Round About the Carpathians

by Andrew F. Crosse

"This very important settlement, which came to be known as the 'Urbarial Conscription,' laid down and defined the rights and services of the peasants, and the amount of land to be held by them. The nobles henceforth were obliged to find new tenants of the peasant class in the event of the 'session-lands' becoming vacant. Likewise their unjust impositions on the serfs were restricted, and the rights of the latter, in respect to wood-cutting and pasturage on the lord's lands, were established by law.

"This was all very well as far as it went," said my friend; "but the inequality of taxation and the forced labour were crying evils not to be endured in the nineteenth century. Our people who travelled in England and elsewhere came back imbued with new ideas. We in Transylvania assume the credit of taking the lead in liberal politics. Baron Wesselényi was one of the first to advise a radical reform, and others—Count Bethlen, Baron Kemeny, and Count Teleki—were all agreed as to the necessity of bringing about the manumission of the serfs. It is an old story now. I am speaking of the third and fourth decades of the century, and political excitement was at white-heat. The extreme views of Wesselényi raised a host of opponents among his own class, who regarded the prospect of reform as nothing short of class suicide. Everything else might go to the devil as long as they retained their privileges; the devil, however, is apt to make a clean sweep of the board when he has got the game in his own hands, but these noble wiseacres could not see that. In other parts of the country good men and true were working up the leaven of reform. The great patriot Széchenyi, as long ago as 1830, when he published his work on 'Credit,' had shown his countrymen their shortcomings. He had proved to them that their laws and their institutions were not marching with the spirit of the age; that, in short, the 'rights of humanity' called for justice. What this truly great man did for the material improvement of his country could hardly be told between sunrise and sundown. You practical English were our teachers and our helpers in those days, when bridges had to be built, roads to be made, and steam navigation set up in our rivers. English horses were brought over to improve the breed in Hungary, and English agricultural machinery still turns out treasure-trove from our fields. But beyond all this, what we saw and admired in England's history was her constitutional struggles for liberty; the efforts made by freedom within the pale of the law; her capacity, in short, for self-reform. You see how it is, my dear sir, that everything English is so popular with us in Hungary."

I bowed my acknowledgments, and begged my friend to proceed with his narrative of events.

"Well, to go back to our own history," he continued, in a tone which had in it a shade of melancholy, "you see from 1823 to the eve of 1848 the Diet had been tinkering at reform in a half-hearted sort of way, but the Paris revolution let loose the whirlwind, and events were precipitated. I need not tell you there was a standing quarrel between us and the reactionary rulers in Vienna. It was the deceitful policy of Austria to bring about a temporary show of agreement between us. The Archduke Stephen was appointed Viceroy, assisted by a council composed entirely of Hungarians. Now mark this turning-point in our history. The first Act of this Diet, presided over by Count Batthyanyi, was to abolish at one sweep the class privileges of the nobility. Roundly speaking, eight millions of serfs received their freedom by that Act! Nor was this all, the important part remains to be told—and I do not think foreigners always realise it—the Act further enforced that the session-lands held by the peasants became henceforth their freehold property. Half, or nearly half, the kingdom thus, by the voluntary concession of the nobles, became converted from a feudal tenure, burdened with duties, into an absolute freehold.

"Like every sudden change, the result was not unmixed good. The Wallacks especially were not prepared for their emancipation; they thought equality before the law meant equality of goods."

I now inquired how the working of the land laws was carried out, and to this my friend replied:—

"As a lawyer I can give you an exact statement in a few words. The disturbed state of the country after the war of independence, which followed immediately upon the emancipation of the serfs, prevented for a while the effective realisation of the great reform of '48. However, in 1853 several imperial decrees were promulgated, by means of which the changed system was worked out in detail. 'Urbarial courts' were instituted to inquire into the amount of compensation due to the lords of the manors who had lost the tithes and the 'forced labour' of the former serfs. To meet this compensation 'State urbarial bonds' were created and apportioned; they bear five per cent. interest, and are redeemable within eighty years, with two drawings annually. The fund for this compensation is raised by a special tax on every Hungarian subject; not only the freed peasant pays towards the fund, but the lord himself, and those who never had any feudal tenants.

"The peasants had also to receive their compensation for the loss of pasturage and the right of cutting wood on the lord's demesne. In lieu of these privileges they received allotments of forest and pasturage as absolute property. The land thus acquired by the peasants is in fact parish property, or in other words, communal property. This is the only instance in which the parish appears as landowner, for all other peasant property, with the exception of the parish buildings, such as the school, is the property of the respective peasants. The parish authorities regulate the usage of the common pasturage and common forest. The sale or cutting down of the latter is subject to the permission of the county authorities."

I now proceeded to question my friend about the laws respecting the transfer of land, and especially about the registration of titles of estate. To these inquiries he replied as follows:—

"Land in Hungary is the absolute property of that person, or corporate body, who appears as owner in the registry. A limitation of claim to ownership does not exist with us; indeed it is contrary to the law. The Avitische Patent of 1854 prescribed further that every one should be regarded as the rightful owner who actually held the property in 1848—i.e., the status quo of 1848 to be accepted as the basis. The Urbarium of Maria Theresa was, in short, the stand-point in all these arrangements, whether it was the sessional lands of tenants formerly held in hereditary use, now freehold, or the allodium of the noble. Immediately succeeding the Avitische Patent, the registration of land was made law, in conformity with which all estates had been surveyed and entered on the registry as belonging to those owners who possessed the same in consequence of the above-named patent."