square miles          inhabitants
1 The hereditary States of Austria,  76,199                 9,843,490
2 The duchy of Styria,                8,454                   780,100
3 Tyrol,                             11,569                   738,000
4 Bohemia,                           20,172                 3,380,000
5 Moravia                            10,192                 1,805,500
6 The duchy of Auschnitz in Galicia,  1,843                   335,190
7 Illyria,                            9,132                   897,000
8 Hungary,                          125,105                10,628,500
9 Dalmatia,                           5,827                   320,000
10 The Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom,     17,608                 4,176,000
11 Galicia,                           32,272                 4,075,000

Thus the whole Austrian monarchy contains 256,399 square miles, and a population which now probably exceeds forty millions.  The standing army of this immense monarchy, in time of peace, consists of 271,400 men, which includes 39,000 horse and 17,790 artillery.  In time of war this force can be increased to almost any conceivable amount.

Thus slumbers this vast despotism, in the heart of central Europe, the China of the Christian world.  The utmost vigilance is practiced by the government to seclude its subjects, as far as possible, from all intercourse with more free and enlightened nations.  The government is in continual dread lest the kingdom should be invaded by those liberal opinions which are circulating in other parts of Europe.  The young men are prohibited, by an imperial decree, from leaving Austria to prosecute their studies in foreign universities.  “Be careful,” said Francis II. to the professors in the university at Labach, “not to teach too much.  I do not want learned men in my kingdom; I want good subjects, who will do as I bid them.”  Some of the wealthy families, anxious to give their children an elevated education, and prohibited from sending them abroad, engaged private tutors from France and England.  The government took the alarm, and forbade the employment of any but native teachers.  The Bible, the great chart of human liberty, all despots fear and hate.  In 1822 a decree was issued by the emperor prohibiting the distribution of the Bible in any part of the Austrian dominions.

The censorship of the press is rigorous in the extreme.  No printer in Austria would dare to issue the sheet we now write, and no traveler would be permitted to take this book across the frontier.  Twelve public censors are established at Vienna, to whom every book published within the empire, whether original or reprinted, must be referred.  No newspaper or magazine is tolerated which does not advocate despotism.  Only those items of foreign intelligence are admitted into those papers which the emperor is willing his subjects should know.  The freedom of republican America is carefully excluded.  The slavery which disgraces our land is ostentatiously exhibited in harrowing descriptions and appalling engravings, as a specimen of the degradation to which republican institutions doom the laboring class.