nglish
agricultural machinery still turns out treasure-trove from our fields.
But beyond all this, what we saw and admired in England's history was
her constitutional struggles for liberty; the efforts made by freedom
within the pale of the law; her capacity, in short, for self-reform. You
see how it is, my dear sir, that everything English is so popular with
us in Hungary."

I bowed my acknowledgments, and begged my friend to proceed with his
narrative of events.

"Well, to go back to our own history," he continued, in a tone which had
in it a shade of melancholy, "you see from 1823 to the eve of 1848 the
Diet had been tinkering at reform in a half-hearted sort of way, but the
Paris revolution let loose the whirlwind, and events were precipitated.
I need not tell you there was a standing quarrel between us and the
reactionary rulers in Vienna. It was the deceitful policy of Austria to
bring about a temporary show of agreement between us. The Archduke
Stephen was appointed Viceroy, assisted by a council composed entirely
of Hungarians. Now mark this turning-point in our history. The first Act
of this Diet, presided over by Count Batthyanyi, was to abolish at one
sweep the class privileges of the nobility. Roundly speaking, eight
millions of serfs received their freedom by that Act! Nor was this all,
the important part remains to be told--and I do not think foreigners
always realise it--the Act further enforced that the session-lands held
by the peasants became henceforth _their freehold property_. Half, or
nearly half, the kingdom thus, by the voluntary concession of the
nobles, became converted from a feudal tenure, burdened with duties,
into an absolute freehold.

"Like every sudden change, the result was not unmixed good. The Wallacks
especially were not prepared for their emancipation; they thought
equality before the law meant equality of goods."

I now inquired how the working of the land laws was carried out, and to
this my friend replied:--

"As a lawyer I can give you an exact statement in a few words. The
disturbed state of the country after the war of independence, which
followed immediately upon the emancipation of the serfs, prevented for a
while the effective realisation of the great reform of '48. However, in
1853 several imperial decrees were promulgated, by means of which the
changed system was worked out in detail. 'Urbarial courts' were
instituted to inquire into the amount of compensation due t