New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1851-02-27

State, each division having It's own diet or
legislature, with an imperial diet to legls-
late for the whole. The Constitution bears
date March 4, 1349, nearly two years ago.
Up to the present day there has not been
the shadow of an election in fulhlment OF
its articles, not single provincial diet has
been called together, Except in Croatia
where the deputies, being disposed to ask
the reason of things, were sent packing by
Ban Jellachich,) nor has any preparation
been made for assembling the diet of the
empire. Not that there is no need of the
benefits of a constitutional legislature, or
that the interests of property and personal
rights, which such legislature is specially
intended to protect, have not suffered for
the want of it. Why, at this very mo-
ment, the treasury of Austria is bankrupt;
all money, but paper in which nobody
believes, has fled from circulation, agrlcul-
ture and manufactures are utterly stag
nant, property has fallen to wretched
fraction of its value, and ruin broOds over
the land. And the Emperor and his minis
tiers 90 on maintaining an army of half a
million men, levying taxes and spending
money with reckless extravaganza, to
which an assembled parliament, exercising
its constitutional powers, would promptly
interpose a decisive check. VIII such
parliament ever be seen in Austria! Never,
till a revolution has revised this cheating
Constitution, and converted it from a mo-
narchical lie into a republican reality.
In fact, it was never intended to be any
thing but a pretext for abolishing the an
cient charters and municipal rights OF the
provinces and kingdoms of the empire in
order to convert the whole into central
;zed bureaucratic depOtism. Thus the
Hungarian Charter is gone, though for
thousand years it had been the bulwark OF
civil liberty. The rude popular instltu-
tions and traditional rights Of the Slave
mans are found inconvenent by these
model constitutionalists, and are brushed
awav. Where too, is the freedom of the
press under this boosted Constitution !
There is no such thing in all Austria.
The makers of the Constitution never in
tended there should be. Despotism was
their purpose. The circumstances of the
moment, especially the Hungarian war;
then undecided and doub full, rendered it
necessary to mask it under the pretence of
liberty. Were, there any honesty in them
thew would make haste, now that their
power is undisputed throughout the vast
territory they govern, " roOliaN their
promises, to carry out the fundamental law
thew have proclaimed. There is nothing
TO prevent it but their own unwilllngness.
Were they to do it, the world would ap-
plaud the act and accept it as at least
partial reparation for the crimes committed
in Hungary and Italy by their authority
and on their responsibility. But dol they
never will voluntarily, and they will not
have chance to do it on cOmpulsion. For
when the compulsion comes, 1t will prove
of a much more sweeping and rapid sort
than TO ask for the fulflment of such con-
situations as this. 1t will start further
back, with human rights fundamental and
radical enough to allow of neither king nor
kaiser, and will begin practically by pitch
ing these faithless servants of to-day into
an outward and intense oblivion.
With this Austrian Lie and the similar
experience of Prussia before us, shall we
again be told of the liberalism and honor
of kings, and the constitutional pledges OF
Hapsburgs and Hohenzollens ! "Ah,'
saws some brainless talker, "but consider
the difficulties of their position" But do
YOU not see, o Brainless that the sole diff
fculty is that they, saying that Gods very
grace has booted and spurred them to ride
the people, though the latter are restifi'
still persist in ridingl Let them abandon
their absurd, blasphemous, outgrOwn king
ships, and the difficulty of their position
will vanish. Otherwise it will not vanish,
but only grow worse daily, till at last ma
ture will tolerate it no more, and these royal
and imperial membranes will be driven
forth, or perchance destroyed, while Brain
less indites their elegy, and pours shame
on the misguided people whose fury was
the instrument of an end their tyrants had
too long and too outrageously provoked.
CITY ITEMS.
THE OPERA-H GUirameRto was sung last