Now this indemnification, amounting to one hundred millions of dollars,
the House of Austria never can realize. You know, with its centralized
government, which is always very expensive, with its standing army of
600,000 men, the only support of its precarious existence, with its army
of spies and secret police, with its system of corruption and robbery,
with its fourteen hundred millions of debt, with its eternal deficit in
its current expenditures, with its new loans to pay the interest of the
old, and an unavoidable bankruptcy impending,--this indemnification
Austria never can pay to the former aristocracy of Hungary. The only
means to get this indemnification is the restoration of Hungary to its
independence by a new revolution. Independent Hungary can pay it,
because it has no debts, will want no large standing armies, and will
have a cheap administration, because not centralized, but municipal, the
people governing itself in and through municipalities, the cheapest of
all governments.
Hungary has already pointed out the fund, out of which that
indemnification can and will be paid, without any imposition upon the
people, or any loss to the commonwealth. Hungary has large State lands,
belonging to and administered by the commonwealth. I have mathematically
proved that the landed property of the State, sold in small parcels to
those who have yet no land, connected with a banking operation founded
upon that property itself, to facilitate the payment of the price, is
more than sufficient for that indemnification; besides, a small land tax
(which the new owners of that immense property, divided into small
farms, will have to pay, as other landed proprietors), will yield more
revenue to the Commonwealth than all the proceeds of domestic
administration.
This my proposition, having been submitted to the National Assembly, was
accepted and approved, and has attached to the Revolution the numerous
class of farm-labourers who have not yet their own farms, but who
contemplated with the liveliest joy this benevolent provision, which
Austria can never execute; since, financially ruined as she is, she
cannot be contented either with the tax revenue or the banking
arrangement, to defray the indemnification; she sells the stock whenever
she can find a man to buy it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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