ancient aristocratic machinery of the
monarchy was substituted a modern constitutional system of government,
with a diet whose lower chamber, of 337 members, was to be elected by
all Hungarians of the age of twenty who possessed property to the
value of approximately $150. Meetings of this diet were to be annual
and were to be held, no longer at Pressburg, near the Austrian border,
but at the interior city of Budapest, the logical capital of the
kingdom. Taxation was extended to all classes; feudal servitudes and
titles payable by the peasantry were abolished; trial by jury,
religious liberty, and freedom of the press were guaranteed. In the
second place, it was stipulated that henceforth Hungary should (p. 454)
have an entirely separate and a responsible ministry, thus ensuring
the essential autonomy of the kingdom. The sole tie remaining between
the two monarchies was to be the person of the sovereign. Impelled by
the force of circumstances, the Government at Vienna designated Count
Louis Batthyany premier of the first responsible Hungarian ministry
and, April 10, accorded reluctant assent to the March Laws. These
statutes, though later subverted, became thenceforth the _Grundrechte_
of the Hungarian people.

*502. The Austrian Constitution of 1848.*--In the meantime, the
Austrians were pressing their demand for constitutionalism. The
framing of the instrument which had been promised was intrusted by the
Emperor to the ministers, and early in April there was submitted to an
informal gathering of thirty notables representing various portions of
the Empire a draft based upon the Belgium constitution of 1831. This
instrument was given some consideration in several of the provincial
diets, but was never submitted, as it had been promised in the
manifesto of March 15 it should be, to the Imperial Diet, or to any
sort of national assembly. Instead it was promulgated, April 25, on
the sole authority of the Emperor. The territories to which it was
made applicable comprised the whole of the Emperor's dominions, save
Hungary and the other Transleithanian lands and the Italian
dependencies. By it the Empire was declared an indissoluble
constitutional monarchy, and to all citizens were extended full rights
of civil and religious liberty. There was instituted a Reichstag, or
general diet, to consist of an upper house of princes of the royal
family and nominees of the landlords, and a lower of 383 members, to
be elected accor