us with arms.

Now let me see what was the condition of Hungary under these
circumstances.

Eight hundred and fifty years ago, when the first King of Hungary, St.
Stephen, becoming Christian himself, converted the Hungarian nation to
Christianity, it was the Roman Catholic clergy of Germany whom he
invited to assist him in his pious work. They did assist him, but the
assistance, as happens with human nature, was accompanied by some
worldly designs. Hungary offered a wide field to the ambition of
foreigners, and they persuaded the King to adopt a curious principle,
which he laid down in his last Will and Testament--that it is not good
for the people of a country to be but of one extraction and speak but
one tongue. A second rule was, to adopt the language of the
Church--Latin--for the language of government, legislature, law and all
public proceedings. This is the origin of that fatality, that Democracy
did not grow up for centuries in Hungary. The public proceedings being
in Latin, the laws given in Latin, public instruction carried on in
Latin, the great mass of the people, who were agriculturists, did not
partake in any of this; and the few who in the ranks of the people
partook in it, became severed and alienated from the people's interests.
This dead Latin language, introduced into the public life of a living
nation, was the most mischievous barrier against liberty. The first
blow to it was stricken by the Reformation. The Protestant Church,
introducing the national language into the divine services, became a
medium to the development of the spirit of liberty, and so our ancient
struggles for religious liberty were always connected with the
maintenance of political rights. But still, Latin public life went on
down to 1780. At that time, Joseph of Hapsburg, aiming at
centralization, replaced the Latin by the German tongue. This roused the
national spirit of Hungary; and our forefathers seeing that the dead
Latin language, excluding the people from the public concerns, cannot be
propitious to liberty, and anxious to oppose the design of the Viennese
Cabinet to Germanize Hungary, and _so melt it into the common
absolutism of the Austrian dynasty_--I say, anxious to oppose this
design by a cheerful public life of the people itself, from the year
1790 began to pass laws in the direction that by-and-by, step by step,
the Latin language should be replaced in the public proceedings of the
Legislature and of the Government