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the ancient Latin race, - that is to say, if we keep to historical truth, of the inhabitants of a penal settlement of the Roman Empire! As if we Europeans had not all successively come from Asia, a little earlier or a little later! The Hungarians, no doubt, were among the last arrivals; and Germans, who here had to suffer much from them at a time when they were yet a rude race, might be least expected to be partial to them. But must not good sense teach us to give up all invidious distinctions in presence of claims well made out by noble struggles for self-government? After all, that Magyar race had established on the banks of the Danube a sort of "British Constitution," even before the time when England had attained to proper parliamentary government, thus practically contradicting a superficial race theory which is at present too much in vogue.

If, on the other hand, we were to inquire into the MoldoWallachian claim to a classic origin, it would be easy enough to show, judging the question ethnologically, that the thinly sown Latin race of the ancient Dacians became, in the centuries immediately following the fall of the Roman Empire, so swallowed up in the invasions of Goths, Kumans, Petchenegs, and a flood of Tartar tribes, that any remnants of the original Roman element must have been completely remoulded. The Principalities have always served as one of the great gateways through which the tide of migrations flowed. Each wave of that human ocean left its impress. Thus the "purity of the pedigree" of the Moldo-Wallachian population is rather doubtful. Whilst antiquarian research may exercise its ingenuity upon the subject, the politician will dismiss the ethnological claim at once, and only take into consideration the urgent political events of the epoch, which unquestionably point to the necessity of maintaining Hungary as a unit.

I cannot do better, in concluding, than refer to the discourse which Louis Kossuth delivered in New York in December, 1851, and which is printed in the edition of his collected speeches under the title, "On Nationalities." This speech was made at a dinner of the press, presided over by Mr. Bryant, the poet. Treating of the relation of the Magyars to the other races of Hungary, Kossuth said that "ro word

has been more misrepresented than the word 'nationality,' which is become in the hands of absolutism a dangerous weapon against liberty. . . . . If language alone makes a nation, then there is no great nation on earth: for there is no country whose population is counted by millions but speaks more than one language. ... But on the European continent there unhappily has grown up a school which bound the idea of nationality to the idea of language only, and joined political pretensions to it. . . . . This idea, if it were not impracticable, would be a curse to humanity, a death-blow to civilization and progress, and throw back mankind by centuries. It would be an eternal source of strife and war. . . Nothing but despotism would rise out of such a fanatical strife of all mankind."

Then, after having denounced those who would "claim from Hungary to divide its territory, . . . . to cut off our right hand, Transylvania, and to give it up to the neighboring Wallachia; to cut out, like Shylock, one pound of our very breast, — the Banat, and the rich country between the Danube and Theiss, -to augment by it Turkish Servia," Kossuth continued: "It is the new ambition of conquest, but an easy conquest, not by arms but by language. So much I know, at least, that this absurd idea cannot, and will not, be advocated by any man here in the United States, which did not open its hospitable shores to humanity, and greet the flocking millions of emigrants.with the right of a citizen, in order that the Union may be cut to pieces, and even your single States divided into new-framed independent countries, according to languages."

"And do you know, gentlemen," the orator went on to say, "whence this absurd idea sprang up on the Continent? It was the idea of Pansclavism,- that is, the idea that the mighty stock of Sclavonic races is called to rule the world, as once the Roman did. It was a Russian plot; it was a dark design to make out of national feelings a tool to Russian preponderance over the world."

At that time the exiled Hungarian leader spoke and acted in accordance with the views of the best elements of his nation. With his later changes I have here nothing to do. On the question of "Hungarian Nationality," the most progressive

men of his country still adhere to the opinions he then gave utterance to, opinions founded in the very nature of things existing in that peculiar Eastern region. It is not by shaking such a complicated, but still necessary, political edifice as Hungary to the ground that freedom can be promoted. It is rather by raising up again those bulwarks of European secu rity which an encroaching autocracy has contrived to throw down through intrigue and brute force. Commonwealths like those of Hungary and the Danubian Principalities ought to join hands in such a work. To venture upon deadly strife

with each other can only bring about for both of them the fate which has befallen unhappy Poland.

KARL BLIND.

ART. VII.-1. A History of the Intellectual Development of Europe. By JOHN WILLIAM DRAPER, M. D., LL. D.. New York.

1863.

2. Ancient Law; its Connection with the Early History of Society, and its Relation to Modern Ideas. By HENRY SUMNER MAINE. London. 1863.

EVERY attempt to discover the laws to which social changes conform must run great risk of being frustrated by the mere immensity of the mass of details which the investigator strives to arrange in orderly sequence. Seemingly numberless as are the phenomena dealt with by the physical sciences, they bear no proportion, either in multitude or in variety, to the facts upon which the historical inquirer must build his scientific theorems. Facts concerning man in his physical relations to soil, climate, food, and the configuration of the earth, blend with facts concerning the intellectual and moral relations of men to each other and to the aspects of nature by which they are surrounded, making up a problem of such manifold and multiform complexity, that it may well have long been deemed incapable of satisfactory solution. The fit subject of wonder is, indeed, not that we are as yet unable to arrive at accurate prevision

amid such a diversified throng of phenomena, but that, considering the meagreness of our knowledge in many other departments, we should have been able to detect any uniformity whatever in human affairs, and having detected it, to affiliate it upon trustworthy primordial principles.

In determining the laws of history, the ordinary inductive methods, so potent in chemistry and physics, are instruments of but little efficiency. The extreme heterogeneity of social phenomena is apt to make their employment very misleading. Many of the worst political fallacies now current have resulted from the perverse application of the methods of Agreement and Difference to cases where the composition of causes is so complex as to render hopeless all attempts at an inductive solution. In the science of history, the deductive method must be used, no less than in astronomy, though under different conditions and with different limitations. It is no less essential, in order to conduct our investigation securely to its final issue, that we should make extensive use of elimination. Minor perturbing elements must for a time be left out of consideration, just as the inequalities of motion resulting from the mutual attraction of the planets were at first passed over in the search for the general formula of gravitation. The discussion of endless minute historical details must be reserved until the law of social changes has been deduced from more general phenomena, and is ready for inductive verification. A law wide enough to form a basis for historical science must needs be eminently abstract, and can be profitably sought after only by contemplating the most general or most prominent characteristics of social changes. The prime requisite of the formula of which we are in quest is that it should accurately designate such changes under their leading aspect.

Now by far the most obvious characteristic common to a vast number of social changes is that they are changes from a worse to a better state of things,-that they constitute phases of progress. It is not asserted that human history has in all times and places been the history of progress; it is not denied that at various times and in many places it has been the history of retrogression; but attention is called to the fact made trite by long familiarity, yet none the less obstinately misconceived

- that progress has been on the whole the most prominent feature of the history of a considerable and important portion of mankind. And it is to the scientific interpretation of this fact that the present article is devoted.

Though several passages in ancient literature express the opinion that the earliest men were little superior to brutes,* there is no reason for supposing that the idea of continuous progress ever entered into the social and political speculations of ancient philosophers. Far from supposing the human race to have advanced in strength, virtue, and intelligence, they for the most part bewailed its constant degeneracy. Scarcely could two men of later times load upon a wagon the stones which Hektor and Diomedes hurled with ease at their antagonists; and even decrepit Nestor lightly quaffed from the goblet which the feebler hands of succeeding nations might vainly strive to stir from the table. Yet even this heroic race has degenerated since the days of Tydeus and Bellerophon; and in the iron age which follows, men are afflicted with grievous calamities, reaping just retribution for their mischievous knavery and profligacy. Hardly does it profit a man to be just; wholesome contrition (Aidós) has quit the earth; and, as a fit consummation, Zeus may shortly be expected to overwhelm all his unworthy creatures in common ruin.

Among the Stoics and the Roman jurisconsults, the golden age of popular belief was refined into a blissful state of nature,

* Esch. Prom. 451-515; Eurip. Suppl. 201-215; Lucret. V. 923, seq.; Horat. Sat. L. iii. 99; Juvenal, XV. 151; Manil. I. 90-94.

+ "Ancient literature gives few or no hints of a belief that the progress of society is necessarily from worse to better." (Maine, p. 74.) I do not recollect any passage where a belief in progress is clearly expressed, unless it be in Seneca, Nat. Quæst. VII. 25. "Veniet tempus quo ista quæ nunc latent, in lucem dies extrahat, et longioris aevi diligentia. . . . . Veniet tempus, quo posteri nostri tam aperta nos nescisse mirentur."

....

† Νῦν δὴ ἐγὼ μήτ' αὐτός ἐν ἀνθρώποισι δίκαιος
Εἴητ ̓ ἐμὸς υἱός. ἐπεὶ κακόν ἐστι δίκαιον
Εμμεναι εἰ μείζω γε δίκην ἀδικώτερος έξει
̓Αλλὰ τόδ ̓ οὔπω ἔολπα τελεῖν Δία τερπικέραυνον.

"Damnosa quid non imminuit dies?

Aetas parentum, pejor avis, tulit

Nos nequiores, mox daturos

- Hesiod, Opp. Di. 270.

--

Progeniem vitiosiorem."- Horat., Carm. III. 6.

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