f state are administered in all departments by
the king's authority. The king's taxes, the king's duties, the king's
escheats and forfeitures, are levied; the harbours are the king's
harbours, the courts are the king's courts, the fortresses are the
king's fortresses, and the people are the king's lieges. But here the
resemblance between the constitutions of the two countries ends, and
all endeavour to trace it further is useless.

Even in reference to the kingly office, we soon begin to find ourselves
diverging one from another. The crown in Hungary is elective far more
decidedly than in England. We, indeed, in the ceremony of our
coronation, retain so much of the spirit which animated our Saxon
forefathers, that the question is still put to the people,--"Will ye
have this prince to reign over you?" and the prince is bound by solemn
oath to govern according to law; but the ceremony of a coronation is
not so vital among us, as that it might not be passed over with
impunity. In Hungary, so tenacious are the magnates on the one hand,
and so sensitive the emperor on the other, that he never omits, in his
own life-time, to have the heir to the imperial diadem, crowned king in
Hungary. The present emperor became king of Hungary three years
previous to the death of his father; and now the empress has been
crowned at Presburg, so that there may be no link wanting in the chain
which holds the several portions of the empire together. Again, the
king of Hungary, while he enjoys various privileges, to which the king
of England cannot lay claim, is likewise subjected to various
restraints, from which the king of England is free. The former, for
example, as he appoints arbitrarily to vacant bishoprics, so he
inherits the whole of a bishop's professional savings, who may chance
to have died intestate. If the bishop possess hereditary property, it
goes, of course, at his decease, to his next of kin; but his
accumulations, be they great or small, are taken possession of by the
crown. And even the making of a will saves but one-third of them. On
the other hand, the king of Hungary is watched and restrained in the
exercise of his prerogatives, not only by a parliament, jealous of its
privileges, but by officers appointed for that purpose. The palatine is
a strange compound of king's lieutenant and guardian of the liberties
of the nation. He is chosen for life out of four personages proposed to
the states by the sovereign; and as in the k