[T]he opening of the letter written by the Persian traveller 'Rica' to his friend 'Ibben' from Paris in '1712':
The Pope is the chief of the Christians; he is an ancient idol, worshipped now from habit. Once he was formidable even to princes, for he would depose them as easily as our magnificent sultans depose the kings of Iremetia or Georgia. But nobody fears him any longer. He claims to be the successor of one of the earliest Christians, called Saint Peter, and it is certainly a rich succession, for his treasure is immense and he has a great country under his control.
In 1868, the administration of the cultivated magnate Count Gyula Andrassy enacted a Nationalities Law which gave the non-Magyar minorities 'every right they had ever claimed or could have claimed - short of turning Hungary into a federation.' But [Kálman] Tisza's accession to the premiership in 1875 opened an era in which the reactionary gentry successfully reconstituted their position, relatively free from Viennese interference.[...] Thus 'the magnates held their entailed estates; the gentry held their entailed jobs.' Such was the social basis for a pitiless policy of enforced Magyarization which after 1875 made the Nationalities Law a dead letter. - pag. 60
Lajos Mocsáry (1826-1916) had in 1874 established a small Independence Party in the Hungarian parliament to fight for Kossuth's ideas, particularly on the minorities question. His speeches denouncing Tisza's blatant violations of the 1868 Nationalities Law led first to his physical extrusion from parliament and then expulsion from his own party. In 1888, he was returned to parliament from a wholly Romanian constituency and became largely a political outcast. - pag. 65
'Saint' Stephen (r. 1001-1038) might admonish his successor that:
„The utility of foreigners and guests is so great that they can be given a place of sixth importance among the royal ornaments.... For, as the guests come from various regions and provinces, they bring with them various languages and customs, various knowledges and arms. All these adorn the royal court, heighten its splendour, and terrify the haughtiness of foreign powers. For a country unified in language and customs is fragile and weak...”
But such words would not in the least prevent his subsequent apotheosis as the First King of Hungary. - pag. 62
Notă: (numerotarea paginii este în funcție de varianta pdf ce se găsește online)
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