warrior aristocracies. The system of government is local and decentralised. The spirit of decentralisation is deeply rooted in the Hungarian people. people. The upper class of nobles is fond of a court life, but the second class of nobility forms the squirearchy of Hungary. They live upon their estates during most of the year, and are fond of field sports. They, as well as the poorer Magyars, are brave, hospitable, but, like our own squirearchy in former days, hard-drinking and unruly. The highest and courtly class generally belongs to the Latin Church; the second and third class of nobles are usually Protestant, either Calvinist or Lutheran. The peasantry, who be

long to the subject races, are not mere serfs, but hold their land by villein tenure of the lord of the manor, and are secured in the possession of it very much like our copyholder. They are agricultural, and without trade or commerce.*

Now, this sketch discloses to us a country in a state very much like that of England in the earlier days of the Tudors; Hungary being, in fact, a very fair type of the stage of national existence next succeeding the settlement of a warrior aristocracy. It is clear that the proper government for such a country is an aristocratic monarchy, till the commons become commercial and able to compete in the national councils with the nobility and the monarch. And it is equally clear that the attempt of the monarch, who happens also to be Emperor of Austria, to introduce functionary despotism into Hungary, is completely and stupidly wrong. The revolution of 1848 was caused by this Austrian policy; and

*See Cayley's European Revolutions in 1848.

† Bishop Heber wrote from Hungary in 1806: "There are few countries where an Englishman could obtain so much important information as in Hungary, the constitution of the government of which is a complete comment on the ancient principles of our own, as low down as Edward III."

though the Austrians were, thanks to the Russian army, victorious in the struggle, it will take many centuries of undisturbed functionary despotism to make it appropriate to that country.

How unhappy is the fortune of oppressed and dissevered Poland! The calamities of the Poles are brought upon them by the fraud and infamy of their neighbours. The despotic functionarism which rules them now is the most alien of all governments to the character of the Poles. They deserve to be trusted; but despotisms are founded on the belief that its subjects cannot be trusted, and, unhappily for poor human nature, this assumption, sometimes unjust at the beginning, in the end justifies itself, for men who are told authoritatively that they are rascals and villains are too prone to prove it. At the time of their subsidence under a foreign yoke, Poland, like Hungary, was in that stage of national career when a monarchical aristocracy rules over an agricultural population. With some slight differences, unimportant to our present purpose, it was like England in the days of King John, like France in the days of Francis I. Now, an invasion by a more warlike race, which settled in the land, would merely have deposed the old aristocracy and founded a new one; but an invasion by an absolute monarch, or a clique of absolute monarchs, who dwell in another country, has a totally different effect. It checks all progress, no towns or trade grow up under that foreign influence, and the people remain precisely as they were, except that their taxes are greater, and the money which their own nobles would spend among them is taken away as tribute to a foreign land.

For a time this condition lasts without any serious moral deterioration of the people; but commerce and towns can hardly arise under such a system, and if the autocrat adopts the Roman practice and Machiavelli's precept, he will soften and enervate his subjects by spreading his "humanitas" among them, till at last they

become, like his own native subjects, the polished and powerless creatures of a military despotism, not trusted because unfit to be trusted. The strong and turbulent he will draft off for his army, the rest he will equalise, humanise, and thus subjugate. If Poland and Hungary can recover their liberty before their Russian, Austrian, and Prussian masters have "civilised" them, there is no circumstance of which I am aware that would prevent their taking their place as distinguished members of some new generation of nations. They would start whence France and England started in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and might attain by their own efforts as high a pitch of self-constructed civilisation as we have attained, and that is the only civilisation that does not immediately, and by a direct action, degrade a people.

Such submissions as those of Poland and Hungary entail no disgrace on the vanquished. They are the simple and inevitable conquests by the stronger over the weaker. There is no resemblance in Poland and Hungary to nations which, having tried to be governed by an aristocratic, or a democratic, or plutocratic government, have been obliged to exchange these for a despotism by reason of the corruptness of the persons in office. A despotism so introduced can never be permanently removed,-the persons may be changed, but the system remains; but the despotisms that now brood over Hungary and Poland might at any time be shaken off finally and for ever when the strength of the vanquished has increased, or that of the autocrats has diminished,—a consummation most devoutly to be wished by every Englishman, not merely for the sake of the subjugated people, but for the sake of human progress, which needs some new and vigorous nations to carry it on to further triumphs than those which it has yet achieved. The hand of France is enfeebled; that of Prussia, never strong, grows more infirm. There is I know not what of

unhappiness ever marring the fortunes of Italy. Spain is stagnant, with how little hope of a useful future; and the true progress of our species is left to be carried on alone by England, who may worthily help to raise up coadjutors without fearing to find them rivals.

CHAP. XXV.

THE PREMATURE APPROACH OF APPROPRIATE DESPOTISM.

"Sed stupet hic vitio, et fibris increvit opimum
Pingue caret culpa: nescit quid perdat, et alto
Demersus summa rursus non bullit in unda."-PERSIUS.

THAT a centralised despotism, like any other government, may be imposed inappropriately at any period of a nation's career, was the thesis which the last chapter assumed to illustrate. That a centralised despotism may become appropriate to a nation at any period in its career, is the thesis which this chapter aspires to establish.

This government, in the development of nations, resembles decay in the development of organic nature. Nothing succeeds to it except inanition. Decay or death may come upon a being at any period of its existence. In cases of full and complete development decay comes only after a long series of phases have been traversed; but it may come, and it often does, in the very first stage of being.

Now, if we take each separate phase (except the penultimate) of the development that has been traced out, and suppose that that phase, instead of leading to what has been described as next in natural succession, leads to centralised despotism, this supposition, so far from being against history, actually gives the clue to the arrested