It was the right of the nobles to assemble and pass resolutions which, when approved of by the king, obtained the force of law. Up to the commencement of the thirteenth century, they used to meet in the open air; and as each brought to the place of assembly as large an armed following as he could muster, it was no unusual circumstance to find as many as eighty thousand men in the field. Such a crowd could effect nothing of its own free will, and was hardly to be managed by any species of influence. At length, in 1235, Bea IV. succeeded in introducing the system of representation which still holds good. By this arrangement, an hereditary seat in the legislature was restricted to the magnates, with whom sat likewise such official personages as prelates and barons of the kingdom. The nobles of inferior rank chose one or more from each county to represent their body, while the clergy were represented by abbots, titular bishops, and dignitaries of an inferior degree. By-and-by, during the reign of Sigismond, in 1386, free towns and royal cities were authorized, in like manner, to choose deputies, and then the framework of the Hungarian legislature became complete.
The Hungarians are never more gratified than when an opportunity offers of instituting a parallel between their houses of parliament and ours; indeed, their taste for comparing is such, that they gravely contend for a perfect similarity of principle between the constitutions of England and of Hungary. It would be as impolitic as unjust, when discussing the question with them, to deny that some such resemblance prevails. Both monarchies are limited monarchies, in which the sovereigns, though invested with absolute power as executors of the law, are just as completely circumscribed by the law, as the meanest of their subjects. It is curious to observe, likewise, how nearly the prerogatives of the one correspond in all essential points with the prerogatives of the other. The persons of both are sacred. Each is, within his own realm, the fountain of honour and of justice; each commands his own army, though by neither may its numbers be increased without a vote of the legislature. And more remarkable still, the king of Hungary, though a Roman Catholic, is the head of the church in Hungary, in the very same sense which we apply to the term, when we speak of the king of England as the head of the English church. In Hungary, the crown appoints absolutely to all bishoprics, abbacies, and even to canonries. Confirmed the choice must be, in the first of these cases, by the Pope, otherwise the spiritual authority attached to the office would be wanting; but the bishop-elect enters at once upon the possession of his temporalties, of which no exercise of papal influence can dispossess him. Moreover, it is in Hungary as it is in England,—the affairs of state are administered in all departments by the king's authority. The king's taxes, the king's duties, the king's escheats and forfeitures, are levied; the harbours are the king's harbours, the courts are the king's courts, the fortresses are the king's fortresses, and the people are the king's lieges. But here the resemblance between the constitutions of the two countries ends, and all endeavour to trace it further is useless.
Even in reference to the kingly office, we soon begin to find ourselves diverging one from another. The crown in Hungary is elective far more decidedly than in England. We, indeed, in the ceremony of our coronation, retain so much of the spirit which animated our Saxon forefathers, that the question is still put to the people,—"Will ye have this prince to reign over you?" and the prince is bound by solemn oath to govern according to law; but the ceremony of a coronation is not so vital among us, as that it might not be passed over with impunity. In Hungary, so tenacious are the magnates on the one hand, and so sensitive the emperor on the other, that he never omits, in his own life-time, to have the heir to the imperial diadem, crowned king in Hungary. The present emperor became king of Hungary three years previous to the death of his father; and now the empress has been crowned at Presburg, so that there may be no link wanting in the chain which holds the several portions of the empire together. Again, the king of Hungary, while he enjoys various privileges, to which the king of England cannot lay claim, is likewise subjected to various restraints, from which the king of England is free. The former, for example, as he appoints arbitrarily to vacant bishoprics, so he inherits the whole of a bishop's professional savings, who may chance to have died intestate. If the bishop possess hereditary property, it goes, of course, at his decease, to his next of kin; but his accumulations, be they great or small, are taken possession of by the crown. And even the making of a will saves but one-third of them. On the other hand, the king of Hungary is watched and restrained in the exercise of his prerogatives, not only by a parliament, jealous of its privileges, but by officers appointed for that purpose. The palatine is a strange compound of king's lieutenant and guardian of the liberties of the nation. He is chosen for life out of four personages proposed to the states by the sovereign; and as in the king's absence he exercises vice-regal powers, so both then, and at other seasons, he mediates between the crown and the people, taking care that the former shall not trench upon the liberties of the latter, nor the latter make any encroachments on the legal prerogatives of the former.
I might specify many other points in which even the parallel between the kingly offices in Hungary and in England fails; but it is not necessary. We have but to pass downwards to the classes below royalty, and all ground of comparison between the institutions of the two countries ceases. The parliament of Hungary is a very different affair from the parliament of England. Its members sit, to be sure, in two chambers, or houses, and enjoy, when assembled, the most absolute freedom of speech; but they meet very rarely, they transact very little business when they do meet, and both in the principle which brings them together, and in their arrangements when assembled, they outrage every notion which we are accustomed to cherish of perfection in such matters. The spirit of the Hungarian constitution requires that the estates should assemble at least once in every five years; the practice of the same constitution leaves the king at liberty to call together, and to dissolve the chambers at pleasure. I have already stated, that to the higher order of nobility, the privilege appertains of meeting, in their own persons, to deliberate on questions affecting the public weal. These,—the princes and magnates,—occupy the same chamber with the prelates and barons of the kingdom. The other chamber is given up to the representatives of the lesser nobles, of the free towns, and of the clergy; and, strange to say, to the proxies of such magnates as may find it inconvenient, personally, to attend in their places. But though there are only two chambers, there are four distinct estates, each of which votes within itself in the first instance, and then carries the result of its scrutiny to the common centre. And finally, while the Upper House is presided over by the palatine, the lower is regulated and kept in order by an official personage who bears the somewhat lengthy title of Personalis presentiæ Regiæ in judiciis locum tenens. He must be of noble birth, of course, and is likewise President of the High Court of Justiciary. There are not fewer than 661 members in the first of these houses, whereas the last can count upon 236 only.
The representative members of the Hungarian legislature are all paid by their constituents, who again consist of the eidelmen of the several counties. Of these very many are, in point of fact, mere peasants, whom the misfortunes or imprudence of their ancestors have reduced to poverty; but all must have noble blood in their veins,—for it is an honourable descent, and not the possession of lands or houses, which entitles a man to exercise the elective franchise in Hungary. Such poor nobles are, of course, controlled and managed by their wealthier neighbours, who, when the season of an election comes round, deal with them pretty much as our own candidates and their committees deal with the poor voters in boroughs. There is prodigious feasting at the castle,—there is no end of magnanimous declarations,—no lack of brilliant and spirit-stirring speeches; under the influence of which, and of the wine and strong drinks that accompany them, the pauper eidelman becomes a hero in his own eyes. But, alas! political gratitude is not more enduring in Hungary than elsewhere. The crisis has its course, and the scion of a glorious race,—the representative of a family which followed Almus to the Theiss and gave the coronet to Arpad,—goes back to his hovel, and his daily toil, and his filth, and his wretchedness, there to chew the cud of bitter fancy, till the return of an electioneering season shall call him forth once more to act a part upon the stage of life.
My reader will be good enough to believe that while I thus speak of a country,—very much under-peopled by ten millions of souls,—I am referring to the condition of a minute fraction of that population,—of something less than two hundred thousand persons, in whom alone the existence of rights and privileges is by the law recognised. The people,—properly so called,—the peasants who cultivate the soil, the mechanics who construct the dwellings, the artisans who fabricate your household utensils, your wearing apparel, your carriages, your ships, your machinery; these are precisely in the condition of Gurth and Wamba in Sir Walter Scott's romance of Ivanhoe. In the rural districts every man whom you meet, provided he be neither a noble nor a soldier, belongs to somebody. He has no rights of his own. He is a portion of another man's chattels; he is bought and sold with the land, as if he were a horse or an ox. On him, too, all the common burdens of the state are thrown. If the parliament vote an increase of the taxes, it is from the peasants that these taxes are wrung; for the lord takes care, though he himself pay immediately, that he shall be indemnified by the deduction which he makes from his serfs' allowances. It is the same spirit which provides that the peasantry, who make the roads, and by the labour of their hands keep them in repair, shall be the only class of persons of whom toll is anywhere exacted. An eidelman in his chariot passes free through every barrier,—a poor peasant's wagon is stopped at each, till the full amount of mout, as it is called, has been settled. But this is not all. Till the year 1835, each landed proprietor possessed over his peasantry an almost unlimited power of punishment, into his manner of exercising which no human being ever took the trouble to inquire. Accordingly, you still find, as an appendage to each mansion, a prison, with its bolts and chains, and other implements of torture; while the rod was as freely applied to the backs of delinquents, real or imaginary, as ever the whip made acquaintance with the persons of our own negroes in a West Indian sugar-field. It is to Count Chechini, (Szechenzi,) in this, and many other respects, the greatest benefactor to his country which modern times has raised up, that Hungary stands indebted for a law, which, for the first time in the annals of the nation, gives to the poor peasant something like protection against the tyranny of a capricious master. Since the passing of that act there have been established in all the counties regular magistrates, before whom delinquents must be brought, and without whose sanction the punishment of the lash is supposed never to be inflicted. I did not find, however, on inquiry, that much regard was paid in practice to this statute. The nobles still flog their serfs, when the humour takes them, and the serfs are too hopeless of finding redress, by an appeal from one noble to another, ever, except in extreme cases, to think of making it.
Such, in few words, is the Hungarian constitution,—a limited monarchy, doubtless, which secures from the oppression of the sovereign a minute fraction of his subjects, and leaves all the rest to the tender mercies, not of one supreme head, whom motives of policy will render humane, and generally just, but of a band of nobles; who, nursed in the most exaggerated notions of their own importance, look upon all beneath them as mere beasts of burden. To speak of it as akin to the constitution under which we live, is to err entirely. It may, and does, in numerous points, resemble the constitution of England, as it existed under the first of the Tudors; but with that which secures to every Englishman the rights which make him what he is, it has nothing in common. A Hungarian noble is a very great man. A Hungarian eidelman is inferior to him, only if he be less wealthy. A Hungarian peasant is a serf. There is an excellent preparation made, doubtless, for better things in the future, but in its immediate working, the constitution which so orders matters, is to the people a thousand-fold more oppressive than the most absolute despotism.
I have spoken of the solemnity of the king's coronation as taking place at Presburg; I am not sure that it is necessary to describe the ceremony in detail. Like its counterpart among ourselves, it is regarded as the ratification of a covenant between the sovereign and the people, and is performed, amid much pomp, both religious and civil. The monarch elect, attended by his magnates and councillors, repairs to the cathedral, where the officiating prelate administers to him the customary oaths, by which he binds himself to govern according to law, to protect the church, to uphold the privileges of the nobility, and to secure the kingdom against foreign aggression. He is anointed with the holy oil, and undergoes the usual routine of enrobing and crowning; after which he proceeds on horseback, the states of the realm in his train, to the Königsberg. It is a circular mound, perhaps fifty feet high, which stands just outside the city, and commands an extensive view over the plain, both eastward and southward. This the king ascends, his nobles, and knights, and dignified clergy being collected in a mass round its base; and, as all are on horseback,—as their dresses are picturesque, their arms and housings costly, and their port chivalrous in the extreme, the spectacle is, perhaps, as grand as can be met with in any part of Europe. Beyond the circle of the privileged classes, again, enormous crowds are gathered,—for the population flocks from far and near to behold the ceremony; and the curious in such matters will doubtless find as much to admire in their grotesque appearance, as in the haughty port and Oriental splendour of their superiors. Meanwhile the king has ridden to the crest of the hill, where, before the bishops, he again gives the pledges which had been exacted from him in the cathedral. Finally, he draws his sword, and making a cut towards each of the cardinal points, thereby denotes, that, let danger come from what quarter it may, he will repel it. Then are medals scattered among the crowd; then is the air rent with shouts, and the princely cavalcade returns to the city in the same order which attended its outward progress.
END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.