nti-Semitism. It was not until the agitators resorted to the Blood
Accusation--that never-failing decoy of obscurantism and
superstition--that Hungary took a definite place in the anti-Semitic
movement. The outbreak was short and fortunately bloodless, but while it
lasted its scandals shocked the whole of Europe.

Dr August Rohling, professor of Hebrew at the university of Prague, a
Roman Catholic theologian of high position but dubious learning, had for
some years assisted the Hungarian anti-Semites with _rechauffes_ of
Eisenmenger's _Enidecktes Judenthum_ (Frankfurt a/M. 1700). In 1881 he
made a solemn deposition before the Supreme Court accusing the Jews of
being bound by their law to work the moral and physical ruin of
non-Jews. He followed this up with an offer to depose on oath that the
murder of Christians for ritual purposes was a doctrine secretly taught
among Jews. Professor Delitzsch and other eminent Hebraists, both
Christian and Jewish, exposed and denounced the ignorance and
malevolence of Rohling, but were unable to stem the mischief he was
causing. In April 1882 a Christian girl named Esther Sobymossi was
missed from the Hungarian village of Tisza Eszlar, where a small
community of Jews were settled. The rumour got abroad that she had been
kidnapped and murdered by the Jews, but it remained the burden of idle
gossip, and gave rise to neither judicial complaint nor public
disorders. At this moment the question of the Bosnian Pacification
credits was before the diet. The unpopularity of the task assumed by
Austria-Hungary, under the treaty of Berlin, which was calculated to
strengthen the disaffected Croat element in the empire, had reduced the
government majority to very small proportions, and all the reactionary
factions in the country were accordingly in arms. The government was
violently and unscrupulously attacked on all sides. On the 23rd of May
there was a debate in the diet when M. Onody, in an incendiary harangue,
told the story of the missing girl at Tisza Eszlar, and accused
ministers of criminal indulgence to races alien to the national spirit.
In the then excited state of the public mind on the Croat question, the
manoeuvre was adroitly conceived. The government fell into the trap, and
treated the story with lofty disdain. Thereupon the anti-Semites set to
work on the case, and M. Joseph Bary, the magistrate at Nyiregyhaza, and
a noted anti-Semite, was induced to go to Tisza Eszlar and institut