The Sun.
London, England, 1859-12-29 00:00:00

B UN G .1 P. _Y.

--4.--

(From the Co; respc;;dent of the Daily News.)
PES:ni, DEC. 25.
It is a peculiar feature of the House of Haps.
burg, even in the female line of the Lorraines, that
they,consistently oppose the principles of civil and
religious liberty. There is not one province of their
empire which has Not revolted against them at some
period or other on account of their oppression, and
some of them were aide to throw off the yoke for
ever—for instance, the Swiss Cantons, Portugal,
the Low Ceuntries, and lately Lombardy. The
Austrian system, however, remains the same,
though it lcd to rebellions in Catalonia under
Charles V., in Arragon under Philip 11., in Austria
Proper, in Carinthia, and elsewhere, in Bohemia
during the Thirty Years' War, and six times in
Hungary during the last 250 years. Indeed, the
dynasty never learn nor ever forget anything; they
seem to think that their task is not to govern a
large empire to the satisfaction of the inhabitants,
but to uphold the system of centralisation and the
supremacy of the Roman Catholic Church at the
continual risk of their own existence. Out of
the six risings in Hungary, three were entirely
successful, and resulted in treaties of peace, en-
suring perfect equality for the Protestants and
constitutional liberty for Hungary ; a fourth was
brought to a satisfactory end by the good
offices of England, under Queen Anne, and the
States General; one failed only by the supe-
riority of the Imperial armies backed by all Ger-
many; the last, though unsuccessful, left the
spirit of the nation unconquered, since Francis
Joseph's ultimate success. was brought about
I only by domestic treason and Russian intervention,
all the rest of the European governments locnting
apathetically upon that grandest of tragedies, a
nation struggling nobly for freedom, and crushed
by a combination of despots. The Hungarians were
subdued, but`not broken, and this is the reason why
ten years sufficed to wear off from their mind the
terror excited by gallows, prisons, and confiscations,
to 'steel their hearts once more for along up-hill fight
against the Austrian rule. The bigoted govern-
ment of Vienna, however, even 110 W took the initia-
tive; had it not meddled with the organisation of
the Protestant, church and forced quiet people of
strong religious convictions into open opposition it
might have postponed the crisis for a long while.
Not taugh t by former experience, those gentlemen at
Vienna do their best to embitter the strife, as if they
wished to provoke a collision. Oa the 15th inst. we
were already within an inch of bloodshed, averted
only by the forbearance of the population, which
does not believe the present moment auspicious for
armed resistance. The Protestants of the mountain
district hating resolved to meet on that day in the
Lutheran church, in defiance of the last orders of
Count Thun, for the purpose of considering the
Count's notorious decree regarding the organisation
of the Protestant churches, the Imperial authorities
shut the church up, and placed a detachment of
police before the building. The members of the
meeting assembled therefore in the adjoining school-
rooms, and hastened to draw up a protest against
the obnoxious Ministerial decree. A police-officer
soon arrived to dissolve the meeting, which, after
a short and impressive prayer by the Rev. Joseph
Szekacs, Lutheran clergyman of the Hungarian con-
gregation of Pesth, obeyad this order. But scarcely
had the members of the district meeting withdrawn,
when about 200 students of the university came, fol-
lowed by several hundred respectable citizens, who
had on the same morning been in the Roman Catholic
church, where a mass was said fort he Hungarian poet,
Charles Kisfaludy, an uncle of Madame Kossuth,
and who, on their return, wished to be present at
the Protestant meeting. The police force, which
had in the meantime arrived, rudely ordered them
to disperse, and at once charged them. The multi-
tude gave way, but the students kept the armed
police for some moments at bay, which allowed the
crowd to get off without injury. The ringleader
of the students was, however, taken into custody,
when he turned out to be the son of an Austrian
count in high Government office. He was at once
released, upon which the excitement subsided: in
the streets.

The Protestant agitation still continues especially
by the provocation given by the Government offi-
cials. All the Protestant districts, and nearly all
the seniorats having already held their meetings
and voted their protestations, the agitation would
now have died out in the most natural way, but the
Austrian Cabinet supplies the fuel for maintain-
ing the fire. Though no arrests have as yet taken
place, and the government claims it indeed as a
merit that it has not yet proceeded to such extremi-
ties, still domiciliary visits were made at the houses
of three superintendent administrators and of
several lay members of the district meetings ; their
private papers were overhauled and carried off, and
169 persons were summoned to appear before the
provincial criminal court at Kaschan on the 15th.
of December, when the heavy snow-fall had made
the roads nearly impracticable, much to their an-
noyance and anxiety. After a short inquest they
were all dismissed except three, who are to be in-'
dieted for exciting the people to resistance against
the government ; but even these three were not im-
prisoned, they had only to give bail. On the other
hand, the government tries to gain some clergymen
over in favour of the ministerial decree, but until
now with very questionable success. The Calvinist
superintendent or administrator of the Danubian
district soon found that his position became unten-
able after he had given up his opposition against
the decree, and therefore resigned. The same hap-
pened to the Luthern clergyman of Schemnitz, to
whom his congregation declared that he had for-
feited their confidence. But the clergyman of
Szent Mikles, the Rev. Mr. Hodzsa, who in 1849
was a violent partisan of the Austrians, forgot him-
self oven se far as to accurse and excommunicate all
his congregation, in the church, before the altar,
when he saw that they were unwilling to accept
the decree. Such indiscreet supporters of Count
Thun only fan the flame, and are scarcely of any
value to the Minister.
As to the Roman Catholics, their conduct is
really admirable. Even the Episcopacy displays a
toleration altogether unusual in any Roman Catho-
lic country, in order not to disturb the patriotic
unity of harmony in Hungary.
The Archbishop of Erlacz has given a piece of
land and material for tho construction of a Protestant
school on one of his estates. Canons have subscribed
for the repairs of Protestant churches and for Protes-
tant cemeteries, since the Ministry has given orders
to protect in future Roman Catholic corpses from
any possible contamination by the subterraneous
neighbourhood of heretic bodies. On the other hand,
the Protestants freely subscribe for the erection of
a splondid altar in honour of St. Stephen, in the
cathedral at Gran, and become members of the
Roman Catholic St. Stephen's Association. Even
the attempt to get up a petition for the preservation
of the temporal power of the Pope has failed, the
priests having unanimously declared that by the
law of Austria they have been forbidden to meddle
with politics, which belong exclusively to Govern-
ment.

A new opportunity for expressing the wishes of
the country was recently given by the Austrian
Government. One of the last official acts of Baron
Bach had been the publication of his scheme for the
organisation of the rural and civic comet unities. It
was, however, so cumbrous and complicated that
his successors in office could not think of enforcing
it. Accordingly it was set aside, but " confidence
men" (Vertrauens-manner) were appointed in every
province by the Government to discuss the subject
upon the basis of Baron Bach's scheme. In
the German provinces this kind of work has gone
on for the last two months without great success,
since each province recommended a different system,
andthe presiding governors or their deputies had
no instructions as to the leading principles of the
cabinet. But if the work done was of little use,
there was at least nowhere any collision between
the confidence-men and the officals. In Hun-
gary, on the contrary, the Presburg confidence-
men, eighteen in number, agreed that no satisfac-
tory law could be given but by the Diet, and ten
of them at once withdrew after this declaration ;
the eight remaining were ready to take the scheme
into consideration as a preparatory step for the
Diet whenever it should be held, but the presiding
Government,official dissolved the committee after a
few meetings. At Oedenburg the confidence men
made short work of it. The Abbot of the Bene-
dictines proposed the resolution that in their opinion
nobody but the legal Diet was empowered to give
laws. It was seconded and carried unanimously,
and the confidence men at once and finally
withdrew. At Pesth, Count Nemes proposed
a similar resolution, though worded in such
a way as to give less offence to the chair-
man. Count Augustus Porgach, canon of
Gran, seconded the proposition. M. Pap, from
Jazygia, supported it in a strong speech, as one
acquainted with the views of the middle classes,
and all the present confidence men voted for it,
though declaring that they were not averse to dis-
cuss the ministerial scheme. At the end of the
third meeting, however, they all withdrew, since
the official paper of Vienna had declared, contrary
to"the facts, that the resolution in favour of a Diet
had not been carried at Pesth, and that the confi-
dence men continued the discussion. Thus three
Hungarian districts have refused to co-operate in
any extra-parliamentary legislation; about the
two remaining ones we have not yet received any
information, but do not doubt that they will follow
the precedents.
The anniversary meeting of the Hungarian Aca-
demy was again very remarkable for pointed
speeches, full of patriotic sentiments and historical
recollections which find their parallel in the pre-
sent state Of Hungary.