542. The Working Executive.—The constitutional arrangements respecting the executive branch of the Hungarian government are set forth principally in Law III. of 1848 "concerning the Formation of a Responsible Hungarian Ministry." The king attains his position ipso jure, by reason of being Emperor of Austria, without the necessity of any distinct act of public law. Within six months of his accession at Vienna he is crowned monarch of Hungary at Budapest, in a special ceremony in which is used the crown sent by Pope Sylvester II. upwards of a thousand years ago to King Stephen. The new sovereign is required to proffer Parliament an "inaugural certificate," as well as to take a coronation oath, to the effect that he will maintain the fundamental laws and liberties of the country; and both of these instruments are incorporated among the officially published documents of the realm. The entire proceeding partakes largely of the character of a contractual arrangement between nation and sovereign.

As in Austria, the powers of the crown are exercised very largely through the ministry. And, by reason of the peculiar safeguards in the Hungarian laws against royal despotism, as well as the all but uninterrupted absence of the king from the dominion, the ministry at Budapest not only constitutes the Hungarian executive in every real sense, but it operates on a much more purely parliamentary basis than does its counterpart at Vienna. "His Majesty," says the law of 1848, "shall exercise the executive power in conformity with law, through the independent Hungarian ministry, and no ordinance, order, decision, or appointment shall have force unless it is countersigned by one of the ministers residing at Budapest."[690] Every measure of the crown must be countersigned by a minister; and every minister is immediately and actually responsible to Parliament for all of his official acts.

543. Composition and Status of the Ministry.—The ministry consists of a president of the council, or premier, and the heads of nine departments, as follows: Finance, National Defense, Interior, Education and Public Worship, Justice, Industry and Commerce, Agriculture, the Ministry for Croatia and Slavonia, and the Ministry near the King's Person. The last-mentioned portfolio exists by virtue of the constitutional requirement that "one of the ministers shall always be in attendance upon the person of His Majesty, and shall take part in all affairs which are common to Hungary and the hereditary provinces, and in such affairs he shall, under his responsibility, represent Hungary."[691] All ministers are appointed by the king, on nomination of the premier. All have seats in Parliament and must be heard in either chamber when they desire to speak. They are bound, indeed, to attend the sessions of either house when requested, to submit official papers for examination, and to give "proper explanations" respecting governmental policies. They may be impeached by vote of a majority of the lower chamber, in which event the trial is held before a tribunal of twelve judges chosen by secret ballot by the upper house from among its own members. Inasmuch, however, as the lower house has acquired the power by a simple vote of want of confidence to compel a cabinet to resign, the right of impeachment possesses in practice small value. The ministry is required to submit once a year to the lower house for its examination and approval a statement of the income and needs of the country, together with an account of the income administered by it during the past twelve months.[692]

III. Parliament—the Electoral System

544. The Table of Magnates.—The Hungarian parliament consists of two houses, whose official designations are Förendihaz—Table, or Chamber, of Magnates—and Képviselöház, or Chamber of Deputies. The upper house is essentially a perpetuation of the ancient Table of Magnates which, in the sixteenth century, began to sit separately as an aristocratic body made up of the great dignitaries of the kingdom, the Catholic episcopate (also, after 1792, that of the Orthodox Greek Church), the "supreme courts," and the adult sons of titled families. The reforms of 1848 left the Chamber untouched, though its composition was modified slightly in 1885.[693] At the session of 1910-1911 it contained 16 archdukes of the royal family (eighteen years of age or over); 15 state dignitaries; 2 presidents of the High Courts of Appeal; 42 archbishops and bishops of the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches; 13 representatives of the Lutheran, Calvinist, and Unitarian faiths; 236 members of the hereditary aristocracy (i.e., those of the whole number of the nobility who pay a land tax to the amount of at least 6,000 crowns annually); 3 members elected by the provincial diet of Croatia; and 60 life peers, appointed by the crown or chosen by the Chamber of Magnates itself—a total of 387.[694] The membership is therefore exceedingly complex, resting on the various principles of hereditary right, ex-officio qualification, royal nomination, and election. In practice the upper house is distinctly subordinate to the lower, to which alone the ministers are responsible. Any member may acquire, by due process of election, a seat in the lower chamber, and the privilege is one of which the more ambitious peers are not reluctant to avail themselves. Upon election to the lower house a peer's right to sit in the upper chamber is, of course, suspended; but when the term of service in the popular branch has expired, the prior right is revived automatically.

545. The Chamber of Deputies: the Franchise.—By law of 1848, amended in 1874, it is stipulated that the Chamber of Deputies, historically descended from the ancient Table of Nuncios, shall consist of 453 members, "who shall enjoy equal voting power, and who shall be elected in accordance with an apportionment made on the basis of population, territory, and economic conditions."[695] Of the total number of members, 413 are representatives of Hungary proper and 40 are delegates of the subordinate kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia. This kingdom possesses its own organs of government, including a unicameral diet which exercises independent legislative power in all internal affairs. Its forty deputies take part in the proceedings at Budapest only when subjects are under consideration which are of common concern to all of the countries of St. Stephen's crown, such as questions pertaining to finance, war, communications, and relations with Austria.[696]

The election of deputies is governed by an elaborate statute of November 10, 1874, by which were perpetuated the fundamentals of the electoral law of 1848. In respect to procedure, the system was further amended by a measure of 1899. Qualifications for the exercise of the suffrage are based on age, property, taxation, profession, official position, and ancestral privileges. Nominally liberal, they are, in actual operation, notoriously illiberal. The prescribed age for an elector is twenty years, indeed, as compared with twenty-four in Austria; but the qualifications based upon property-holding are so exacting that they more than offset the liberality therein involved. These qualifications—too complicated to be enumerated here—vary according as they arise from capital, industry, occupation, or property-holding. With slight restrictions, the right to vote is possessed without regard to property or income, by members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, professors, notaries public, engineers, surgeons, druggists, graduates of agricultural schools, foresters, clergymen, chaplains, and teachers. On the other hand, state officials, soldiers in active service, customs employees, and the police have no vote; servants, apprenticed workingmen, and agricultural laborers are carefully excluded; and there are the usual disqualifications for crime, bankruptcy, guardianship, and deprivation by judicial process. In an aggregate population of approximately 20,000,000 to-day there are not more than 1,100,000 electors.

546. The Magyar Domination.—The explanation of this state of affairs is to be sought in the ethnographical composition of Hungary's population. Like Austria, Hungary contains a mélange of races and nationalities. The original Hungarians are the Magyars, and by the Magyar element attempt has been made always to preserve as against the affiliated German and Slavic peoples an absolute superiority of social, economic, and political power. The Magyars occupy almost exclusively the more desirable portion of the country, i.e., the great central plain intersected by the Danube and the Theiss, where they preponderate decidedly in as many as nineteen counties. Clustered around them, and in more or less immediate touch with kindred peoples beyond the borders, are the Germans and the Slavs—the Slovaks in the mountains of the north, the Ruthenes on the slopes of the Carpathians, the Serbs on the southeast, and the Croats on the southwest. When the census of 1900 was taken the total population of Hungary (including Croatia-Slavonia) was 19,254,559. Of this number 8,742,301 were Magyars; 8,029,316 were Slavs; 2,135,181 were Germans; and 397,761 were of various minor racial groups. To put it differently, the Magyars numbered 8,742,301; the non-Magyars, 10,512,258. The fundamental fault of the Hungarian electorate is that it has been shaped, and is deliberately maintained, in the interest of a race which comprises numerically but 45.4 per cent of the country's population.[697] So skillfully, indeed, have electoral qualifications and electoral proceedings been devised in the Magyar interest that the non-Magyar majority has but meager representation, and still less influence, at Budapest.[698] Even in Hungary proper the electorate in 1906 comprised but 24.4 per cent of the male population over twenty years of age; and, despite the disqualifications that have been mentioned one-fourth of the men who vote are officials or employees of the state.

547. The Demand for Electoral Reform: the Franchise Reform Bill of 1908.—In recent years, especially since the Austrian electoral reform of 1906-1907, there has been in Hungary an increasingly insistent demand that the Magyar parliamentary hegemony be overthrown, or at least that there be assured to the non-Magyar peoples something like a proportionate share of political influence. As early as 1905 the recurrence of legislative deadlocks at Budapest influenced Francis Joseph to ally himself with the democratic elements of the kingdom and to declare for manhood suffrage; and in the legislative programme of the Fejérváry government, made public October 28, 1905, the place of principal importance was assigned to this reform. Fearing the swamping of the popular chamber by the Slavs and Germans, the Magyars steadily opposed all change, and for the time being the mere threat on the part of the Government was sufficient to restore tolerable, if not normal, parliamentary conditions. The Wekerle coalition cabinet of 1900 announced electoral reform as one of its projected tasks, but as time elapsed it became apparent that no positive action was likely to be taken. During 1907 and 1908 riotous demonstrations on the part of the disappointed populace were frequent, and at last, November 11, 1908, Count Andrássy, Minister of the Interior, introduced in the Chamber the long-awaited Franchise Reform Bill.

The measure fell far short of public expectation. It was drawn, as Count Andrássy himself admitted, in such a manner as not "to compromise the Magyar character of the Hungarian state." After a fashion, it conceded manhood suffrage. But, to the end that the Magyar hegemony might be preserved, it imposed upon the exercise of the franchise such a number of restrictions and assigned to plural voting such an aggregate of weight that its concessions were regarded by those who were expected to be benefited by it as practically valueless. The essentials of the measure were: (1) citizens unable to read and write Hungarian should be excluded from voting directly, though they might choose one elector for every ten of their number, and each elector so chosen should be entitled to one vote; (2) every male citizen able to read and write Hungarian should be invested, upon completing his twenty-fourth year and fulfilling a residence requirement of twelve months, with one vote; (3) electors who had passed four standards of a secondary school,[699] or who paid yearly a direct tax amounting to at least twenty crowns ($4.16), or who fulfilled various other conditions, should be entitled to two votes; and (4) electors who had completed the course of secondary instruction, or who paid a direct tax of 100 crowns (approximately $21), should be possessed of three votes. As before, voting was to be oral and public. In the preamble of the measure the cynical observation was offered that "the secret ballot protects electors in dependent positions only in so far as they break their promises under the veil of secrecy." It was announced that the passage of the bill would be followed by the presentation of a scheme for the redistribution of seats.