"Hungary, indeed, is a tinder-box like Montenegro, and much more dangerous, because her supply of combustible is on a larger scale. The last bit of puerile folly has been to press for an Austrian military occupation of Servia; and why? Because an Austrian monitor, being in a part of the river where 'No thoroughfare' is put up, was fired upon with ball cartridges by a schildwache (sentinel) from the fort walls, and exploded, bungler that she was, one of her own shells. The Hungarians had been raving at the idea of 'occupation' in Bulgaria, but the moment they saw an opportunity of breaking the Treaty of Paris, they proposed doing so at once. By-the-by, now that Prince Wrede, a personâ ingratâ, is removed from Belgrade, you will hear no more of Servian outrages against Austria. To the 'Magyarists' we may trace most of the calumnies against the brave and unfortunate Servian soldiery—lies of the darkest dye, so eagerly swallowed by the philo-Turk members of the English Press, and danger of Hungary and her politics of passion. Russians and Turks might be safely put into the ring together, like 'Down-Easters' in a darkened room, and be allowed to fight it out till one cried, 'Enough!'
"If these views of Hungary and the Hungarians be true—and they are our views—you will considerably discount the valuation set upon them by the Turcophile Press. They were once a barrier against Tartar savagery, a Finnish race, invited by the Byzantine Emperors to act as a buffer against Mohammedanism. The three orders of Magyars—Magnates, Moderates, and Miserables—hate Russia for the sensible and far-seeing part which she played in 1848-49; all excitement is apt to spread; even so in a street dog-fight, every cur thinks itself bound to assist, and to bite and wrangle something or other, no matter what. And where, we may ask, is the power that can muzzle these Eastern ban-dogs? who shall take away the shillelaghs of these Oriental Paddies?
"A taste of Hungarian quality has been given by M. Vambéry in the columns of the Daily Telegraph. M. Vambéry was born in Hungary, of Israelitish German parents. Like the sons of Israel generally, he hates Russia, and he loves England, and probably he has good and weighty reasons both for his hate and for his love. He was daring enough to tell us, in his first book of travels, that after dinner with the Turkish Minister at Teheran—and a very good dinner it was—he just disguised himself as a dervish, and travelled perfectly incog. for months and months under Russian eyes, partly through Russian territory. The Russians must have known every step taken by M. Vambéry. He saw only what he was allowed to do; and thus Mr. Schuyler, whose name has, we regret to say, been altered by the irreverent Turcophile to 'Squealer,' roundly declares that he never visited the places which he has so well described. You will therefore regard M. Vambéry's opinions upon the subject of Turkey with suspicion, and reserve all your respect for his invaluable publications upon the Turanian dialects, his spécialité. Lieutenant Payer's book will disappoint you; its main merit is that of having been written by a Magyar.
"Do not believe these Ugrians to be 'the backbone of the Austrian Empire,' whatever they may be to its element of weakness, the Monarchy. And if you are driven to own that the Hungarians 'play the leading part in the events of Southern Europe,' understand that the chief end and aim of Magyarist policy is to ruin the Slavs. I am a strong Austrian, with a great admiration for the Hungarians, who are to me, personally and individually, most attractive; but this does not blind me to the disadvantages they, en masse, bring to Austria. I believe the Slav to be the future race of Europe, even as I hold the Chinese to be the future race of the East. In writing politics and history which may live after one is long forgotten, one must speak the truth, and bury repulsions and attractions.
"Were I Emperor of Austria, I should have the police organized on English principles. I should punish with death the first two or three cases of brutal crime. The people are excellent. It speaks highly for the independent Triestines that, with weak laws, and authorities that act as though they dreaded them, the worst crimes are only stabbing when drunk, and suicide; and the latter is entirely owing to the excitability of the climate and the utter throwing off of religion, whilst all moral disgrace or dread is removed by the applause conferred on the suicide, and sympathy with the surviving family—which last is good and noble. I have seen thousands accompanying a felo de se to the grave, with verses and laurel leaves and a band of music, as if he had done something gallant and brave. Indeed, one was considered very narrow-minded for not joining in his eulogy.
"They say that forty years ago Trieste was a charming place to live in; but that, with increase of trade, luxury and money flowed in and faith flowed out. Let us say that the population is 150,000, with suburbs; 20,000 are practical Catholics, 30,000 are freethinkers, and 90,000 are utterly indifferent. In fact, the national religion is dying out; and when that is so in a Catholic land, there is nothing to replace it except Socialism. After repeated outrages and torpedo-throwing, the Habeas Corpus would have been at once suspended in free England, and the French would have placed the City under martial law. The Empire-Kingdom does not, however, disfranchise the turbulent City by suppressing the local Diet till such time as the public expression of disloyal feeling shall have disappeared. A more manly policy would suit better. Trieste is also allowed to retain peculiar privileges. She is still a free port; her octrois are left to her for squandering and pillage, and are so heavy that till lately the adjoining villages consumed sugar which came viâ Holland all round and through Europe. Trieste has three towns, as well as three races. The oldest is the Citta Vecchia, which dates before the days of Strabo. Filthy in the extreme, it is a focus of infection. Smallpox is rarely absent from it, and it swells the rate of mortality to the indecent figure of 40 to 50 per 1000 per annum; London being 22, and Madras 36. The climate is peculiar. It has three winds—the Bora (Boreas), the Baltic current, the winter wind, cold, dry, highly electrical, very exciting, and so violent that sometimes the quays have been roped, and some of the walls have iron rails let in to prevent people from being blown into the sea. And there have been some terrible accidents in my time. An English engineer has been blown from the quay into the hold of a ship (thirty feet). I saw him in the hospital, a mere jelly, but nothing more; he is well and at work. A cab and horse have been upset, and also a train. The summer wind is the Scirocco, straight from Africa, wet, warm, and debilitating; whilst the contraste means the two blowing together, and against each other, with all the disadvantages of both.
"Trieste is a political and coy personage, hotly wooed by Italy and by Germany. The latter openly declares that she is part of the new Teutonic Empire, and that the eight millions or so of Austro-Germans ought to belong body and soul to the Fatherland. Meanwhile she is enjoyed by the Empire-Kingdom, greatly against the grain. A powerful rival is rising a few miles to the south, in the person of Croatian Fiume, which has long ago repented her of having cast her lot with Hungary. The Flanatic Bay of the ancients is magnificent, almost equalling the scenery of Naples. A French company is building a port, which will avoid much of the expense and some of the errors fatal to Trieste; and but for the inveterate backwardness of the people, the utter ignorance of what progress means, and the miserable local jealousies, Fiume, connected by a railway with Agram or Zagabria, might already have risen upon the decline of Trieste; but Fiume does not see her advantage, and we retain our supremacy.
"Beyond the Sinus Flanaticus begins the kingdom of Dalmatia, with a line of natural harbours between Zara and the Bocche di Cattaro, which are perhaps the finest in the European world. Unhappily, at present these ports have nothing to export or import. After long and careful consideration of the question, based upon the impartial hearing of both sides discussed, we have come to the conclusion, firstly, that the dualism of 1867 has not been successful; secondly, that Austria should have been a Triregno; thirdly, that H.I.M. Franz Josef might still be crowned King of Bohemia as well, and thus establish a nucleus about which the divided families of Slavs, especially the estimable Slovenes, the Wends who founded Venice, could and would group themselves. I am essentially Austrian by sympathy; but I do not like the Germans to chuckle when they tell me that the last great Slavonic Congress, which met in 1845, was compelled, after various failures, to make speeches in German; because the laughers ignore the fact that Panslavism is still rampant in Austria, and the clergy puff up the patriotic movement with all their might, and that schools and colleges are teaching the rising generation its rights as well as its wrongs. None but an inveterate theorist, who holds that the Slav race is not to be the race of the future, would neglect the importance of a people constituting nearly half the total of Austro-Hungary—nineteen millions out of the thirty-four which remained after the cession of Venice in 1866.
"The evil action of this unfair dualism is now causing profound discontent. Dalmatia is the narrowest kingdom in Europe—300 miles long by 0 to 15 miles broad, the cypher representing the two spots where Turkey touches the sea. She is a face without a head; the latter would be Bosnia and the Herzegovina. She has a profusion of ports which have nothing to port, and a fine seafaring population ready for, and capable of, any amount of carrying trade, but condemned to be professors, custom-house officers, and fishers of sardines. Bosnia, with her unworked mines and forests, her unimproved flocks and herds, and her hundred other sources of neglected wealth, is the complement of, a political necessity to, Dalmatia. Some day she must become Dalmatian, and the sooner she connects herself with Austro-Hungary by a plébiscite, or some such civilized instrument, the better it will be for both. The only drawback to this movement in the far west of the Ottoman Empire is that it appears to be somewhat premature. Russia has her hands full in Eastern Asia, and Austria has for some time a hole in her pocket. No one knows how sick the famous Sick Man really is since his last attack of Russomania, following his chronic Russophobia[5]—an attack brought on by our own disgraceful (Liberal) abandonment of the Black Sea Treaties. None know, save those who have sat by his bedside, looked at his tongue, and have felt his pulse. He was breaking fast when he determined to risk a national bankruptcy. Finding the so-called 'tax of blood' too heavy, he was already talking of a Christian recruitment, which would have been the beginning of the end; and the paroxysm induced by sending a few thousand troops to ravage and lay waste his discontented outlying estates, has reduced him to the last gasp. For the rebellion, although premature, is a reality—it will not be put down by paper; it means to last till next spring, and when the fighting season comes it will call for the armed intervention of Europe.
"The integrity of the Ottoman Empire has been, since the days of Chatham, a fortieth article of faith to English statesmen; although since the publication of Macfarlane's 'Turkey and her Destiny,' every traveller from Mostar to Bussorah, from Candia to Circassia, has shown up the miserable misrule which oppresses those fair and fruitful regions. The British Cabinet till now has not opened its eyes to ask 'How long?' or has had originality enough or irreverence sufficient to pull down the old idol, and to propose a remedy for the present condition of things. The official mind was made up; there was no more to be said upon the subject. A Government that preferred peace and present prosperity to the discharge of an arduous and distasteful duty, laid down its law, determined to let sleeping dogs lie, till that little matter of the Turkish debt, the neatest thing done by the arch-enemy of the Ottoman, came like a thunderbolt and 'roused the spirit of the British Lion.'