are hopelessly
subverted. Finally, and most fundamental of all, at no period in the
kingdom's history have there been two great parties, contending on (p. 500)
fairly equal terms for the mastery of the state, each in a position to
assume direction of the government upon the defeat or momentary
discomfiture of the other. From 1867 to 1875, as will appear, there
was but one party (that led by Deak) which accepted the Compromise,
and hence could be intrusted with office; and from 1875 to the present
day there has been but one great party, the Liberal, broken at times
into groups and beset by more or less influential conservative
elements, but always sufficiently compact and powerful to be able to
retain control of the government. Under these conditions it has worked
out in practice that ministries have retired repeatedly by reason of
decline of popularity, internal friction, or request of the sovereign,
and but rarely in consequence of an adverse vote in Parliament.

IV. POLITICAL PARTIES

*552. The Question of the Ausgleich.*--Throughout half a century the
party history of Hungary has centered about two preponderating
problems, first, the maintenance of the Compromise with Austria and,
second, the preservation of the political ascendancy of the Magyars.
Of these the first has been the more fundamental, because the
ascendancy of the Magyars was, and is, an accomplished fact and upon
the perpetuation of that ascendancy there can be, among the ruling
Magyars themselves, no essential division. The issue upon which those
elements of the population which are vested with political power (and
which, consequently, compose the political parties in the true sense)
have been always most prone to divide, is that of the perpetuation and
character of the Ausgleich. To put it broadly, there have been
regularly two schools of opinion in respect to this subject. There
have been the men, on the one hand, who accept the arrangements of
1867 and maintain that by virtue of them Hungary, far from having
surrendered any of her essential interests, has acquired an influence
and prestige which otherwise she could not have enjoyed. And there
have been those, on the other hand, who see in the Ausgleich nothing
save an abandonment of national dignity and who, therefore, would have
the arrangement thoroughly remodelled, or even abrogated outright.
Under various names, and working by different methods, the parties of
the kingdom have assumed almost