laves,
Serbs, Germans, or Wallachians, because their names had not quite a
Hungarian sound. And still what was the issue of this malignant plot?
That of the twelve millions of inhabitants of Hungary proper, the
Magyars turned out to be more than eight millions, some two millions
more than we know the case really is. The people instinctively felt that
the tyrant had the design through the pretext of language to destroy the
existence of the complex nation, and it met the tyrannic plot as if it
answered, "We are, and must be, a nation; and if the tyrant takes
language only for the mark of nationality, then we are all Magyars." And
mark well, gentlemen! this happened, not under my governorship, but
under the rule of Austrian martial law. The Cabinet of Vienna became
furious; it thought of a new census, but prudent men told them that a
new census would give the whole twelve millions as Magyars; thus no new
census was taken.

But on the European continent there unhappily has grown up a school,
which bound the idea of nationality to the idea of language only, and
joined political pretensions to it. There are some who advocate the
theory that existing States must cease, and the territories of the world
be divided anew by languages and nations, separated by tongues.

You are aware that this idea, if it were not impracticable, would be a
curse to humanity--a deathblow to civilization and progress, and throw
back mankind by centuries. It would be an eternal source of strife and
war: for there is a holy, almost religious tie, by which man's heart is
bound to his home, and no man would ever consent to abandon his native
land only because his neighbours speak another language than himself.
His heart claims that sacred spot where the ashes of his fathers
lie--where his own cradle stood--where he dreamed the happy dreams of
youth, and where nature itself bears a mark of his manhood's toil. The
idea were worse than the old migration of nations was. Nothing but
despotism would rise out of such a fanatical strife of all mankind.

And really it is very curious. Nobody of the advocates of this
mischievous theory is willing to yield to it for himself--but others he
desires to yield to it. Every Frenchman becomes furious when his Alsace
is claimed to Germany by the right of language--or the borders of his
Pyrenees to Spain--but there are some amongst the very men who feel
revolted at this idea, who claim of Germany that it should yield up