ars receive as
punishment." In short, the statesmen of Vienna, untaught by experience,
reverted to the old bureaucratic and absolutist _regime_.

For ten years (1849-1859) this endured--Clericalism rampant, financial
ruin, stagnation everywhere. Then Nationality burst its bonds once more.
The war with Napoleon III. ended in Austria's loss of Lombardy and the
creation of the Italian kingdom. Faced by the bankruptcy of the whole
political and financial system, Francis Joseph launched into a period of
constitutional experiment. Following the line of least resistance,
as throughout his long reign, he inclined now to federalism, now to
centralism, and he was still experimenting when the war of 1866 broke out.
For Austria this war was decisive, for its results were her final expulsion
both from Germany and from Italy, and the creation of that fatal Dual
System which has distorted her whole subsequent development.

Under the Ausgleich or Compromise of 1867 the Dual Monarchy is composed of
two equal and separate States, the Empire of Austria and the Kingdom of
Hungary, each possessing a distinct parliament and cabinet of its own, but
both sharing between them the three Joint Ministries of Foreign Affairs,
War, and Finance. The chiefs of these three offices are equally responsible
to both Delegations, which are committees of the two Parliaments, sitting
alternately in Vienna and Budapest, but acting quite independently of each
other.

This system really secured the political power in Austria and Hungary to
two races--the Germans and the Magyars, and they, as the strongest in each
country, bought off the two next strongest, the Poles and the Croats, by
the grant of autonomy to Galicia and Croatia. The remaining eight were not
considered at all. At first this ingenious device seemed to offer fair
prospects of success. But ere long--for reasons which would lead us too
far--the German hegemony broke down in Austria, and the whole balance was
disturbed. It gradually became clear that the system was only workable when
one scale was high in the air. The history of the past forty-seven years is
the history of the gradual decay of the Dual System. Austria has progressed
in many ways; her institutions have steadily grown freer, her political
sense has developed, universal suffrage has been introduced, racial
inequalities have been reduced though not abolished, industry, art, and
general culture have advanced steadily. But she has been co