A N T I - S E M I T I S M institute an inquiry. All the anti-Liberal elements in the hostility this excited in the Liberal press, largely written country now became banded together in this effort to by Jews, served to bring the feudal Christian Socialists and discredit the Liberal Government, and for the first time Radical anti-Semites together. In 1891 these strangely the Hungarian anti-Semites found themselves at the head assorted factions became consolidated, and during the of a powerful party. Fifteen Jews were arrested and elections of that year Prince Liechtenstein came forward as thrown into prison. No pains were spared in preparing an anti-Semitic candidate and the acknowledged leader of the case for trial. Perjury and even forgery were freely the party. The elections resulted in the return of fifteen. resorted to. The son of one of the accused, a boy of anti-Semites to the Reichsrath, chiefly from Vienna. Although Prince Liechtenstein and the bulk of the fourteen, was taken into custody by the police, and by threats and cajoleries prevailed upon to give evidence for the Christian Socialists had joined the anti-Semites with the prosecution. He was elaborately coached for the terrible support of the clerical organ, the Vaterland, the clerical role he was to play. The trial opened at Nyiregyhasa on party as a whole still held aloof from the Jew-baiters. the 19th June, and lasted till the 3rd August. It was The events of 1892-95 put an end to their hesitation. The one of the most dramatic causes celebres of the century. Hungarian Government, in compliance with long-standing Under the brilliant cross-examination of the advocates for pledges to the Liberal party, introduced into the Diet a the defence the whole of the shocking conspiracy was series of ecclesiastical reform Bills providing for civil gradually exposed. The public prosecutor thereupon marriage, freedom of worship, and the legal recognition of withdrew from the case, and the four judges—the chief of Judaism on an equality with other denominations. These whom held strong anti-Semitic views—unanimously ac- proposals, which synchronized with Ahlwardt’s turbulent quitted all the prisoners. The case proved the death-blow agitation in Germany, gave a great impulse to antiof Hungarian anti-Semitism. Although another phase Semitism and served to drive into its ranks a large number of the Jewish question, which will be referred to presently, of clericals. The agitation was taken in hand by the Roman had still to occupy the public mind, the shame brought on Catholic clergy, and the pulpits every Sunday resounded the nation by the Tisza Eszlar conspiracy effectually pre- with denunciations of the Jews. One clergyman, Father vented the anti-Semites from raising their voices with any Deckert, was prosecuted for preaching the Blood Accusation and convicted (1894). Cardinal Schlauch, effect again. Meanwhile a more formidable and complicated outburst bishop of Grosswardein, declared in the Hungarian House was preparing in Austria itself. Here the lines of the of Magnates that the Liberals were in league with German agitation were closely followed, but with far more “cosmopolitans” for the ruin of the country. In October dramatic results. It was exclusively political—that is 1894 the Magnates adopted two of the ecclesiastical Bills to say, it appealed to anti-Jewish prejudices for party with amendments, but threw out the Jewish Bill by a purposes while it sought to rehabilitate them on a majority of six. The crown sided with the Magnates, pseudo-scientific, racial, and economic basis. At first it and the ministry resigned, although it had a majority in was confined to sporadic pamphleteers. By their side the Lower House. An effort was made to form a clerical there gradually grew up a school of Christian Socialists, cabinet, but it failed. Baron Banffy was then entrusted recruited from the ultra-clericals, for the study and appli- with the construction of a fresh Liberal ministry. The cation of the doctrines preached at Mayence by Arch- announcement that he would persist with the ecclesiastical bishop Ketteler. This constituted a complete Austrian Bills, lashed the clericals and anti-Semites into a fury, and analogue to the Evangelical-Socialist movement started in the agitation broke out afresh. The pope addressed a Germany by Herr Stoecker. For some years the two letter to Count Zichy encouraging the Magnates to resist, movements remained distinct, but signs of approximation and once more two of the Bills were amended, and the were early visible. Thus one of the first complaints of third rejected. The papal nuncio, Mgr. Agliardi, now the anti-Semites was that the Jews were becoming masters thought proper to pay* a visit to Budapest, where he of the soil. This found an echo in the agrarian principles allowed himself to be interviewed on the crisis. This of the Christian Socialists, as expounded by Rudolph Meyer, interference in the domestic concerns of Hungary was in which individualism in landed property was admitted on deeply resented by the Liberals, and Baron Banffy requested the condition that the land-owners were “ the families of Count Kalnoky, the imperial minister of foreign affairs, to the nation ” and not “ cosmopolitan financiers.” A further protest against it at the Vatican. Count Kalnoky refused indication of anti-Semitism is found in a speech delivered and tendered his resignation to the emperor. Clerical in 1878 by Prince Alois von Liechtenstein (b. 1846), sympathies were predominant in Vienna, and the emperor the most prominent disciple of Rudolph Meyer, who was induced for a moment to decline the count’s resignation. denounced the national debt as a tribute paid by the state It soon became clear, however, that the Hungarians were to cosmopolitan rentiers (Nitti, Catholic Socialism, pp. resolved to see the crisis out, and that in the end Vienna 200, 201, 211, 216). The growing disorder in parlia- would be compelled to give way. The emperor accordingly ment, due to the bitter struggle between the German retraced his steps, Count Kalnoky’s resignation was accepted, and Czech parties, served to bring anti-Semitism into the papal nuncio was recalled, a batch of new Magnates the field of practical politics. Since 1867 the German were created, and the Hungarian ecclesiastical Bills passed. Liberals had been in power. They had made enemies of Simultaneously with this crisis another startling phase the clericals by tampering with the concordat, and they had of the anti-Semitic drama was being enacted in Vienna split up their own party by the federalist policy adopted by itself. Encouraged by the support of the clericals the Count Taaffe. The Radical secessionists in their turn found anti-Semites resolved to make an effort to carry the it difficult to agree, and an ultra-national German wing Vienna municipal elections. So far the alliance of the formed itself into a separate party under the leadership of clericals with the anti-Semites had been unofficial, but Ritter von Schonerer (b. 1842), a Radical nationalist of on the eve of the elections (Jan. 1895) the pope, influenced the most violent type. In 1882 two anti-Semitic leagues partly by the Hungarian crisis and partly by an idea of had been founded in Vienna, and to these the Radical Cardinal Rampolla that the best antidote to Democratic nationalists now appealed for support. The growing im- Socialism would be a clerically controlled fusion of the portance of the party led the premier, Count Taaffe, to Christian Socialists and anti-Semites, sent his blessing to angle for the support of the clericals by accepting a I Prince Liechtenstein and his followers. This action portion of the Christian Socialist programme. The | alarmed the Government and a considerable body of the 478
