s,--the national antipathy to the system of an
upper house, which was considered as a foreign institution, because it
had been introduced under the Austrian dynasty,--the immemorial custom
of periodically electing all officials, and even the judges,--the
detestation in which bureaucracy and all the instruments of
centralization were held in all ages, while the attachment to the
municipal self-government was ineradicable,--the fact that, in
consequence of the laws which had been sanctioned in April, 1848, the
county authorities, formerly only elected from the "nobility," were
democratically reconstituted, and exercised their functions in this form
till the catastrophe of Vilagos, without the slightest collision between
the different classes of society,--the peaceful election of the
representatives of the last Diet conducted almost on the principle of
universal suffrage,--all these facts unmistakeably prove that the germ
of democracy lay in our institutions, and that these could receive a
democratic development without any concussion. Those characteristic
_traits_ of our nation, which have been so often misrepresented as
signs of an aversion to a republic, and which may be more properly
called civic virtues; as, for example, our respect for law, our
antipathy to untried political theories, our attachment to traditional
customs, and our pride in the history of our country, are no obstacles
to, but rather guarantees, and even conditions of a republic, which is
to be national and enduring. It would indeed be an unprecedented event
in history, if staunch royalism could be the characteristic of a country
which, like Hungary, has found in its kings for three hundred years the
inexorable foes of its liberties, and which in that time, for its
defence, had to wage six bloody wars against the dynasty.

As to the criticisms by the noble count of the personal character of
Kossuth, I take leave to assert that a great majority of the Hungarian
nation do not share his opinion. It is not my task to appear as a
personal advocate, and I wish, therefore, to advert only to one point of
his attack, which may seem to be based on facts. The noble count
asserts that Kossuth has attained to power _by doubtful means_. I
am amazed at this assertion, knowing, as I do, that Kossuth was proposed
by Count Louis Bathyanyi, and nominated by the King, with the universal
applause of the nation, to the Ministry of Finance. After the
resignation of the first