lph Meyer, in which individualism in
landed property was admitted on the condition that the landowners were
"the families of the nation" and not "cosmopolitan financiers." A
further indication of anti-Semitism is found in a speech delivered in
1878 by Prince Alois von Liechtenstein (b. 1846), the most prominent
disciple of Rudolph Meyer, who denounced the national debt as a tribute
paid by the state to cosmopolitan rentiers (Nitti, _Catholic Socialism_,
pp. 200, 201, 211, 216). The growing disorder in parliament, due to the
bitter struggle between the German and Czech parties, served to bring
anti-Semitism into the field of practical politics. Since 1867 the
German Liberals had been in power. They had made enemies of the
Clericals by tampering with the concordat, and they had split up their
own party by the federalist policy adopted by Count Taaffe. The Radical
secessionists in their turn found it difficult to agree, and an
ultra-national German wing formed itself into a separate party under the
leadership of Ritter von Schonerer (b. 1842), a Radical nationalist of
the most violent type. In 1882 two anti-Semitic leagues had been founded
in Vienna, and to these the Radical nationalists now appealed for
support. The growing importance of the party led the premier, Count
Taaffe, to angle for the support of the Clericals by accepting a portion
of the Christian Socialist programme. The hostility this excited in the
liberal press, largely written by Jews, served to bring the feudal
Christian Socialists and Radical anti-Semites together. In 1891 these
strangely assorted factions became consolidated, and during the
elections of that year Prince Liechtenstein came forward as an
anti-Semitic candidate and the acknowledged leader of the party. The
elections resulted in the return of fifteen anti-Semites to the
Reichsrath, chiefly from Vienna.

Although Prince Liechtenstein and the bulk of the Christian Socialists
had joined the anti-Semites with the support of the Clerical organ, the
_Vaterland_, the Clerical party as a whole still held aloof from the
Jew-baiters. The events of 1892-1895 put an end to their hesitation. The
Hungarian government, in compliance with long-standing pledges to the
liberal party, introduced into the diet a series of ecclesiastical
reform bills providing for civil marriage, freedom of worship, and the
legal recognition of Judasim on an equality with other denominations.
These proposals, which synchronized