In more recent times the historic work of Béla Grünwald on the social and political condition of Hungary from 1711 to 1825 (“_A régi Magyarország_”) has elaborated the ideas of Eötvös with the armoury of learned footnotes and systematic chapters. The novel of Eötvös is still the text of all the loud centralists in Hungary, to whom the county selfgovernment is an absurd anachronism. As a matter of fact, on the continent, Hungary is the only country where local selfgovernment is still extant. Nor can there be any doubt, that that local selfgovernment alone enabled the Magyars to hold their supremacy over the numerically stronger nations in their country. Taking the British constitution as the model of all representative government, we cannot go astray in claiming for such government three absolutely indispensable elements. First, a parliament proper, consisting of two Chambers or Houses; secondly, a cabinet proper; and thirdly, two or three real and energetic political parties, the numerous members of which take an intense interest in every one of the political issues of the day. Applying this standard to the United States, for instance, we find, that the Americans while having a federal, two-chambered parliament and also two or more genuine parties, yet have no Cabinet proper; and hence many of the features of political corruption that were rampant in England in the times from Charles II. to George III., when the Cabinet was still forming, and not yet formed, may be noticed in the United States at the present day. In the same way France has a Cabinet indeed, and also a two-chambered parliament; but genuine political parties, with members intensely interested in politics, are wanting. Hence the instability and irregularity of the French representative government. In Hungary, and there alone, the student of politics will find a perfect replica of the British constitution, in that the fine superstructure of Parliament and Cabinet is based on the broad pedestal of genuine political parties. The members of these parties take a real, passionate and untiring interest in political questions of any kind, and hence there is a real public opinion, a real nation. This basis of the political life in Hungary, where has it been quarried from but in the local selfgovernment of the counties? Interest in the mostly arid questions of politics can be acquired only by early and constant contact with men who make it almost the chief interest of their lives. It is in the county halls, and in the social reunions of the county-gentry, that the young Magyars learn the great lesson of dispensing authority, commanding respect and discussing public business with tact and prudence. It is there that men were formed who could at all times find resources to withstand the anti-national policy of the Habsburgs or the occasional rebellions of the Slav or Roumanian peasantry. Of the country-gentlemen in Hungary indeed may be said, what Macaulay wrote of the English esquire