Each of the grounds here enumerated would justify the exclusion of a dynasty from the throne. But the House of Lorraine-Hapsburg is unexampled in the compass of its perjuries, and has committed every one of these crimes against the nation.***

In former times, a governing COUNCIL, under the name of the Royal Hungarian Stadtholdership, the president of which was the Palatine, held its seat at Buda, whose sacred duty it was to watch over the integrity of the state, the inviolability of the Constitution, and the sanctity of the laws; but this collegiate authority not presenting any element of personal responsibility, the Vienna cabinet gradually degraded this council to the position of an administrative organ of court absolutism. In this manner, while Hungary had ostensibly an independent government, the despotic Vienna cabinet disposed at will of the money and blood of the people for foreign purposes, postponing our commercial interests to the success of courtly cabals, injurious to the welfare of the people, so that we were excluded from all connection with the other countries of the world, and were degraded to the position of a colony. The mode of governing by a MINISTRY was intended to put a stop to these proceedings, which caused the rights of the country to moulder uselessly in its parchments; by the change,[*] these rights and the royal oath were both to become a reality. It was the apprehension of this, and especially the fear of losing its control over the money and blood of the country, which caused the house of Austria to resolve on involving Hungary, by the foulest intrigues, in the horrors of fire and slaughter, that, having plunged the country in a civil war, it might seize the opportunity to dismember the kingdom, and to blot out the name of Hungary from the list of independent nations, and unite its plundered and bleeding limbs with the Austrian monarchy.

[Footnote *: The change was solemnly enacted in the Parliamentary Laws of
March, 1848, which King Ferdinand V. sanctioned by his public oath in
April, 1848.]

The beginning of this course was, (after a Ministry had been called into existence), by ordering an Austrian general [Jellachich] to rise in rebellion against the laws of the country and nominating him Ban of Croatia, a kingdom belonging to the kingdom of Hungary.***

The Ban revolted therefore in the name of the emperor, and rebelled openly against the king of Hungary, who is however one and the same person; and he went so far as to decree the separation of Croatia and Slavonia from Hungary, with which they had been united for eight hundred years, as well as to incorporate them with the Austrian empire. Public opinion and undoubted facts threw the blame of these proceedings on the Archduke Louis, uncle to the emperor, on his brother, the Archduke Francis Charles, and especially on the consort of the last-named prince, the Archduchess Sophia; and since the Ban, in this act of rebellion, openly alleged that he acted as a faithful subject of the emperor, the ministry of Hungary requested their sovereign, by a public declaration, to wipe off the stigma which these proceedings threw upon the family. At that moment affairs were not prosperous for Austria in Italy; the emperor therefore did proclaim that the Ban and his associates were guilty of high treason, and of exciting to rebellion. But while publishing this edict, the Ban and his accomplices were covered with favours at court, and supplied for their enterprise with money, arms, and ammunition. The Hungarians, confiding in the royal proclamation, and not wishing to provoke a civil conflict, did not hunt out those proscribed traitors in their lair, and only adopted measures for checking any extension of the rebellion. But soon afterward the inhabitants of South Hungary, of Servian race, were excited to rebellion by precisely the same means.

These were also declared by the king to be rebels, but were nevertheless, like the others, supplied with money, arms, and ammunition. The king's commissioned officers and civil servants enlisted bands of robbers in the principality of Servia to strengthen the rebels, and aid them in massacring the peaceable Hungarian and German inhabitants of the Banat. The command of these rebellious bodies was further entrusted to the rebel leaders of the Croatians.

During this rebellion of the Hungarian Servians, scenes of cruelty were witnessed at which the heart shudders; the peaceable inhabitants were tortured with a cruelty which makes the hair stand on end. Whole towns and villages, once flourishing, were laid waste. Hungarians fleeing before these murderers were reduced to the condition of vagrants and beggars in their own country; the most lovely districts were converted into a wilderness.***

The greater part of the Hungarian regiments were, according to the old system of government, scattered through the other provinces of the empire. In Hungary itself, the troops quartered were mostly Austrian; and they afforded more protection to the rebels than to the laws, or to the internal peace of the country. The withdrawal of these troops, and the return of the national militia, was demanded of the government, but was either refused, or its fulfilment delayed; and when our brave comrades, on hearing the distress of the country, returned in masses, they were persecuted, and such as were obliged to yield to superior force were disarmed, and sentenced to death for having defended their country against rebels.

The Hungarian ministry begged the king earnestly to issue orders to all troops and commanders of fortresses in Hungary, enjoining fidelity to the Constitution, and obedience to the ministers of Hungary. Such a proclamation was sent to the Palatine, the viceroy of Hungary, Archduke Stephen, at Buda. The necessary letters were written and sent to the post-office. But this nephew of the king, the Archduke Palatine, shamelessly caused these letters to be smuggled back from the post-office, although they had been countersigned by the responsible ministers; and they were afterward found among his papers when he treacherously departed from the country.

The rebel Ban menaced the Hungarian coast with an attack, and the government, with the king's consent, ordered an armed corps to march into Styria for the defence of Fiume; but this whole force received orders to march into Italy.***