For the spirit of nationality had awakened these also. The Slavs of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia dreamed of establishing a great Slavic kingdom in Southeastern Europe; they, too, were putting forth a literature. Their Illyrism--to their prospective nation they gave the name “Illyria”--clashed with the recrudescent Magyarism. When the Hungarian Diet decreed that the Magyar language should be taught in their schools, and that every official must use it, they protested as strenuously as the Magyars themselves had protested when Austria tried to impose the German language and German officials on them. “The Magyars are an island in the Slavic ocean,” exclaimed Gaj, the poet and spokesman of Illyrism, to the Hungarian Diet: “I did not make this ocean, I did not stir up its waves; but take care that they do not go over your heads and drown you.” Nevertheless, the law was passed. In the Southland the Serbs along the Danube, in the East the Wallachs of Transylvania, feeling the first tingle of national aspirations, resented this encroachment. Austria--whose motto was, _Divide et impera_--found her advantage in embittering tribe with tribe and class with class. For three years and a half Kossuth’s _Gazette_ had an unprecedented influence in Hungary; but in the summer of 1844, disagreeing with his publisher over a matter of salary, he resigned, and expected to found another journal which should draw off the _Gazette’s_ patrons. Government, however, refused to grant him a license. Accordingly, he devoted himself to agitation in another form. In the assembly of the County of Pesth, he discussed with matchless eloquence the great political questions; outside, he organized an economical crusade. Austria burdened Hungary with a tariff which stunted her industrial and commercial development. Kossuth created a league whose members vowed for five years to use only Hungarian products. He projected a railway to Fiume, to secure an outlet for exporting Hungarian goods. He urged the establishment of savings banks and of mercantile corporations. And for a brief time, under this patriotic stimulus, trade flourished.