field. Such a crowd could effect
nothing of its own free will, and was hardly to be managed by any
species of influence. At length, in 1235, Bea IV. succeeded in
introducing the system of representation which still holds good. By
this arrangement, an hereditary seat in the legislature was restricted
to the magnates, with whom sat likewise such official personages as
prelates and barons of the kingdom. The nobles of inferior rank chose
one or more from each county to represent their body, while the clergy
were represented by abbots, titular bishops, and dignitaries of an
inferior degree. By-and-by, during the reign of Sigismond, in 1386,
free towns and royal cities were authorized, in like manner, to choose
deputies, and then the framework of the Hungarian legislature became
complete.

The Hungarians are never more gratified than when an opportunity offers
of instituting a parallel between their houses of parliament and ours;
indeed, their taste for comparing is such, that they gravely contend
for a perfect similarity of principle between the constitutions of
England and of Hungary. It would be as impolitic as unjust, when
discussing the question with them, to deny that some such resemblance
prevails. Both monarchies are limited monarchies, in which the
sovereigns, though invested with absolute power as executors of the
law, are just as completely circumscribed by the law, as the meanest of
their subjects. It is curious to observe, likewise, how nearly the
prerogatives of the one correspond in all essential points with the
prerogatives of the other. The persons of both are sacred. Each is,
within his own realm, the fountain of honour and of justice; each
commands his own army, though by neither may its numbers be increased
without a vote of the legislature. And more remarkable still, the king
of Hungary, though a Roman Catholic, is the head of the church in
Hungary, in the very same sense which we apply to the term, when we
speak of the king of England as the head of the English church. In
Hungary, the crown appoints absolutely to all bishoprics, abbacies, and
even to canonries. Confirmed the choice must be, in the first of these
cases, by the Pope, otherwise the spiritual authority attached to the
office would be wanting; but the bishop-elect enters at once upon the
possession of his temporalties, of which no exercise of papal influence
can dispossess him. Moreover, it is in Hungary as it is in
England,--the affairs o