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
political arrangements, none could be more intolerable than the
permission to certain citizens of a country to retain their civil
rights and residence in that country, and at the same time to be free
to claim, _according to their own fancy_, the special protection
secured by citizenship in another State.
The National Committee of Prague, finding that the Government at
Vienna were unable or unwilling to protect them, resolved on stronger
measures of self protection; and on May 1 they issued an appeal to all
the Slavs of Austria to meet on the 31st of the same month in Prague,
to protest against the desire of the Frankfort Parliament to absorb
Austria in Germany. This appeal was signed by Count Joseph Matthias
Thun, whose relative, Count Leo Thun, had taken an active part in
forming the National Committee; by Count Deym, who had headed the
first deputation to Vienna; by Palacky and his son-in-law Dr. Rieger;
by the philologer Szaffarik, and by less well known men. But at the
same time the Bohemian leaders were most anxious to try to maintain
the connection with Austria and to observe a strictly deferential
attitude towards the Emperor. They therefore appealed again to the
Emperor and his Ministers to withdraw the indirect sanction which they
had given to the proposed Bohemian elections to the Frankfort
Parliament. They pointed out that Austria had never belonged, in
regard to most of her provinces, to the German Bund; and that the
question of whether or no Bohemia should join herself to Germany was
clearly one of those internal questions with reference to which she
had been promised the right of decision. They further urged that the
Emperor had acted on a different line with regard to the union between
Moravia and Bohemia; and although the claim for this latter union
rested on old treaties and laws, he had decided that it should only be
restored by a vote of the respective provincial Assemblies, and the
Bohemians had been perfectly willing to accept a compromise on the
subject. How much more reasonable then was it that the Bohemians
should claim the right of deciding on the question of an entirely new
relation between their country and Germany? Again they warned him of
the violence which might be the consequence of such elections; and
they entreated him to consider also that any attempt on the part of
the Frankfort Parliament to make a Constitution for all the lands of
the Bund, would be a violation of the independence of the Emperor of
Austria and of all his subjects. This last argument might, at an
earlier stage, have produced an effect on some at least of the
Ministers to whom it was addressed; for they had already announced
that Austria could not be bound by the decisions of the Frankfort
Parliament. But affairs in Vienna were at this time hastening towards
a change, which was materially to affect the relations of that city
with the other parts of the Empire.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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