And one thing I have to mention yet.  This replacing of the Latin language by the Hungarian was not a work of our recent measures, it was done before, step by step, from 1791.  When we carried in 1848 our democratic reforms, and gave political, social, civil, and full religious freedom to the whole people, we extended our cares to the equal protection of every tongue and race, affording to all equal right to aid out of the public funds, for the moral, religious, and scientific development in churches and in schools.  Nay, we extended this even to political affairs, sanctioning the free use of every tongue, in the municipalities and communal corporations, as well as in the administration of justice.  The promulgation of the laws in every tongue, the right to petition and to claim justice in each man’s tongue, the duty of the government to answer in the same, all this was granted, and thus far more was done in that respect also, than any other nation ever accorded to the claims of tongues; by far more than the United States ever did, though there is no country in the world where so many different languages are spoken as here.

It is therefore the most calumnious misrepresentation to say that the Hungarians struggled for the dominion of their own race.  No; we struggled for civil, political, social, and religious freedom, common to all, against Austrian despotism.  We struggled for the great principle of self-government against centralization; because centralization is absolutism; and is inconsistent with constitutional rights.  Austria has given the very proof of it.  The House of Austria had never the intention to grant constitutional life to the nations of Europe.  I will prove that on another occasion.  But the friends of the Hapsburgs say, it has granted a constitution—­in March, 1849.  Well, where is that Constitution now?  It was not only never executed, but it was, three months ago, formally withdrawn.  Even the word Ministry is blotted out from the Dictionary of the Austrian government!  Schwarzenberg is again House, Court, and State Chancellor, as Metternich was; only Metternich ruled not with the iron rule of martial law over the whole empire of Austria as Schwarzenberg does.  Metternich encroached upon the constitutional rights of Hungary, Transylvania, Croatia, and Slavonia.  Schwarzenberg has abolished them, and young Francis-Joseph has melted all the nations together into common bondage, where the promised equality of nationalities is carried out most literally, to be sure, for they are all equally oppressed, and all are equally ruled by absolutist principles and by the German language.  And why was that illusory constitution withdrawn?  Because it was a lie from the beginning; an impossibility.  It was founded on the principle of centralization.  It centralized thirteen different nations, which had had no political history in common, except to have groaned under Austrian rule.  Under such circumstances to have a common life was an absurdity augmented by deceit.