Newark post. (Newark, Del.) 1910-1969, 1917-06-20

dominions of the Emperor of Aus
tria is, as far as he can make it,
matter of the privileged few.
Until ten years ago the members
of the Austrian Imperial House of
Representatives were elected upon
complicated suffrage that made
sure the rule of small minority.
Now the House is chosen by the
equal and direct suffrage of all
males over "a years of age, a re-
form that would not have come
even in 1907 but for threats of
revolution that scared the EN-
peror and his nobility. What the
people have gained by this extern
sion of the suffrage, however, is
mainly lost by the character and
powers of the Imperial House of
Lords, which has an equal voice
in legislation with the House of
Representatives. No European
legislative body is more clearly in
tended to confer the essential
power of legislation upon a small
minority of the privileged than
this Austrian House of Lords. It
is made up of about Is imperial
princes, members by right of berth
and imperial selection, a group of
bishops and archbishops, sitting
by right Of their office, and made
prelates of the church through
imperial influence, and 1859 life
members appointed from the no.
bility by the Emperor. Liberal
laws passed by the House of Rep
resentatives get through the Lords
when their and their imperial
master are badly enough scared by
the spectre of revolutionary move
ment among the people.
Local parliaments in the seven
teen divisions of the Austrian EN-
pire are so constituted as to make
sure of control by the privileged
few, and the Emperor appoints the
presiding officer of each local par
lament. If Hungary is in some
respects more literally governed
than Austria it is because the
Hungarians, mobiles a1d people
alike, hate the Austrian power as
svmbolized by the f"ct thai the
Emperor of Austria is also King
of Hungary. There is really the
making of a republic in Hungary,
and when our arms have helped to
win victory in this war we may
have the honor Of being the first
nation to recognize a Hungarian
republic, and we hoped to be
nearly seventy years ago, when
the President Of the United States
sent over an agent to watch the
revolution in the Austrian possess
sions, with instructions to take the
very earliest opportunity to re-
cOgnize the independence of Hun
gary. We have had more than one
quarrel with the Austrian tyrants,
and in reply to piece of insolence
from the Empire, Daniel Webster
as Secretary of State, declared
that the possessions of the Haps-
burgs were but patch on the map
of Europe as compared with the
area Of the United States, piece
of spread-eagleism that stirred the
whole country. Later a brother of
the Austrian Emperor set up a
imperial despotism in
Mexico under the patronage of
Napoleon the Little" but just as
soon as the civil war was off our
hands we whispered word in the
ear of Napoleon III that led him
to withdraw his troops, so that the
hollow Mexican Empire of Max
collapsed, and he himself |
was shot by his Mexican captors.
An insane princess, his widow,
still inhabits a secluded European
palace, now and then murmuring
the name of her dead husband, a
pathetic spectre of the past,
monument to the folly and ambi-
lion of Napoleon III and a silly
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