the long established
laws of the Hungarian kingdom were repeatedly guaranteed. Much of the
time they were, in practice, disregarded; but the nationalistic vigor
of the Hungarian people invested them with unlimited power of
survival, and even during the reactionary second quarter of the
nineteenth century they were but held in suspense.

[Footnote 688: There is an interesting comparative
study of the _Bulla Aurea_ and the Great Charter in
E. Hantos, The Magna Carta of the English and of
the Hungarian Constitution (London, 1904).]

*541. Texts: the "March Laws."*--In large part, the constitution to-day
in operation took final form in a series of measures enacted by the
Hungarian parliament during the uprising of 1848. Thirty-one laws, in
all, were at that time passed, revising the organization of the
legislative chambers, widening the suffrage, creating a responsible
cabinet, abolishing feudal survivals, and modernizing, in general, the
institutions of the kingdom. The broad lines which remained were those
marked out in the ancient constitutional order; the new measures
merely supplemented, revised, and imparted definite form to
pre-existing laws, customs, and jealously guarded rights. Not all of
these inherited constitutional elements, however, were included in the
new statutes; and to this day it is true that in Hungary, as in (p. 490)
Great Britain, a considerable portion of the constitution has never
been put into written form. The fate of the measures of 1848 was for a
time adverse. The Austrian recovery in 1849 remanded Hungary to the
status of a subject province, and it was not until 1867, after seven
years of arduous experimentation, that the constitution of 1848 was
permitted again to come into operation. The Ausgleich involved as one
of its fundamentals a guarantee for all time of the laws, constitution,
legal independence, freedom, and territorial integrity of Hungary and
its subordinate countries. And throughout all of the unsettlement and
conflict which the past half-century has brought in the Austro-Hungarian
world the constitution of kingdom and empire alike has stood firm
against every shock. The documents in which, chiefly, the written
constitution is contained are: (1) Law III. of 1848 concerning the
Formation of a Responsible Hungarian Ministry; (2) Law IV. of 1848
concerning Annual Sessions of the Diet; (3) Law XXXIII. of