us over royalty, the latter had to yield in
Hungary to the privileged nobility. The restored constitution was a
charter of political privileges for the nobles only, and as such was
most jealously guarded by them. This class kept a strict watch over the
liberal tendencies of the age, preventing the importation of democratic
ideas from France from fear of harm to their exclusive immunities.

Joseph was succeeded by his brother, Leopold II, who until now had been
Grand Duke of Tuscany. The new ruler was as enlightened as his
predecessor, and had as much the welfare of the people at heart; but he
respected, at the same time, the laws and the constitution. He
immediately convoked the Diet in order to be crowned, and by this act he
solemnly sealed the peace with the nation. The people hailed with joy
this first step of their new King, and there was nothing in the way of
their now obtaining lawfully from the good-will of the King the salutary
legislation which Joseph had attempted to force arbitrarily upon them.
But the fond hopes in this direction were doomed to disappointment. The
national movement had not helped to power those who were in favor of
progress, equality of rights, and democracy.

No doubt there were people in the country who differed from the men in
authority, who were sincerely attached to the doctrines of the French
Revolution and eager to supplant the privileges of the nobles by the
broader rights belonging to all humanity. The national literature was in
the hands of men of this class. They combated the reactionary spirit of
the nobility, and contended for the recognition of the civil and
political rights of by far the largest portion of the people, the
non-nobles. They boldly and with generous enthusiasm wielded the pen in
defence of those noble ideas, and indoctrinated the people with them as
much as the restraints placed upon the press allowed it at that period.
They succeeded in obtaining recruits for their ideas from the very ranks
of the privileged classes, and many an enlightened magnate admitted that
the time had arrived for modernizing the Constitution of Hungary by an
extension of political rights.

Their number was swelled also by the more intelligent portion of the
inhabitants of the cities, and those educated patriotic people who,
although no gentle blood flowed in their veins, had either obtained
office under Joseph's reign or had imbibed the political views of that
monarch. But all of these