The extraordinary influence obtained by Kossuth through his paper frightened Széchenyi, and, to even a greater degree, those whose prejudices were shocked or ancient privileges and interests were endangered by the democratic agitations for reform. Kossuth was attacked in books, pamphlets, and newspapers, but he came out victorious from all contests. In vain did Széchenyi himself, backed by his great authority in the land, assail him, declaring that he did not object to Kossuth’s ideas, but that his manner and his tactics were reprehensible, and that the latter were sure to lead to a revolution. The great mass of the people felt instinctively that revolution had become a necessity and was unavoidable, if Hungary was to pass from the old mediæval order to the establishment of modern institutions, and was to become a state where equality before the law should be the ruling standard. The masses were strengthened in this conviction by the unreasonable, short-sighted, and violent policy pursued by the government of Vienna, which obstructed the slightest reforms in the ancient institutions and opposed every national aspiration, and under whose protecting wing the reactionary elements of the Upper House were constantly paralyzing the noblest and best efforts made by the Lower House for the public weal, while the same government arbitrarily supported claims of the Catholic clergy, in flat contradiction to the rights and liberties of the various denominations inhabiting the country. The government, in its antipathy to the national movement, went even further. It secretly incited the other nationalities, especially the Croats, against the Hungarians, and thus planted the seeds from which sprang the subsequent great civil war. In observing the dangerous symptoms preceding the last-mentioned movement, and the bloody scenes and fights provoked at every election by the hirelings of the government, in order to intimidate the adherents of reform, the friends of progress became more and more convinced that the period of moderation, such as preached by Széchenyi, had passed by, and must give way to that resolute policy, advocated by Kossuth, which recoiled from no consequences. Numerous magnates, all the chief leaders of the gentry, boasting of enlightenment and patriotism, and imbued with European culture, rallied around Kossuth, until finally the public opinion of the country and the enthusiasm of which he was the centre caused him to be returned, in 1847, together with Count Louis Batthyányi, as deputy from the foremost county of the country, the county of Pesth.