[Footnote *:  In the original Latin, obnoxium, “not entangled, or compromised, with any other.”]

The laws which we succeeded to carry in 1848, of course altered nothing in that old chartered condition of Hungary.  We transformed the peasantry into freeholders, and abolished feudal incumbrances.  We replaced the political privileges of aristocracy by the common liberty of the whole people; gave to the people at large representation in the legislature; transformed our municipalities into democratic corporations; introduced equality before the law for the whole people in rights and duties, and abolished the immunity of taxation which had been enjoyed by the class called Noble; secured equal religious liberty to all, secured liberty of the press and of association, provided for public gratuitous instruction of the whole people of every confession and of whatever tongue.  In all this we did no wrong.  All these were, as you see, internal reforms which did not at all interfere with our allegiance to the king and were carried lawfully in peaceful legislation with the king’s own sanction.  Besides this there was one other thing which was carried.  We were formerly governed by a Board of Council, which had the express duty to govern according to our laws, and be responsible for doing so; but we found by long experience that a Corporation cannot really be responsible; and that this was the reason why the absolutist tendency of the dynasty succeeded in encroaching upon our liberty.  So we replaced the Board of Council by Ministers; the empty responsibility of a Board by the individual responsibility of men—­and the king consented to it.  I myself was named by him Minister of the Treasury.  That is all.  But precisely here was the rub.  The dynasty could not bear the idea that we would not give to its ambition the life sweat of our people; it was not contented with the 1,500,000 dollars which were generously appropriated to it yearly.  It dreaded that it would be disabled in future from using our brave army, against our will, to crush the spirit of freedom in the world.  Therefore it resorted to the most outrageous conspiracy, and attacked us by arms, and upon receiving a false report of a great victory this young usurper issued a proclamation declaring that Hungary shall no more exist—­that its independence, its constitution, its very existence is abolished, and it shall be absorbed, like a farm or fold, into the Austrian Empire.  To all this Hungary answered, “Thou shalt not exist, tyrant, but we will;” and we banished him, and issued the declaration of the deposition of his dynasty, and of our separate independence.