The Revolutionary Movement of 1848-9 in Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Germany: With Some Examination of the Previous Thirty-three YearsMaurice, C. Edmund (Charles Edmund)
History
The Revolutionary Movement of 1848-9 in Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Germany: With Some Examination of the Previous Thirty-three Years
Maurice, C. Edmund (Charles Edmund)
Europe -- History -- 1848-1849; Revolutions -- Europe
nationalities, and by that bond of Constitutionalism which can produce
a kindred feeling. The bureau and the bayonet are miserable bonds." He
then went on to apologize for not examining the difficulties between
Hungary and Croatia. The solution of the difficulties of the Empire
would, he held, solve the Croatian question too. If it did not, he
promised to consider that question with sympathy, and examine it in
all its details. He concluded by proposing an address to the Emperor
which should point out that it was the want of Constitutional life in
the whole Empire which hindered the progress of Hungary; and that,
while an independent Government and a separate responsible Ministry
were absolutely essential to Hungary, it was also necessary that the
Emperor should surround his throne, in all matters of Government, with
such Constitutional arrangements as were indispensably demanded by the
needs of the time.
This utterance has been called the Baptismal speech of the Revolution.
Coming as it did directly after the news of the French Revolution, it
gave a definiteness to the growing demands for freedom; but it did more
than this. Metternich had cherished a growing hope that the demand for
Constitutional Government in Vienna might be gradually used to crush
out the independent position of Hungary, by absorbing the Hungarians in
a common Austrian parliament; and he had looked upon the Croatian
question as a means for still further weakening the power of the
Hungarian Diet. Kossuth's speech struck a blow at these hopes by
declaring that freedom for any part of the Empire could only be
obtained by working for the freedom of the whole; he swept aside for
the moment those national and provincial jealousies which were the
great strength of the Austrian despotism, and appealed to all the
Liberals of the Empire to unite against the system which was oppressing
them all. Had Kossuth remained true to the faith which he proclaimed
in this speech, it is within the limits of probability that the whole
Revolution of 1848-9 might have had a different result.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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