A little later the Fejervary Ministry announced a programme of policy which offered concessions and many excellent measures, but all save one of them were scorned. That one was a proposal of universal suffrage, with direct secret balloting, which in both Hungary and Austria had now become a subject of wide popular demand. The agitation for it became clamorous in the later months of the year, especially in the Austrian towns. But the leaders of the Hungarian Opposition were supposed to be personally hostile to universal suffrage. "As representatives of the most educated, wealthy, and powerful race in the kingdom, they have long enjoyed absolute political control. But universal suffrage," says a contemporary journalist, "would so increase the non-Magyar elements in Parliament as to deprive the Magyar leaders of much of their ascendency. At present these leaders are strong enough to defeat the King’s magnificent programme, announced by Baron Fejervary. But such a defeat would place them in an embarrassing position. They would have definitely assumed an attitude which belies their name of Liberal." The Fejervary programme was well planned to be troublesome to the opponents of the Government. While not surrendering to their demand for the Magyar language of command in the Hungarian part of the Imperial army, it proposed that the men who do not speak that language should be trained in it as far as possible. And it included a number of other most important measures: for compulsory free education; for compulsory insurance of workmen; for small farm grants to the peasantry; for the conversion of mortgage debts that weigh on small landowners, and for various taxation reforms. Evidently the Opposition endeavored to keep public attention and public feeling focused on the claim for a distinct Hungarian army, with the Magyar language for its word of command. Kossuth, the dominating leader of the coalition against the Government, defined the argument for this claim. No mention, he said, is made of any common army in the agreement on which the Dual Empire is founded. The Hungarian Constitution vests in the Emperor of Austria, as King of Hungary, "all those things which refer to the commanding and administration … of the Hungarian army." {38}