I do not feel at all convinced, as the noble count asserts, that the institutions and habits of Hungary are incompatible with a democratic republic.  I find, on the contrary, traits in them which lead me to an opposite conclusion.  The aggregate character of the numerous nobility which resigned its privileges in the Diet of 1847-48 of its own accord, and which was in its nature more a democratic than an aristocratic body, because neither territorial wealth nor rank interfered with or disturbed the equality of its rights,—­the national antipathy to the system of an upper house, which was considered as a foreign institution, because it had been introduced under the Austrian dynasty,—­the immemorial custom of periodically electing all officials, and even the judges,—­the detestation in which bureaucracy and all the instruments of centralization were held in all ages, while the attachment to the municipal self-government was ineradicable,—­the fact that, in consequence of the laws which had been sanctioned in April, 1848, the county authorities, formerly only elected from the “nobility,” were democratically reconstituted, and exercised their functions in this form till the catastrophe of Vilagos, without the slightest collision between the different classes of society,—­the peaceful election of the representatives of the last Diet conducted almost on the principle of universal suffrage,—­all these facts unmistakeably prove that the germ of democracy lay in our institutions, and that these could receive a democratic development without any concussion.  Those characteristic traits of our nation, which have been so often misrepresented as signs of an aversion to a republic, and which may be more properly called civic virtues; as, for example, our respect for law, our antipathy to untried political theories, our attachment to traditional customs, and our pride in the history of our country, are no obstacles to, but rather guarantees, and even conditions of a republic, which is to be national and enduring.  It would indeed be an unprecedented event in history, if staunch royalism could be the characteristic of a country which, like Hungary, has found in its kings for three hundred years the inexorable foes of its liberties, and which in that time, for its defence, had to wage six bloody wars against the dynasty.

As to the criticisms by the noble count of the personal character of Kossuth, I take leave to assert that a great majority of the Hungarian nation do not share his opinion.  It is not my task to appear as a personal advocate, and I wish, therefore, to advert only to one point of his attack, which may seem to be based on facts.  The noble count asserts that Kossuth has attained to power by doubtful means.  I am amazed at this assertion, knowing, as I do, that Kossuth was proposed by Count Louis Bathyanyi, and nominated by the King, with the universal applause of the nation, to the Ministry of Finance.  After the resignation of the first Hungarian ministry, he was freely and unanimously elected by the Diet to the Presidency of the Committee of Defence, and after the declared forfeiture of the dynasty to the Governorship of the country.  I know no more honourable means by which a man can be raised to power.