The question of the reform of the Urbarium he at once made his own. Besides the miseries of the peasantry above mentioned, they were continually exposed to all kinds of petty tyrannies. Their horses were liable to be seized by tourists through the country, and soldiers were billeted upon them. Deak demanded the extension to the peasant of the right of buying land, and better security for person and property. But it soon became evident that, whatever exceptions there might be to the rule, the Magnates of Hungary were not prepared to surrender their privileges. The point which the reformers specially insisted on in the new Urbarium was a clause enabling the peasant to free himself from his feudal dues by a legal arrangement with the landlord. Thirteen times the Lower House of the Diet passed the clause; thirteen times the House of Magnates rejected it; and when at last that House consented to pass it, the Emperor vetoed it. The reformers were now clearly justified in calling on the people to recognize them as their champions against both nobles and sovereign. But in order to prevent this recognition the Government had forbidden any publication of the debates. Wesselenyi had met this difficulty in the Transylvanian Diet by introducing a private press of his own, with the help of which he circulated a report of the proceedings. This so alarmed the Government that they dissolved the Transylvanian Diet and established an absolute ruler in that province. Wesselenyi then transferred his eloquence to the House of Magnates in Presburg, where he thundered against the Government for opposing the liberties of the peasantry, denouncing them in the following words: "The Government sucks out the marrow of nine million of men (_i.e._, the peasantry); it will not allow us nobles to better their condition by legislative means; but, retaining them in their present state, it only waits its own time to exasperate them against us. Then it will come forward to rescue us. But woe to us! From freemen we shall be degraded to the state of slaves." But the work which Wesselenyi had half done for Transylvania was to be carried out for Hungary more thoroughly by a man who had been gradually rising into note. This was Louis Kossuth, of whom it may be said that, more than any other man in Europe, he was the author of the Revolution of 1848. He was a few years older than Francis Deak, and, like him, was trained as a lawyer. He had been appointed, in the exercise of his profession, arbitrator between several wealthy proprietors and their dependants. In this position he gained the confidence of many of the peasantry, and he was also able to give them help in the time of the cholera.