risks than a
resolute march upon Vienna against the disbanded brigands of
Jellachich would have done.

But, it is said, such an advance of the Hungarians, unless authorized
by some official body, would have been a violation of the German
territory, would have brought on complications with the central power
at Frankfort, and would have been, above all, an abandonment of the
legal and constitutional policy which formed the strength of the
Hungarian cause. Why, the official bodies in Vienna were nonentities!
Was it the Diet, was it the popular committees, who had risen for
Hungary, or was it the people of Vienna, and they alone, who had taken
to the musket to stand the brunt of the first battle for Hungary's
independence? It was not this nor that official body in Vienna which
it was important to uphold; all these bodies might, and would have
been, upset very soon in the progress of the revolutionary
development; but it was the ascendancy of the revolutionary movement,
the unbroken progress of popular action itself, which alone was in
question, and which alone could save Hungary from invasion. What forms
this revolutionary movement afterwards might take, was the business of
the Viennese, not of the Hungarians, so long as Vienna and German
Austria at large continued their allies against the common enemy. But
the question is, whether in this stickling of the Hungarian government
for some quasi-legal authorization, we are not to see the first clear
symptom of that pretence to a rather doubtful legality of proceeding,
which, if it did not save Hungary, at least told very well, at a later
period, before the English middle class audiences.

As to the pretext of possible conflicts with the central power of
Germany at Frankfort, it is quite futile. The Frankfort authorities
were _de facto_ upset by the victory of the counter-revolution at
Vienna; they would have been equally upset had the revolution there
found the support necessary to defeat its enemies. And lastly, the
great argument that Hungary could not leave legal and constitutional
ground, may do very well for British free-traders, but it will never
be deemed sufficient in the eyes of history. Suppose the people of
Vienna had stuck to "legal and constitutional means" on the 13th of
March, and on the 6th of October, what then of the "legal and
constitutional" movement, and of all the glorious battles which, for
the first time, brought Hungary to the notice of the civilized