This was as far as the law took the position, for although in 1891 the Government introduced another, extremely comprehensive Bill for defining the powers of the Jurisdictions, the opposition to it was so frenetic that the Government had to drop all the specific clauses and content itself with the enunciation of the general principle that ‘administration in the Counties was a Government duty’.
In 1896 an Administrative Court was established to settle conflicts of competence between the Government and the Jurisdictions.
It is, of course, obvious, that while the Counties had saved their faces, the last word on essentials was now always with the Government, while the extension of the national law to an ever-widening field of subjects brought with it a proportionate diminution in the Jurisdictions’ sphere of autonomous activity.
No attempt was made to alter the relationship between the Crown and Parliament, and the structure of the House of Representatives underwent no significant change, although the franchise for it was, as we have said, made more restrictive. Its term was changed in 1886 from three to five years. The composition of the Upper House, as the old Bench of Magnates was now called, was revised in 1885: it now consisted of the male adult Archdukes and male adult members of Hungarian or Transylvanian families of the rank of Count or Baron, being resident in Hungary (a provision which excluded the class possessing titular Indigenat but residing outside the Kingdom) and paying a minimum of six thousand fl. in taxation – these as life members; as ex officio members, the holders of certain high State dignities, fifteen in all; all Roman and Greek Catholic Archbishops and Bishops, and four other dignitaries of that Church, the heads and Bishops of the Greek Oriental Churches, six representatives of the Calvinist Church, six of the Lutheran, and one of the Unitarian; and finally, a maximum of fifty persons appointed for life by the Crown, on the proposal of the Minister President, for distinguished service.
Legislation could originate in either House,19 but had to pass both before being submitted for Royal promulgation. Government Bills were introduced first in the House of Representatives. In 1881 the police was reorganized, and a new gendarmerie, the Csendörség,20 created.
It was an army question that eventually brought the end of Tisza’s reign. An Army Bill introduced by his Government in January 1889 contained two provisions21 which both wings of the national opposition chose to regard as objectionable, and their Parliamentary blustering, which was supported by street demonstrations, was so virulent that Tisza sickened of office. In March 1890, when a more popular pretext presented itself,22 he resigned.
His resignation was a personal one, and did not affect his Party, which continued to supply Hungary with its Governments for another fifteen years, under a succession of six Ministers President: Count Gyula Szapáry (1890–2), S. Wekerle (1892–5), Baron Dezsö Bánffy (1895–9), Kálmán Széll (1899–1903), Count Károly Khuen-Hedérváry (1903) and Count23 István Tisza (1903–5). During the term of office of the first two of these the Issue of Public Law was, indeed, temporarily shouldered out of the forefront of public interest by another. The Liberals had not thitherto succeeded in putting Church-State and inter-Confessional relations on the footing desired by them. Successive Governments had wanted to put through what they regarded as the key measure, compulsory civil marriage, but all their attempts had foundered on the opposition of the Catholic leaders in the Upper House, and of Francis Joseph himself.24 Then, in 1900, a Protestant Deputy complained in Parliament that Catholic priests were, by various devices, violating the rule in respect of the issue of mixed marriages. Other speakers seized the occasion to raise the whole complex of problems, in particular, the questions of civil marriage and of the status of the Jews. An embittered controversy ensued which before it ended, as it did, in well-nigh complete victory for the party of change – it left Hungarian legislation in this field in line with that favoured by the Liberal political thought of the day, and corresponding fairly closely to that achieved by Austria some thirty years before25 – had largely absorbed public attention for some five years, had entailed the resignations of two Ministers President, Szápary because he was against the changes and Wekerle because he was for them,26 and of one Imperial and Royal Foreign Minister27 and had been won by the victors only by threatening the Upper House with a large change in its composition and carrying through a small one,28 and Francis Joseph, with the possible collapse of a Parliamentary majority in favour of the Compromise. This question had played havoc with Party alignments: it had split both the Liberals and the Independence Parties from top to bottom, and had even produced the unique phenomenon of a non-Socialist political Party (the Christian People’s Party) with a programme which was primarily social. It had also, for a time, brought the Liberals and Francis Joseph into flat conflict. But even now, the Issue had dominated the scene from behind it: Wekerle broke Francis Joseph’s resistance to the anti-Clerical Bills by representing to him the danger that if he persisted in opposing them, he might drive a substantial proportion of the Liberal Party into permanent revolt and thereby jeopardize the Parliamentary majority in favour of the Compromise. Once this question had been settled, through the Crown’s yielding on it, and after another short interval during which the Parties observed a truce for the duration of the millennary celebrations,29 the pattern returned to the normal one of a Government committed to the Compromise, and supported on that understanding by the Crown, and a nationalist Opposition.
The elections of the period always gave these Governments comfortable majorities, and before those of 1901 Széll even persuaded Apponyi to rejoin the Liberal Party (some of his followers, indeed, refused to follow him, and joined instead the Party of Independence30). Nevertheless, it is probably true to say that the tumultuous scenes of 1889 ended the period when it was possible to think of the Compromise as constituting a long-term settlement of Hungary’s position within the Monarchy. If Francis Joseph accepted defeat at the time on the points over which the trouble had broken out (on Andrássy’s advice, he allowed the first of the objectionable clauses to be withdrawn, and the second to be modified), and if he shrank from undertaking another big reconstruction, he never again trusted Hungary, and not often, a Hungarian. On the other side, the extremists perhaps lost some ground, for Kossuth’s death in 1894 deprived them of their great rallying-point, and the fact that his son, Ferenc Kossuth, then returned to Hungary and, after his election to Parliament in 1895, was given the leadership of the Party of Independence, proved, if anything, rather a source of weakness to the Independence cause, for Ferenc Kossuth was a conciliatory, rather timid man, probably not even wholly convinced of the rightness of his father’s doctrines, and in any case, quite incapable of expounding them with his father’s fire. Under his leadership, his Party became lukewarm and disunited. On the other hand, Apponyi, who was gifted with all the eloquence and personal magnetism which Kossuth lacked, began from 1889 onward (he himself in his memoirs describes the Army debate of that year as the turning-point of his views) to expound the doctrine that neither the Pragmatic Sanction nor any other later act had in any way affected Hungary’s sovereignty, She was a completely independent State, entitled in principle (although he did not press for their immediate introduction in practice) to all her own State apparatus – her own diplomatic representation, her own army, her own financial system, etc. – and the Monarch could possess in her no ‘reserved rights’ which he could exercise independently of Parliament. He claimed this to be the true interpretation of all Hungary’s Constitutional legislation, including the Compromise, in token whereof he described himself as a supporter of that instrument, and in 1900 allowed Széll to tempt him back (not, indeed, for long) into the Liberal fold; but in the eyes of Francis Joseph and of such men as the Archduke Albrecht, and after him, Francis Ferdinand, Apponyi’s support of the Compromise, as interpreted by him, was indistinguishable from rejection of it, and this was, generally, the light in which it appeared to Hungarian public opinion. In fact, his followers found themselves on a slippery slo
pe. They might maintain that they were supporting the Compromise, but they ganged up increasingly with its opponents, often shouting louder than they.
Apponyi’s doctrines were very popular, and if, as we have said, the electoral results continued to show big majorities for the supporters of the Compromise, this was no safe guide to the development of feeling in the country, particularly as they usually reflected a considerable measure of administrative pressure (this was especially true of those of 1896, when Bánffy, a Transylvanian by birth and political experience, employed pressure and corruption on a scale which astonished even the case-hardened politicians of Inner Hungary). The truth was that the Liberal majorities were growing increasingly artificial, and the national opposition in its various forms, which now included the Christian People’s Party, increasingly popular with the electorate. The last two years of Liberal ‘rule’ were, as we shall see, not so much rule as continued and disorderly battle.
The economic relationship with Austria, too, was becoming very strained. The 1887 revision of the economic clauses of the Compromise simply renewed that of 1877, with some minor and relatively non-controversial amendments. In 1897, however, both sides wanted changes made. The Austrians were asking for a big revision of the quota to take account of Hungary’s increased wealth and population (at first they actually suggested a figure of 58:42), while the Hungarian national extremists were pressing both for an independent National Bank and an autonomous Hungarian tariff in place of the Customs Union with Austria. In favour of this, they unleashed a ‘Buy Hungarian’ campaign similar to that of the 1840s.
The conversations between the experts had not been completed when Badeni’s Government fell in Austria, whose Parliament then plunged itself into a chaos which forbade any hope of fulfilling the condition laid down in the Compromise legislation, that the decennial revision must be approved by the Parliaments of both countries.
The Hungarian Independence politicians took advantage of this situation to claim that when the 1887 revision lapsed, at the end of 1897, Hungary automatically recovered her tariff autonomy. Bánffy, this time helped by Apponyi, managed to wheedle the House into granting a breathing-space up to May 1898, subject to the stipulation that agreement must be reached by that date, and ratified by both Parliaments by the end of the year. He then succeeded in agreeing with Thun’s Government on a new settlement which was, in fact, reasonably equitable: Hungary conceded an upward revision of the quota (to 34·4:65·6), but secured in return recognition of the principle of parity in the National Bank and satisfaction for another demand, that the yield of all indirect taxation derived from consumption should go to the country in which the consumption took place.
This, however, did not satisfy the nationalists, and their tempers were further roused when the news leaked out that Bánffy and his Finance Minister, László Lukács, had secretly agreed that the arrangements should not expire automatically at the end of ten years, but remain in force until the Hungarian Parliament should demand revision of them.31 A new storm arose, which was the direct cause of Bánffy’s downfall. His successor, Széll, produced a new formula which admitted that the Customs Union had really lapsed. Hungary would, however, not exercise her right to introduce an autonomous tariff unless she had failed to reach agreement with Austria by 31 December 1902 to continue the de facto union. In default of such agreement, no commercial treaty should be concluded by the Monarchy as a common customs territory beyond the end of 1907.
The new negotiations, which this time were conducted between Széll and Koerber, ended just in time, on the evening of 31 December 1902, in an agreement which retained the customs union de facto, while calling it a treaty, and for the rest, confirmed without substantial modification the agreements reached in 1898. The effect of the whole episode, however, had been to strengthen the movement for economic independence in Hungary, and to enhance the ill-will, already copious, with which each half of the Monarchy regarded the other.
II THE FACE OF HUNGARY
The material development of Hungary after 1848 was similar in trend to that of Austria. In one important respect conditions in Hungary changed even faster than in Austria, for the growth of the population was a little more rapid still. The 13 millions or so of 185032 rose by 1869 to 15·5. In the next decade the cholera came back, and the 1870 census showed an advance of only about a quarter of a million, but after that, the pace was resumed. The figure for 1890 was 17·5 millions, that for 1900, 19·25, and that although emigration was now going on on a scale exceeding even the Austrian.33
The two major factors determining the economic structure in which these growing masses found their places were the condition of the country before 1848 – that has been sufficiently described elsewhere – and the integration of its economic and financial system into that of the Gesammtmonarchie which was consummated in 1851 and reaffirmed by the nation’s own decision in 1867.
The first effects of this were, as we have seen, favourable to Hungary’s agriculture, placing as it did the whole Austrian market (above the local level) at the disposal of her producers, and leaving as the only limitations under which her landlords then suffered those imposed by her own conditions: the relatively backward methods of cultivation still prevalent in most of the country, the sparse labour force, the bad communications. The initial advantage thus gained by her agriculturalists was self-perpetuating, for it gave them an interest in opposing any development of a nature to draw off the land the supply of labour, which, until the 1880s, was, in most parts of the country, regularly below the demand for it, or to compete with their requirements of credit.
We have also seen that the first effects of the integration on the other branches of Hungary’s national economy were mixed. On the one hand, a great shortage of accumulated mobile capital, a deficiency, much larger than the Austrian, of experienced entrepreneurs and skilled workers, and many other difficulties, including those of communications, placed Hungarian industry, as a whole, at a big disadvantage where it had to compete with its stronger Austrian neighbours, so that the integration proved immediately fatal to a number of Hungarian enterprises, and in the later years many branches of industry found it impossible to strike root. But there was another side of the medal, in the benefits conferred on the country by the Government’s public works, and in the fact that the unification had allowed, and tempted, Austrian capital to interest itself in the development of those industries for which the natural conditions were more favourable than in Austria. The flow of this investment dried up in 1857, with the collapse of the Austrian money market in that year, but another spurt came in the boom years after 1867, which again was carried out largely with the help of capital which Hungary could not have provided out of her own resources.
This opening-up process conducted by foreign capital in its own interests was again interrupted by the 1873 Krach, which brought with it the withdrawal of a large amount of the capital, and although the process recommenced, it suffered further setbacks, although less serious ones, in 1878 and
1895. By this time, however, substantial sums of native capital had been accumulated, and its ambition to assert itself had found a helper after 1867 in the politically emancipated country’s national pride – the ambition to see Hungary in possession of the material equipment of a progressive modern State, adequate institutions and communications, a worthy capital city, and also a national industry, this if only as a pre-condition of true political independence. The large position held by the State in the national economy made it possible for some of these aspirations to be given practical satisfaction by direct action. Thus the construction of communications was carried on regardless of the difficulties, and in 1881, the essential communications being now complete, Hungary introduced a law which authorized the Government to foster her domestic industries by subsidies, interest-free loans, freight concessions, and similar devices. As this law proved not very effective, it was supplemented by others in the same sense in 1890 and 1899.
Developments were st
ill retarded by shortage of capital, the pressure of vested interests in other camps, and other factors, but they were nevertheless still considerable. The combined result of the various forces operating was that in 1902 Hungary was, like Austria, in a state of transition from the predominantly rural and agricultural conditions of half a century before to one in which industry, trade, etc., played a larger part; but one in which the transition had not yet proceeded so far as in Austria. Both industrialization and urbanization had been making appreciable progress, the pace of which had, moreover, been gathering momentum as the years went on, especially after April 1890. The figures for 1857 had shown 409,616 persons in the Lands of the Hungarian Crown as occupied in industry; those for 1869, 646,964 (an increase of 57·94%, compared with a total population increase of 11·91%), and those for 1880, 788,970 (92·61% more than in 1857, against a population increase of 13·57%). The 1900 census showed 2,400,000 persons (including dependents)34 in Inner Hungary – 14·2% of its total population – as deriving their livelihood from industry proper and 161,000 (1%) from mining. Some of these industries, especially the rougher branches of heavy industry, food-processing (flour-milling, brewing and distilling) and the industries connected with building, were well-established and large; others, including textiles, chemicals, and sugar-beet refining, were making promising beginnings.
Similarly, the increase in the urban population, which had been 6·4% between 1869 and 1880, had sprung up to 10·7% in 1881–90 and 14·9% in 1890–1900. In the last-named year 20% of the inhabitants of the Kingdom lived in places with populations exceeding 20,000, among which Budapest, which had grown by 45·6% in the single decade 1890–1900, and now possessed over 700,000 inhabitants, was outstanding. Another 7 towns in the Kingdom had populations of 50–100,000 each, and over 60 more had reached 5 figures.
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