revising and annulling all their decisions. It was further declared that the right of granting citizenship[1] to foreigners, which the Estates had formerly possessed, should in future belong to the king. A last and very important enactment stated that henceforth the German language should in all law courts and Government offices be recognized as having the same value as the national language.
In the preamble to this constitutional enactment Ferdinand declared that he had conquered the Bohemian lands by the force of the sword and that "the whole kingdom had rebelled in forma universitatis"—a statement which, according to the then generally accepted views, involved the loss of all the ancient rights and privileges of the nation. In apparent contradiction to this declaration, the Emperor nineteen days after the publication of the new ordinance issued a decree stating that he allowed the Bohemians to preserve their ancient privileges as far as they had not been suppressed by the new constitutional enactments. This contradiction has often been noticed, and the learned Professor Kalousek—our principal authority on the constitutional history of Bohemia—thinks that Ferdinand's promise was never a genuine one, and that it was only made to pacify the Bohemians. This question has of recent times again been discussed on several occasions—in 1847 when the Bohemian Estates attempted to recover some of their ancient rights, and in 1871 when that talented and able statesman the late Count Hohenwarth made an attempt to re-establish the ancient constitution of Bohemia.
It is significative of the spirit which animated the new rulers of Bohemia that though it had been decided that the "new ordinance of the land" should be published in Bohemian, German and Latin, only the German version was printed. This leads us to consider another great change in the condition of Bohemia, which resulted from the battle of the Bila Hora, but which has proved less permanent than many others. It is probable that with the exception of the earliest period Bohemia always had a certain number of German inhabitants, and the Jews who arrived very early in Bohemia at all times preferred German to the national language. The number of German inhabitants in Bohemia varied according to the political situation of the country, but the Germans were always considered as foreigners
- ↑ In Bohemian "inkolat."
