He possessed a quick and keen sensibility, which was the source of many of his faults and of his virtues. A curious illustration of this quality is shown in his renunciation of field sports, in consequence of reading a passage in a Persian poet on the duty of humanity to all living things. No doubt it was to this sensibility that he owed a large part of that matchless eloquence which was to be so powerful an engine in the revolutionary war. It was connected, too, with the keen statesmanlike instinct which enabled him to see so often the right moment for particular lines of action; and which, had it been united with a wider sympathy, stronger nerves, and a more scrupulous conscience, might have made his career as useful as it was brilliant.
KOSSUTH LAJOS.
This instinct it was which enabled him to see at this crisis that nothing could be effected for Hungary until the work done in the Diet was better known to the main body of the people. The private press which he now started may have been suggested to him by Wesselenyi's attempt in Transylvania; but its work was carried out with an ingenuity and resourcefulness which were altogether Kossuth's own. The Government became so alarmed at this press that they wished to purchase it from him, but, wherever print was hindered, he circulated written correspondence. Nor did he confine his reporting to the debates in the Diet of Presburg, for he circulated also reports of the county meetings.
The Count Palatine, the chief ruler of Hungary, tried to hinder this work; but the county officials refused to sanction this prohibition, and thus deprived it of legal force.
The Government was now thoroughly roused; and in May, 1837, Kossuth was indicted for treason, arrested, and kept for two years in prison without any trial.
But great as was the indignation excited by this arrest, it was as nothing compared to the storm which was aroused by the prosecution and imprisonment of Wesselenyi. The Government had marked him out during the Transylvanian debates as an enemy who was to be struck on the first opportunity. The printing of the Transylvanian reports would have been followed very speedily by a prosecution, had he not escaped into North Hungary; but his speech against the Government in the Presburg Diet gave a new opportunity for attack.
The enthusiasm which his prominent position, impressive manner, and high rank had caused had been strengthened in Transylvania by the extreme personal kindness which he had shown towards his peasantry; and one of them walked all the way from Wesselenyi's Transylvanian estate to Vienna to petition, on his own behalf and that of one hundred fellow-peasants, that their landlord might be restored to them.
Had Francis been still on the throne, it is possible that Metternich would have offered further resistance to the popular demands. But Francis had died in 1835, the year before the closing of the Diet. His successor, Ferdinand, though, chiefly from physical causes, too weak to hold his own against Metternich, was a kindly, easy-tempered man, not without a sense that even kings ought to obey the law.