invariably one or the other of these
attitudes.

*553. Formation of the Liberal Party.*--As has been pointed out, the
Compromise was carried through the Hungarian parliament in 1867 by the
party of Deak. Opposed to it was the Left, who favored the maintenance
of no union whatsoever with Austria save through the crown. The (p. 501)
first ministry formed under the new arrangement, presided over by
Count Andrassy, was composed of members of the Deak party, and at the
national elections of 1869 this party obtained a substantial, though
hard-won, majority. In 1871 Andrassy resigned to become the successor
of Count Beust in the joint ministry of foreign affairs at Vienna, and
two years later Deak himself, now an aged man, withdrew from active
political life. There followed in Hungary an epoch of political
unsettlement during the course of which ministries changed frequently,
finances fell into disorder, and legislation was scant and haphazard.
The Deak party disintegrated and, but for the fact that the Left
gradually abandoned its determination to overthrow the Ausgleich, the
outcome might well have been a constitutional crisis, if not war. As
it was, when, in February, 1875, the leader of the Left, Kalman Tisza,
publicly acknowledged his party's conversion to the Austrian
affiliation, the fragments of the Deak party amalgamated readily with
the Left to form the great Liberal party by which the destinies of
Hungary have been guided almost uninterruptedly to the present day.
Except for the followers of Kossuth, essentially irreconcilable, the
Magyars were now united in the support of some sort of union with
Austria, and most of them were content for the present to abide by the
arrangement of 1867. Before the close of 1875 Tisza was established at
the head of a Liberal cabinet, and from that time until his fall, in
March, 1890, he was continuously the real ruler of Hungary.

*554. The Liberal Ascendancy: Tisza, Szapary, Wekerle, and Banffy.*--The
primary policy of Tisza was to convert the polyglot Hungarian kingdom
into a centralized and homogeneous Magyar state, and to this end he
did not hesitate to employ the most relentless and sometimes
unscrupulous means. Nominally a Liberal, he trampled the principles of
liberalism systematically under foot. To the disordered country,
however, his strong rule brought no small measure of benefit,
especially in respect to economic conditions. He supported faithfully
the Compromise of