The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories

one-fourth of the whole, and not another so much as one-sixth; and each has remained for ages as unchanged in isolation, however mingled together in locality, as globules of oil in water. There is nothing else in the modern world that is nearly like it, though there have been plenty in past ages; it seems unreal and impossible even though we know it is true; it violates all our feeling as to what a country should be in order to have a right to exist; and it seems as though it was too ramshackle to go on holding together any length of time. Yet it has survived, much in its present shape, two centuries of storms that have swept perfectly unified countries from existence and others that have brought it to the verge of ruin, has survived formidable European coalitions to dismember it, and has steadily gained force after each; forever changing in its exact make-up, losing in the West but gaining in the East, the changes leave the structure as firm as ever, like the dropping off and adding on of logs in a raft, its mechanical union of pieces showing all the vitality of genuine national life.' That seems to confirm and justify the prevalent Austrian faith that in this confusion of unrelated and irreconcilable elements, this condition of incurable disunion, there is strength--for the Government. Nearly every day some one explains to me that a revolution would not succeed here. 'It couldn't, you know. Broadly speaking, all the nations in the empire hate the Government--but they all hate each other too, and with devoted and enthusiastic bitterness; no two of them can combine; the nation that rises must rise alone; then the others would joyfully join the Government against her, and she would have just a fly's chance against a combination of spiders. This Government is entirely independent. It can go its own road, and do as it pleases; it has nothing to fear. In countries like England and America, where there is one tongue and the public interests are common, the Government must take account of public opinion; but in Austria-Hungary there are nineteen public opinions--one for each state. No--two or three for each state, since there are two or three nationalities in each. A Government cannot satisfy all these public opinions; it can only go through the motions of trying. This Government does that. It goes through the motions, and they do not succeed; but that does not worry the Government much.' The next man will give you some further information. 'The Government has a policy--a wise one--and sticks to it. This policy is--tranquillity: keep this hive of excitable nations as quiet as possible; encourage them to amuse themselves with things less inflammatory than politics. To this end it furnishes them an abundance of Catholic priests to teach them to be docile and obedient, and to be diligent in acquiring ignorance about things here below, and knowledge about the kingdom of heaven, to whose historic delights they are going to add the charm of their society by-and-by; and further--to this same end--it cools off the newspapers every morning at five o'clock, whenever warm events are happening.' There is a censor of the press, and apparently he is always on duty and hard at work. A copy of each morning paper is brought to him at five o'clock. His official wagons wait at the doors of the newspaper offices and scud to him with the first copies that come from the press. His company of assistants read every line in these papers, and mark everything which seems to have a dangerous look; then he passes final judgment upon these markings. Two things conspire to give to the results a capricious and unbalanced look: his assistants have diversified notions as to what is dangerous and what isn't; he can't get time to examine their criticisms in much detail; and so sometimes the very same matter which is suppressed in one paper fails to be damned in another one, and gets published in full feather and unmodified. Then the paper in which it was suppressed blandly copies the forbidden matter into its evening edition--provokingly giving credit and detailing all the circumstances in courteous and inoffensive language--and of course the censor cannot say a word. Sometimes the censor sucks all the blood out of a newspaper and leaves it colourless and inane; sometimes he leaves it undisturbed, and lets it talk out its opinions with a frankness and vigour hardly to be surpassed, I think, in the journals of any country. Apparently the censor sometimes revises his verdicts upon second thought, for several times lately he has suppressed journals after their issue and partial distribution. The distributed copies are then sent for by the censor and destroyed. I have two of these, but at the time they were sent for I could not remember what I had done with them. If the censor did his work before the morning edition was printed, he would be less of an inconvenience than he is; but, of course, the papers cannot wait many minutes after five o'clock to get his verdict; they might as well go out of business as do that; so they print and take their chances. Then, if they get caught by a suppression, they must strike out the condemned matter and print the edition over again. That delays the issue several hours, and is expensive besides. The Government gets the suppressed edition for nothing. If it bought it, that would be joyful, and would give great satisfaction. Also, the edition would be larger. Some of the papers do not replace the condemned paragraphs with other matter; they merely snatch them out and leave blanks behind--mourning blanks, marked 'Confiscated'. The Government discourages the dissemination of newspaper information in other ways. For instance, it does not allow newspapers to be sold on the streets: therefore the newsboy is unknown in Vienna. And there is a stamp duty of nearly a cent upon each copy of a newspaper's issue. Every American paper that reaches me has a stamp upon it, which has been pasted there in the post-office or downstairs in the hotel office; but no matter who put it there, I have to pay for it, and that is the main thing. Sometimes friends send me so many papers that it takes all I can earn that week to keep this Government going. I must take passing notice of another point in the Government's measures for maintaining tranquillity. Everybody says it does not like to see any individual attain to commanding influence in the country, since such a man can become a disturber and an inconvenience. 'We have as much talent as the other nations,' says the citizen, resignedly, and without bitterness, 'but for the sake of the general good of the country, we are discouraged from making it over-conspicuous; and not only discouraged, but tactfully and skillfully prevented from doing it, if we show too much persistence. Consequently we have no renowned men; in centuries we have seldom produced one--that is, seldom allowed one to produce himself. We can say to-day what no other nation of first importance in the family of Christian civilisations can say--that there exists no Austrian who has made an enduring name for himself which is familiar all around the globe. Another helper toward tranquillity is the army. It is as pervasive as the atmosphere. It is everywhere. All the mentioned creators, promoters, and preservers of the public tranquillity do their several shares in the quieting work. They make a restful and comfortable serenity and reposefulness. This is disturbed sometimes for a little while: a mob assembles to protest against something; it gets noisy--noisier--still noisier--finally too noisy; then the persuasive soldiery comes charging down upon it, and in a few minutes all is quiet again, and there is no mob. There is a Constitution and there is a Parliament. The House draws its membership of 425 deputies from the nineteen or twenty states heretofore mentioned. These men represent peoples who speak eleven different languages. That means eleven distinct varieties of jealousies, hostilities, and warring interests. This could be expected to furnish forth a parliament of a pretty inharmonious sort, and make legislation difficult at times--and it does that. The Parliament is split up into many parties--the Clericals, the Progressists, the German Nationalists, the Young Czechs, the Social Democrats, the Christian Socialists, and some others--and it is difficult to get up working combinations among them. They prefer to fight apart sometimes. The recent troubles have grown out of Count Badeni's necessities. He could not carry on his Government without a majority vote in the House at his back, and in order to secure it he had to make a trade of some sort. He made it with the Czechs--the Bohemians. The terms were not easy for him: he must issue an ordinance making the Czech tongue the official language in Bohemia in place of the German. This created a storm. All the Germans in Austria were incensed. In numbers they form but a fourth part of the empire's population, but they urge that the country's public business should be conducted in one common tongue, and that tongue a world language--which German is. However, Badeni secured his majority. The German element in Parliament was apparently become helpless. The Czech deputies were exultant. Then the music began. Badeni's voyage, instead of being smooth, was disappointingly rough from the start. The Government must get the Ausgleich through. It must not fail. Badeni's majority was ready to carry it through; but the minority was determined to obstruct it and delay it until the obnoxious Czech-language measure should be shelved. The Ausgleich is an Adjustment, Arrangement, Settlement, which holds Austria and Hungary together. It dates from 1867, and has to be renewed every ten years. It establishes the share which Hungary must pay toward the expenses of the imperial Government. Hungary is a kingdom (the Emperor of Austria is its King), and has its own Parliament and governmental machinery. But it has no foreign office, and it has no army--at least its army is a part of the imperial army, is paid out of the imperial treasury, and is under the control of the imperial war office. The ten-year arrangement was due a year ago, but failed to connect. At least completely. A year's compromise was arranged. A new arrangement must be effected before the last day of this year. Otherwise the two countries become separate entities. The Emperor would still be King of Hungary--that is, King of an independent foreign country. There would be Hungarian custom-houses on the Austrian border, and there would be a Hungarian army and a Hungarian foreign office. Both countries would be weakened by this, both would suffer damage. The Opposition in the House, although in the minority, had a good weapon to fight with in the pending Ausgleich. If it could delay the Ausgleich a few weeks, the Government would doubtless have to withdraw the hated language ordinance or lose Hungary. The Opposition began its fight. Its arms were the Rules of the House. It was soon manifest that by applying these Rules ingeniously it could make the majority helpless, and keep it so as long as it pleased. It could shut off business every now and then with a motion to adjourn. It could require the ayes and noes on the motion, and use up thirty minutes on that detail. It could call for the reading and verification of the minutes of the preceding meeting, and use up half a day in that way. It could require that several of its members be entered upon the list of permitted speakers previously to the opening of a sitting; and as there is no time-limit, further delays could thus be accomplished.