reach of the constitution. This was the time when the King, in the
opinion of the people, was kept distinct from the Camarilla. But when
the Austrian ministry openly attempted to deprive Hungary of its
ministries of war and finance, when the base game of the degradation and
restoration of Jellachich was played, and when the Hungarian army,
fighting in the name of the King against the insurrections of the
Serbians and Croats, became aware that the balls of that same King
thinned their ranks from the hostile camp, the nation arrived at the
universal conviction that the Hapsburg dynasty were only pursuing their
old absolute tendencies, and that they wanted to force Hungary into
self-defence, in order, under the pretext of rebellion, to deprive it of
all its constitutional rights and guarantees. It needs no proof that a
loud indignation, and even hatred of the dynasty, spread far and wide in
the country, in consequence of these intrigues and proceedings. In spite
of this natural excitement, and of the war itself, carried on by the
nation with an increasing enthusiasm of hatred of the House of Austria,
no party in the country urged a declaration of _decheance_ or
forfeiture against the dynasty. Even all the faithless acts recorded in
the letter of Count Casimir Bathyanyi, and the cruelties committed in
the name of that court in Lower Hungary and Transylvania, did not turn
the scales in this direction. The Pragmatic Sanction was still
considered as good in law; and the many precedents of our history, when
the nation and its kings went to war with each other, and ultimately
settled their disputes by solemn pacts confirming the constitution of
the land, conveyed the notion that a reconciliation was even then not
impossible.

Without these precedents and reminiscences of history, and only guided
by the universal feeling of the country against the dynasty, the
Hungarian parliament would have pronounced the forfeiture of the House
of Austria so far back as October, 1848, when Jellachich was appointed
absolute plenipotentiary of the King in Hungary, with discretionary
power of life and death; or in December, 1848, when in Olmuetz the
succession of the Hungarian throne was changed and determined, without
the concurrence of the nation through the Diet. To force the nation and
its parliament to the last step in this momentous crisis, the court
itself broke the dynastic tie.

This was done by the imposition of the constitution of the