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CHAPTER IV. 90 CHAPTER V. 105 CHAPTER VI. 128 CHAPTER VII. 138 CHAPTER VIII. 161 CHAPTER IX. 178 CHAPTER X. 217 CONCLUSION 236 NOTES 242

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PREFACE.

When Joseph, Baron Eötvös, wrote his "Village Notary," and when he dedicated that work to me, neither he nor I could anticipate the sudden and unexpected downfall of the political and social institutions which he attempted to portray. It is true that my friend did not, in the present work, make an exclusive use of his poetical faculties. The dregs of opposition were fermenting in his mind, and his ostensible object, to give a sketch of life in a Hungarian province, was mixed up with the desire to make his story act as a lever upon the vis inertiæ of our political condition. In those days, the liberal party in Hungary was divided into three factions. Our great reformer, the Count Széchenyi, was worn out by his long and seemingly resultless struggles against the policy of the Court of Vienna. He made a surrender of the leading ideas of his political life. He had ever since 1829 been the champion of equal taxation and of legal equality. He had advocated the abolition of feudal burdens on the land. But he lived to consider these objects of his former aspirations as matters of secondary import. He became a practical man, and directed his energies to the steam-navigation on the Danube, to the damming and dyking of the river Theiss, to railroads, &c.; and for the furtherance of these plans the Count Széchenyi, though still faithful to his principles, had drawn close to the conservative party, and become reconciled to the government at Vienna. He did not, indeed, deprive himself of the pleasure of recounting numberless anecdotes and sketches from life, all of which tended to prove the incapability and the malevolence of that government; but his voice was silent in the debates of the Parliament, and the whole of his energies were devoted to the execution of practical improvements. "Make money, and enrich the country!" such was the advice he gave to us, his younger friends; and he added,—"An empty sack will topple over; but if you fill it, it will stand by its own weight."

Count Széchenyi's practical clique was flanked by a more numerous and influential party. M. Kossuth's parliamentary opposition, taking a firm stand on the letter of the law, waged an unceasing warfare against the machinations of the Vienna bureaucracy. His party advocated the institutions of the counties, the free election of civic magistrates, and the independence of boroughs; and they stood ready to repel any direct or indirect blow which might be aimed at these institutions. This party was supreme, both in strength and in numbers. The middle classes and the gentry belonged to it; while Széchenyi's followers were members of the high aristocracy, who resided in the metropolis, and who scarcely ever busied themselves about the county elections.

Baron Eötvös was the leader of a third party. He was imbued with the levelling tendencies of French liberalism. The men of Eötvös's school admired the theoretical perfection of Centralisation, and vied with the Vienna party in their aversion to the county institutions, with their assemblies and elections. But the Austrian Camarilla wished to establish the so-called "Paternal Absolutism" in the place of the county institutions; while the Eötvös party dreamed of a free parliamentary government. His party considered Hungary as a "tabula rasa," and they endeavoured, in defiance of history, to raise a new political fabric; not on the ground of written law, but on the treacherous soil of the law of nature. It was chiefly composed of young men of letters, who, full of spirit and ability, were but too prone to discover the weak and faulty parts of the county government, while they were unable to appreciate its practical soundness and its salutary influence. This circumstance caused them to withdraw from the elections, and to look down upon the struggles and contests of parliamentary life. Their doctrines could not, therefore, have any influence. To obtain a license for printing and publishing a newspaper was extremely difficult. Nevertheless, the Eötvös party had got possession of a newspaper. Their leaders, though spirited and witty, failed in bringing their ideas of centralisation home to the minds of their readers. The national instincts of the Hungarian people were opposed to such notions. But so convinced was Baron Eötvös of their truth and justness, that he resolved to publish them and make them popular, at any hazard. He wrote a novel, in which he put together a variety of small sketches and studies from nature, and formed them into one grand picture, for the express purpose of caricaturing the political doings in our counties. But, fortunately for the public, Baron Eötvös was a better poet than a politician, and his political pamphlet ripened, very much against his will, into one of the most interesting works of fiction that the Hungarian literature can boast of. His book was eagerly read and enthusiastically admired, it was devoid of all political action. Baron Eötvös missed the object at which he aimed; but he carried off a higher prize. Instead of popularising his ideas, he popularised himself, and the poet atoned for the sins of the politician. Nor was this difficult. Baron Eötvös was a thoroughly romantic character. He was more than the hero of a novel: his adventures and his fortunes made him a real hero. His years, though few, had been full of strange vicissitudes, and his life, from the cradle to his mature age, was one uninterrupted chain of strange and untoward events.

The grandfather of Joseph Eötvös was a Hungarian government officer