increase of the taxes, it is from
the peasants that these taxes are wrung; for the lord takes care,
though he himself pay immediately, that he shall be indemnified by the
deduction which he makes from his serfs' allowances. It is the same
spirit which provides that the peasantry, who make the roads, and by
the labour of their hands keep them in repair, shall be the only class
of persons of whom toll is anywhere exacted. An eidelman in his chariot
passes free through every barrier,--a poor peasant's wagon is stopped
at each, till the full amount of mout, as it is called, has been
settled. But this is not all. Till the year 1835, each landed
proprietor possessed over his peasantry an almost unlimited power of
punishment, into his manner of exercising which no human being ever
took the trouble to inquire. Accordingly, you still find, as an
appendage to each mansion, a prison, with its bolts and chains, and
other implements of torture; while the rod was as freely applied to the
backs of delinquents, real or imaginary, as ever the whip made
acquaintance with the persons of our own negroes in a West Indian
sugar-field. It is to Count Chechini, (Szechenzi,) in this, and many
other respects, the greatest benefactor to his country which modern
times has raised up, that Hungary stands indebted for a law, which, for
the first time in the annals of the nation, gives to the poor peasant
something like protection against the tyranny of a capricious master.
Since the passing of that act there have been established in all the
counties regular magistrates, before whom delinquents must be brought,
and without whose sanction the punishment of the lash is supposed never
to be inflicted. I did not find, however, on inquiry, that much regard
was paid in practice to this statute. The nobles still flog their
serfs, when the humour takes them, and the serfs are too hopeless of
finding redress, by an appeal from one noble to another, ever, except
in extreme cases, to think of making it.

Such, in few words, is the Hungarian constitution,--a limited monarchy,
doubtless, which secures from the oppression of the sovereign a minute
fraction of his subjects, and leaves all the rest to the tender
mercies, not of one supreme head, whom motives of policy will render
humane, and generally just, but of a band of nobles; who, nursed in the
most exaggerated notions of their own importance, look upon all beneath
them as mere beasts of burden. To speak of it