in its place.' 'The present position of affairs,' said a third, is very puzzling, and the Germans are not unnaturally irritated; but the change of system having been once announced, there is nothing for it but to help it to work. The new Ministers are honourable men-men of

the world, aristocratical in tendency, and hence unpopular with the German party, which is essentially of the middle class.' 'Talk of governing Austria by the Hungarians' said a fourth; 'talk of governing England by the gipsies!' Some there were who thought that the irritation of the Emperor against certain members of the Reichsrath had had much to do with the suspension of its powers. Others, again, looked at the whole matter from a very different point of view. Of course,' they said, 'for Liberals to rejoice at the suspension of a constitution has an ugly look; but if that constitution is only laid aside in order to put something better in its place, they are surely right in rejoicing. The recent change was the only thing possible.'

This chaos of opinions still continues, and will continue; and while we range ourselves on the side of the new Ministers, we do so with the full consciousness that some of the most impartial and best-informed observers of Austrian politics have taken the other view.1

To our thinking, then, it would be infinitely desirable that the idea of that Austrian Guizot, M. Schmerling, should be carried out, and that there should be in Vienna a Parliament whose decrees on all subjects should be as much respected in Essek and Sissek, in Debreczin and Kronstadt, as those of our own are from London to Unst or St. Kilda; but that seems to us just one of the many desirable things which are simply impossible. We can well understand how painful it is to the members of the 'Great-Austrian party,' to be obliged to give up a brilliant and cherished dream; but they must learn, we fear, to recognise the limitations of existence, and to say, with the philosophy which distinguishes their race, Es ist nun einmal so. There may be a time far off when their dream shall become a reality; but it must be at a period so remote, as to lie quite beyond the ken of the politician.

It is but too true, that even if the question which now divides opinions in Austria were settled in the most satisfactory manner, and if the Hungarian Diet, and the Central Assembly at Vienna, were working side by side, with most of the minor provincial assemblies, from the Lake of Constance to Cattaro, following suit, the Empire would still be an object of considerable anxiety to all politicians. It is hardly possible that such a state of concord can be perpetual; nothing, at least, has ever occurred

1 At the moment of our going to press the situation remains, in its main features, unaltered. Our last accounts from Pesth, public and private, give much hope, but afford no certainty, of a favourable issue to the pending negotiations; and the tone of the Hungarian Address, laid before the Diet upon the 8th of February, is as firm as ever.

in the world's history to entitle us to cherish so bright a hope. The best, perhaps, to which we can look forward is, that some day or other, under circumstances different, and far more favourable than the present, it may be given to some statesman to turn the personal union which Deak now conceives to exist between Austria and Hungary; or the real union which Wheaton and other publicists see in their connexion; or the unnamed union · between a real and a personal union, for which the author of Drei Jahre Verfassungsstreit contends,-into an incorporative union like that which exists between England and Scotland. The increase of railways and other means of communication may make this come quicker than seems possible at present, but it must still be very far away.

There is in this mighty Empire the strangest intermingling of society as it was in the seventeenth century, with society as it is now in the most highly advanced nations. How difficult it is to believe that the scenes which Mr. Boner describes in the Transylvanian Saxon-land, are going on at this moment; or that in the Rouman nation, which is called to equal rights with the most civilized populations of the Empire, there should be only about 150 educated men!

The difficulties which have been entailed upon the present rulers of Austria by the follies, crimes, and neglects of many generations, are so great, that we ought to judge particular acts, if they continue as now to be clearly animated by honest intentions, with the greatest forbearance, and give much weight to what such writers as Mr. Paton and Mr. Boner have to say about the doings of Austrian employés, even at the worst and most painful moments of recent years. We hope that if the questions which at present agitate the Empire can be in any way tolerably arranged, the next few years will be given, as much as possible, to material improvement. Much, even since we first saw Hungary, nineteen years ago, has been done for the improvement of that magnificent country; but millions of capital must still be expended before her resources are even half developed; and we cannot help thinking that Mr. Boner is right in pointing to Transylvania as a very profitable field for English enterprise.

A most wise beginning has been made by the present Ministers of Austria in the Commercial Treaty with England, a measure which, as has been truly said, marks a turning-point, not only in the policy of their country, but in that of ours in the policy of their country, because they give up the prohibitive system in which they have so long delighted; in that of ours, because, far more decidedly than in the French Treaty, we come forward as the assertors of the principle that for a nation to re

fuse to exchange with us those commodities which can be exchanged with mutual advantage by both nations, is an unfriendly, semi-hostile act, and because we give it distinctly to be understood, that far from thinking it necessary to buy 'concessions' by 'concessions' on our part, we think that by persuading the Austrians to make these 'concessions' we are conferring at least as great a benefit upon them as on ourselves. The concessions' which it is understood we are to make with regard to the timber duties, and to the duties on wines in bottle, are really no equivalents at all for their concessions,' for not only are they trifling in themselves, but we should very soon have made them for our own purposes. In fact, their being treated as 'concessions' at all, is only an accommodation to the weakness of half-converted neophytes.

The history of this Treaty is a curious one. Springing out of the anti-French sympathies of a small knot of English politicians, becoming complicated with questions of a loan and the private arrangements of capitalists, looked on very coldly by the Foreign Office, it gradually slipped into the hands of the two men most fitted to carry it to a successful issue, Mr. Morier, one of the ablest of that not too numerous class of diplomatists who take au sérieux their noble profession, and Mr. Mallet of the Board of Trade, whose great knowledge of mercantile affairs, wide sympathies and high political ability, are known and appreciated by all who have watched our commercial progress in the last ten years. Great credit is also due to Mr. Somerset Beaumont for having originated the idea of a Treaty with Austria, and for having paved the way for it at the cost of infinite time and trouble-efforts which have as yet by no means been, in our opinion, sufficiently appreciated. These three gentlemen should divide between them most of the praise which accrues to England from this transaction, although other figures flitted across the negotiations, and were sometimes helpful enough. On the Austrian side all credit is due to Count Mensdorff and Baron Wüllerstorf, especially to the former, whose conduct was loyal and honourable in the highest degree.

A

The direct effects of the Treaty in promoting trade between Austria and this country will not be very great or very immediate, although we need hardly say that the average of the new duties will be far below the maximum of 25 per cent. very large trade between Austria and Switzerland, and Austria and Italy, may presently be expected to arise, and when any impulse is given to the general trade of Europe, we shall not be long without reaping great indirect advantage.

The finances of Austria may be expected to improve under

this judicious change of system, and we may trust that in twenty years the least advanced of Austrian economists will look back with astonishment on the fact which Count Larisch lately announced to the world, that the State lotteries brought into his coffers more than half as much again as the Customs. Still we must not expect to see the fruit of all this late wisdom ripen too soon. Austria is terribly poor, and it will be long before she feels in all her members the vivifying influence of a just commercial legislation.

It must not be forgotten, that even if the relations of the lands of the Hungarian Crown to the rest of the Empire were definitively settled, much tact and good sense would be required on the part of Hungarian statesmen to prevent the outbreak of those jealousies of nationality which proved so fatal to Hungarian aspirations in 1848 and 1849. Doubtless, the tyranny of the Bach period, by showing all the nationalities that they had a common enemy in the centralizers of Vienna, did a good deal to destroy the memory of old feuds. The Croat,' said a man in the neighbourhood of Agram to the writer, in 1851, 'put down the Hungarian, but he will take uncommonly good care not to do it again.' A very little manifestation, however, of the old ultra-Magyar spirit would soon make the Roumans or the Ruthenians more unwilling to take laws from Pesth than even from Vienna, if, indeed, the former will not be hostile to any Magyar ascendency, however beneficent. Baron Eötvös, who shows in his recent pamphlet, Die Nationalitäten-Frage, that he thoroughly understands the force, while he does not estimate too highly the wisdom, of the nationality cry, takes a hopeful view of this subject, and thinks that many of the difficulties which are involved in the question of Hungarian nationalities will be got over, if only the State will leave as much play as possible to individual liberty; and without pronouncing any opinion upon a question about which no one who has not lived long in the country, and transacted business in many parts of it, has a right to speak, we would fain accept the views of one who is at once a patriot and a man of enlightenment.1

The question of Venetia is extremely difficult-far more difficult than it appears at first sight to most of our countrymen. In the first place, the military reasons which have been so fully stated in England by Mr. Bonamy Price in favour of the reten

1 For a more formal statement of the views of Hungarian Liberals on this subject, see the translation of the Second Address of the Diet of 1861 in Mr. Horne Payne's Collection of Documents illustrative of Hungarian history in that year.