partook in it, became severed and alienated from the people's interests.
This dead Latin language, introduced into the public life of a living
nation, was the most mischievous barrier against liberty. The first
blow to it was stricken by the Reformation. The Protestant Church,
introducing the national language into the divine services, became a
medium to the development of the spirit of liberty, and so our ancient
struggles for religious liberty were always connected with the
maintenance of political rights. But still, Latin public life went on
down to 1780. At that time, Joseph of Hapsburg, aiming at
centralization, replaced the Latin by the German tongue. This roused the
national spirit of Hungary; and our forefathers seeing that the dead
Latin language, excluding the people from the public concerns, cannot be
propitious to liberty, and anxious to oppose the design of the Viennese
Cabinet to Germanize Hungary, and _so melt it into the common
absolutism of the Austrian dynasty_--I say, anxious to oppose this
design by a cheerful public life of the people itself, from the year
1790 began to pass laws in the direction that by-and-by, step by step,
the Latin language should be replaced in the public proceedings of the
Legislature and of the Government by a living language familiar to the
people itself. And what was more natural, than that, being in the
necessity to choose one language, they choose the Magyar? the more so,
since those who spoke Hungarian were not only more than those who spoke
any one of the other languages, but were if not more than, at least
equal to, all those who spoke several other languages together.

Be so kind to mark well, gentlemen; no other language was oppressed--the
Hungarian language was enforced upon nobody. Wherever another language
was in use even in public life; of whatever Church--whatever popular
school--whatever community--it was not replaced by the Hungarian
language. It was only the dead Latin, which by-and-by became eliminated