Let me now speak about the condition of my own dear native land.  I hope not to meet any contradiction when I say that no condition can and will endure, which is so bad, so insupportable, that, by trying to change it, a people can lose nothing, and may gain everything.  No condition can and will endure, the maintenance of which is contrary to every interest of every class.  A revolution on the contrary is unavoidable, when every interest of every class wishes and requires it.  I will first speak of the lower, and still the most powerful of all, of the material interest.

There are some countries, where, however insupportable the condition of the masses, still the government has an ally in the mighty and influential class of bankers, who lend their money to support despotism, and in those who have invested their fortunes in the shares of these loans, negotiated by bankers, who speculate on and with the fortunes of small capitalists.  That class of men, partly tools of oppression, partly the fools of the tools, exists not in Hungary.  We have no such bankers in Hungary, and but a very small inconsiderable number who have invested their fortunes in such loan-shares.  And even the few who had been playing in the fatal loan-share game have withdrawn from it, at any price, because they feared to lose all.  From that quarter therefore the House of Austria has no ally in Hungary.

As to our former aristocracy, a class influential by its connections, and by its large landed property:  you remember that, when we succeeded to abolish the feudal charges, and converted millions of our countrymen, of different religion and different language, out of leaseholders into free landed proprietors, we guaranteed an indemnification to the landowners for what they lost.  From a farm of about thirty-five to fifty acres of land, the farmer had to work one hundred and two days a year for the landowner; to give him the ninth part of all his crops, half a dollar in ready money, besides particular fees for shopkeeping, brewery, mill, &c.  We freed the people from all the encumbrances, and, thanks to God! that benefit never more can be torn from the people’s hands.  The aristocracy consented to it, because we had guaranteed full indemnification.  The very material existence of this class of former landowners is depending on that indemnification, to defray their debts, (which they formerly had the habit wantonly to contract,) and to provide for the cultivation of their own large allodial property, which they formerly cultivated by the hands of their leaseholders, but now have to invest capital into.