The Sun.
London, England, 1861-08-21 00:00:00

have been equivalent to an admission that he saw
that very well—but, he added, it was impossible to
decentralise the whole empire in order to content
Hungary. This is one of those stereotyped phrases
which have become axioms in Vienna, and which
are there considered conclusive answers to the
gravest questions. Francis Joseph is rather cele-
brated for the frequent use he makes of them,
but they are a very poor substitute for the
large political views in which he is here consi-
dered—it is to be feared only too justly—to be
wholly deficient. After the official delivery of the
Address each President, separately, was received by
the Emperor in private audience—apparently
merely as a mark of personal goodwill, for, although
little has transpired of what passed in those tete-a-
tete interviews, it is certain that it was nothing of
importance, political or otherwise.
The general feeling here, as far as I have as yet
been able to ascertain it, seems to be in favour of a
dissolution in preference to a prorogation. This was
pretty sure to be the case with the Left, which likes
decided and well-defined positions. I see, by the by,
that some of the telegrams, in referring to that
party, designate it as the " party of action"—a term
completely improper if intended to represent it as
desirous of resorting to physical force for the vindi-
cation of its cause. Here and there may be found some
crackbrained individual ready to advocate such a
mode of proceeding, but he represents no party, or
even section of a party, and is left to support his
own views and do his own fighting. There is only one
party in Hungary now, and that one has nailed the
Deak Address to the mast as the standard beneath
which it henceforward will combat. If the present
policy of Austria be persisted in, the whole com-
bined party which lately was divided into Ultras
and Moderates, or, according to the local terms to
which the main incidents of the Session have given
rise, into Address-men and Beschluss-men, will be
found a party of action"—that is to say, ready to
rise in arms -whenever Austria's embarrassments
shall be such as may seem to give them
a good chance of success. But for the
present passive resistance will be most rigidly
adhered to. When the Diet shall have been dis-
solved or prorogued (whichever it may prove to be),
its members will go down to their respective dis-
tricts and steadily apply themselves to maintaining
and organizing the refusal of taxes, and also to
keeping the lower classes quiet and preventing colli-
sion between them and the troops, encouraging
them by their own example to endure and to for-
bear. It is in a great measure due to the exertions of
the larger landed proprietors that the rural popula-
tion has hitherto shown itself so patient under no
small amount of aggravation. This military gather-
ing of taxes is an excellently devised plan for com-
pleting and eementingthe unanimity that has grown
up in Hungary. The Vienna papers that support
the Government and its centralizing policy, and
which have lately shown themselves much more
prolific in misstatements and inventions than in argu-
ments that will hold water, are just now particu-
larly liable to be betrayed, by their excessive irrita-
tion, into admissions which in their cooler moments
they might be glad to retract. Thus one of the most
virulent among them, and which used to maintain
that disaffection in Hungary did not exist in the
masses, but was limited to a mischievous minority,
a band of agitators, and the like, has just announced
a change in its views by the declaration that all the
Hungarians are conspirators, that the virus is uni-
versal and extends through all classes. It is strange
that it should not have occurred to the author of
this sweeping denunciation that when a whole nation
conspires, and so party in it, however small, is
found opposing such conspiracy and upholding the
powers that be, it is more than probable that its
unanimity and determination are attributable to bad
government, and to the denial of claims which, in
its heart and conscience, it feels to be well founded
and just.