Lutherans, many of the Greek Church, and many Jews: such was the
state of their religious dissensions that Mahomet had often been
called in to the aid of Calvin, and the crescent often glittered on
the walls of Buda and Presburg. At last, in 1791, during the most
violent crisis of disturbance, a Diet was called, and by a great
majority of voices a decree was passed, which secured to all the
contending sects the fullest and freest exercise of religious
worship and education; ordained--let it be heard in Hampstead--that
churches and chapels should be erected for all on the most perfectly
equal terms; that the Protestants of both confessions should depend
upon their spiritual superiors alone; liberated them from swearing
by the usual oath, "the Holy Virgin Mary, the saints, and chosen of
God;" and then the decree adds, "that PUBLIC OFFICES AND HONOURS,
HIGH OR LOW, GREAT OR SMALL, SHALL BE GIVEN TO NATURAL-BORN
HUNGARIANS WHO DESERVE WELL OF THEIR COUNTRY, AND POSSESS THE OTHER
QUALIFICATIONS, LET THEIR RELIGION BE WHAT IT MAY." Such was the
line of policy pursued in a Diet consisting of four hundred members,
in a state whose form of government approaches nearer to our own
than any other, having a Roman Catholic establishment of great
wealth and power, and under the influence of one of the most bigoted
Catholic Courts in Europe. This measure has now the experience of
eighteen years in its favour; it has undergone a trial of fourteen
years of revolution such as the world never witnessed, and more than
equal to a century less convulsed: What have been its effects?
When the French advanced like a torrent within a few days' march of
Vienna, the Hungarians rose in a mass; they formed what they called
the sacred insurrection, to defend their sovereign, their rights and
liberties, now common to all; and the apprehension of their approach
dictated to the reluctant Bonaparte the immediate signature of the
treaty of Leoben. The Romish hierarchy of Hungary exists in all its