The weakness of this Coalition Ministry was first brought into prominence by Bartholomaus Szemere, a cold, hard man, who had had little previous influence on politics. He was appointed to draw up the new regulations with regard to freedom of the Press; and produced a law which was of so reactionary a character that the students of the Pesth University burnt it publicly in front of the Town Hall, and sent a deputation to the Diet to entreat them to repeal the law and to change the seat of government to Pesth. Batthyanyi consented to the repeal of the law; but rejected, for a time, the other proposal of the students; and the Ministry remained at Presburg, weakened by the sense that the strongest element of Magyar feeling was centred in Kossuth and the Pesth party, and that this feeling would eventually overpower the more moderate patriots. Under these circumstances it was natural that the weak Ministry at Presburg should sacrifice to their fiery opponents the claims of those races with which neither party had any deep sympathy; and when, on March 24, the Serb petition came before the Ministry, they answered that the Hungarians would not endure that any nationality except the Hungarian should exist in Hungary. But the Serbs of the Raitzenstadt were but the feeble representatives of a much more powerful body, which was scattered over various parts of Hungary and found its chief centre in the province of Slavonia. It was during the sixteenth century that the great immigration of the Serbs into Hungary had taken place. All the important history of this race had been connected with their struggle against the Turks; and it was as fugitives from Turkish tyranny that they took refuge in Hungary. They arrived just about the time when Hungary had accepted the rule of the House of Austria, and, finding that Ferdinand I. was more zealous than his Magyar subjects in resistance to the Turks, and that some of the Magyars were even willing to call in the Turks to their assistance, the Serbs naturally became the champions of the House of Austria against the Magyars. As a reward for this loyalty, the Austrian rulers granted various privileges to their new subjects; and, in 1690, Leopold I. gave special invitation to the Serbs to come over from the Turkish provinces and to settle in the district assigned to them. To those who lived in that district was granted the right of choosing the Patriarch of their own Church, their own Voyvode, or military leader, and their own magistrates; while those living actually on the frontier were placed under a special military government which was administered from Vienna, and were rewarded for their military services by freedom from taxation. The Magyars, indeed, did not abandon the hope of drawing the Serbs to their side; and when, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, Rakoczi[11] attempted to set up an independent principality in Transylvania, he appealed to the Serbs to assist him in his attempt.