And one thing I have to mention yet. This replacing of the Latin
language by the Hungarian was not a work of our recent measures, it was
done before, step by step, from 1791. When we carried in 1848 our
democratic reforms, and gave political, social, civil, and full
religious freedom to the whole people, we extended our cares to the
equal protection of every tongue and race, affording to all equal right
to aid out of the public funds, for the moral, religious, and scientific
development in churches and in schools. Nay, we extended this even to
political affairs, sanctioning the free use of every tongue, in the
municipalities and communal corporations, as well as in the
administration of justice. The promulgation of the laws in every tongue,
the right to petition and to claim justice in each man's tongue, the
duty of the government to answer in the same, all this was granted, and
thus far more was done in that respect also, than any other nation ever
accorded to the claims of tongues; by far more than the United States
ever did, though there is no country in the world where so many
different languages are spoken as here.

It is therefore the most calumnious misrepresentation to say that the
Hungarians struggled for the dominion of their own _race_. No; we
struggled for civil, political, social, and religious freedom, common to
all, against Austrian despotism. We struggled for the great principle
of _self-government against centralization_; because centralization
is absolutism; and is inconsistent with constitutional rights. Austria
has given the very proof of it. The House of Austria had never the
intention to grant constitutional life to the nations of Europe. I will
prove that on another occasion. But the friends of the Hapsburgs say,
it has granted a constitution--in March, 1849. Well, where is that
Constitution now? It was not only never executed, but it was, three