passes free through every barrier,--a poor peasant's wagon is stopped at each, till the full amount of mout, as it is called, has been settled. But this is not all. Till the year 1835, each landed proprietor possessed over his peasantry an almost unlimited power of punishment, into his manner of exercising which no human being ever took the trouble to inquire. Accordingly, you still find, as an appendage to each mansion, a prison, with its bolts and chains, and other implements of torture; while the rod was as freely applied to the backs of delinquents, real or imaginary, as ever the whip made acquaintance with the persons of our own negroes in a West Indian sugar-field. It is to Count Chechini, (Szechenzi,) in this, and many other respects, the greatest benefactor to his country which modern times has raised up, that Hungary stands indebted for a law, which, for the first time in the annals of the nation, gives to the poor peasant something like protection against the tyranny of a capricious master. Since the passing of that act there have been established in all the counties regular magistrates, before whom delinquents must be brought, and without whose sanction the punishment of the lash is supposed never to be inflicted. I did not find, however, on inquiry, that much regard was paid in practice to this statute. The nobles still flog their serfs, when the humour takes them, and the serfs are too hopeless of finding redress, by an appeal from one noble to another, ever, except in extreme cases, to think of making it. Such, in few words, is the Hungarian constitution,--a limited monarchy, doubtless, which secures from the oppression of the sovereign a minute fraction of his subjects, and leaves all the rest to the tender mercies, not of one supreme head, whom motives of policy will render humane, and generally just, but of a band of nobles; who, nursed in the most exaggerated notions of their own importance, look upon all beneath them as mere beasts of burden. To speak of it as akin to the constitution under which we live, is to err entirely. It may, and does, in numerous points, resemble the constitution of England, as it existed under the first of the Tudors; but with that which secures to every Englishman the rights which make him what he is, it has nothing in common. A Hungarian noble is a very great man. A Hungarian eidelman is inferior to him, only if he be less wealthy. A Hungarian peasant is a serf. There is an excellent preparation made, doubtless, for better things in the future, but in its immediate working, the constitution which so orders matters, is to the people a thousand-fold more oppressive than the most absolute despotism.