for justice.  What this truly great man did for the material improvement of his country could hardly be told between sunrise and sundown.  You practical English were our teachers and our helpers in those days, when bridges had to be built, roads to be made, and steam navigation set up in our rivers.  English horses were brought over to improve the breed in Hungary, and English agricultural machinery still turns out treasure-trove from our fields.  But beyond all this, what we saw and admired in England’s history was her constitutional struggles for liberty; the efforts made by freedom within the pale of the law; her capacity, in short, for self-reform.  You see how it is, my dear sir, that everything English is so popular with us in Hungary.”

I bowed my acknowledgments, and begged my friend to proceed with his narrative of events.

“Well, to go back to our own history,” he continued, in a tone which had in it a shade of melancholy, “you see from 1823 to the eve of 1848 the Diet had been tinkering at reform in a half-hearted sort of way, but the Paris revolution let loose the whirlwind, and events were precipitated.  I need not tell you there was a standing quarrel between us and the reactionary rulers in Vienna.  It was the deceitful policy of Austria to bring about a temporary show of agreement between us.  The Archduke Stephen was appointed Viceroy, assisted by a council composed entirely of Hungarians.  Now mark this turning-point in our history.  The first Act of this Diet, presided over by Count Batthyanyi, was to abolish at one sweep the class privileges of the nobility.  Roundly speaking, eight millions of serfs received their freedom by that Act!  Nor was this all, the important part remains to be told—­and I do not think foreigners always realise it—­the Act further enforced that the session-lands held by the peasants became henceforth their freehold property.  Half, or nearly half, the kingdom thus, by the voluntary concession of the nobles, became converted from a feudal tenure, burdened with duties, into an absolute freehold.

“Like every sudden change, the result was not unmixed good.  The Wallacks especially were not prepared for their emancipation; they thought equality before the law meant equality of goods.”

I now inquired how the working of the land laws was carried out, and to this my friend replied:—­

“As a lawyer I can give you an exact statement in a few words.  The disturbed state of the country after the war of independence, which followed immediately upon the emancipation of the serfs, prevented for a while the effective realisation of the great reform of ’48.  However, in 1853 several imperial decrees were promulgated, by means of which the changed system was worked out in detail.  ‘Urbarial courts’ were instituted to inquire into the amount of compensation due to the lords of the manors who had lost the tithes and the ‘forced labour’ of the former serfs.  To meet this compensation ‘State urbarial bonds’ were created and apportioned; they bear five per cent. interest, and are redeemable within eighty years, with two drawings annually.  The fund for this compensation is raised by a special tax on every Hungarian subject; not only the freed peasant pays towards the fund, but the lord himself, and those who never had any feudal tenants.