It is commonly thought in this country that the war in Hungary was a contest for national independence, and that it bears a close analogy to the memorable conflicts by which, in former times, the independence of Scotland was maintained, or the liberties of England purchased. There never was a more unfounded opinion. After the Hungarian insurrection had taken place, indeed, and when the Austrian empire had been wellnigh torn to pieces in the shock, Hungary was formally incorporated with Austria, just as the grand-duchy of Warsaw was with Russia after the sanguinary revolt of 1831, and Ireland with England after the rebellion of 1798. But anterior to the revolution, what step had the cabinet of Vienna taken which was hostile to the independence of Hungary? Not one. The constitution which the Austrian government had given to the Hungarians, if it erred at all, did so on the liberal side: for it conceded to a people, scarcely emerged from barbarism, a constitution founded on universal suffrage, such as England, with its centuries of freedom, could not withstand for three months. It was the Hungarian insurgents who are responsible for the loss of their national independence; because they first put it in issue by joining Lombardy and the revolutionists of Prague and Vienna, in their assault upon the Imperial government, at a time when nothing whatever had been done which menaced their separate existence. The truth is, they thought, as many others did, that the Austrian empire was breaking up, and that now was the time to become a separate power. Having voluntarily, and without a cause, committed high treason, they cannot complain with reason, if in a mitigated form they incur its penalties by forfeiting their national existence.
The ultimate suppression of the revolt in Hungary has been attended with a most distressing amount of bloodshed on the scaffold, and the occurrence of several mournful scenes, in which courage and fidelity have asserted their wonted superiority, in the supreme hour, over all the storms of fate. God forbid that we should either justify or approve of such severity, or deprive the heroic Hungarian leaders of the well-earned praise which some of them deserve, for their noble constancy in misfortune! But while fully admitting this on the one hand, we must, in justice to the Austrian government on the other, recall to recollection the circumstances in which they were placed at the close of the contest, the dangers they had undergone, and the dreadful devastation which the Hungarian war had brought upon their country. When Georgey capitulated and Comorn surrendered, Austria was wellnigh exhausted by the conflict: she had owed her salvation in part at least to foreign intervention. She had been forced to proclaim her weakness in the face of Europe, and to bring down the hated Muscovite battalions into the heart of the empire. In judging of the course which her rulers, when victorious, pursued, we must in justice recall to mind the perils they had escaped, and the humiliations to which they had been reduced. We must recollect also the state of civilisation which Hungary has attained, and go back, in imagination, to what we ourselves did in a similar stage of national progress. Hungary is hardly more advanced in civilisation than England was during the Wars of the Roses, when the prisoners on both sides were put to death without mercy, and eighty princes of the blood or nobles were massacred in cold blood; or than Scotland was when the Covenanters murdered all the Irish in Montrose's army, with their wives and children. What did the English government do at Carlisle after the advance of the Pretender to Derby, or in Ireland after the rebellion of 1798? What has she recently done in the Ionian islands, after the insurrection in Cephalonia? Nay, would we have been less rigorous than the Austrians, even at this time, if we had been reduced to similar extremities? It is very easy to be lenient after an insurrection which has been extinguished in a cabbage garden, and rendered the insurgents ridiculous in the eyes of all the world; but what should we have done, and how would we have felt, if Smith O'Brien at the head of the Irish rebels had invaded England, taken London, nourished for a year and a half a frightful civil war in the heart of the empire, and compelled us to call in the legions of France into the midland counties to save the nation from ruin? We do not mean, by these observations, to justify the executions of Haynau and the other Imperial generals: God knows, we deplore them as much as any one can do, and yield to none in admiration of the heroism of the Hungarian leaders, who have shown themselves so worthy of the noble nation to which they belong. But we extenuate, if we cannot justify, the severity of the Austrians, by the recollection of their sufferings; and reserve the weight of our indignation for those insane and selfish demagogues who, for their own elevation, lighted so terrible a conflagration, and caused so much noble blood to be shed, alike on the part of those who fanned and those who sought to extinguish the flames.
The third circumstance which seems to have mainly tended to stop the progress of revolution in Europe, has been the great amount of interests in France which could not fail to be injured, either by foreign warfare or domestic Socialist triumph. This is mainly owing to France having already undergone fusion in the revolutionary crucible. Scarcely anything remains to melt, but the dross which had flowed out of the first furnace. The great estates and church lands were divided; two-thirds were cut off from the national debt. Nobody remained to despoil but the tiers état and revolutionary proprietors. They stood shoulder to shoulder in defence of their all, which they saw was seriously menaced; and thence the stoppage of the revolution at Paris, and the rapid retrograde movement of opinion on the subject, in the majority, over all France. Foreign war was not less an object of apprehension than internal spoliation. The peasants recollected the conscription and the Cossacks, and the weighty contributions of the Allies; the bourgeois dreaded the cessation of foreign travelling in their country, and the termination of the prolific shower of English gold. It was a general terror that the best interests of society were in danger which produced the determined resistance to the insurgents in Paris on the 23d of June, and formed the majority of four millions who elected Prince Louis Napoleon to the president's chair. Beyond all doubt, the greater part of the electors, when they recorded their suffrages for him, understood they were really voting for an emperor, and opposing the barrier of force to the revolution.
This circumstance suggests a very important consideration, on which it well becomes the people of this country to ponder, in reasoning from the example of France to themselves. It is not unusual now to hear the opinion advanced, that the result of universal suffrage in France proves that the apprehensions entertained on this subject, on this side of the Channel, are unfounded; and that, in truth, there is no such effectual barrier against revolution as universal, or, at least, a very low suffrage. America is frequently referred to, also, in confirmation of the same opinion. But under what circumstances has universal suffrage been forced to uphold property in these two countries? Recollect that both are overspread with a host of small proprietors: in France no less than 6,000,000 persons, for the most part in very indigent circumstances, being holders of land; and in America, the whole soil, from its having been so recently reclaimed from the forest, and the law of equal succession, ab intestato, being in the hands of the actual cultivators. But can any opinion be formed from this as to what would be the effect of a change in the electoral law, which created 6,000,000 of voters in a country where there are not 300,000 holders of land, and not above an equal number of proprietors in the funds? It is evident that we can never argue from a country which has been revolutionised, and where property has been divided, to one where neither of these events has taken place. Doubtless the robber will make a fight before he allows his prey to be torn from him; and when there are six millions of persons, for the most part possessed of the fruits of robbery, the rendering these back will not be very easily effected. But if we would see the effect of an extended suffrage, in a country which has not been revolutionised, and where the strong curb-chain of individual interest does not exist to restrain the majority, we have only to look to what the electors of France in 1793 did with the