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INTRODUCTION
25

nation which responded as only a politically awakened and intelligent national constituency can respond. Undaunted he attacked the great hulking body of the Austrian government, reeking with sores and ugly with its age-old unfulfilled promises to the nations which composed it. He demanded a constitution with full political freedom but he was as firm in his denunciation of a radical revolution. He urged separation of church and state, insisted on full educational opportunities for all clasess—in rural districts as well as in cities. He rejected Russian paternalism and sympathized with the Poles and Southern Slavs.

His style is simple, clear, direct, forceful. He never missed making his point. By the clarity and precision of his short incisive sentences, he made it possible for the people to follow him in teachings of the most progressive and advanced sort. But the Austrian government could not, of course, brook the untrammelled presence of a man of Havliček’s imposing and inspiring personality. His paper was confiscated again and again. Journals which he founded elsewhere did not long elude the censor. Prosecution and persecution followed ultimately. At the end of 1851 Havliček was deported to Brixen in the Tyrol where he contracted tuberculosis. It was here he wrote his unequalled satires “Tyrolské Elegie” (Tyrol Elegies) and “Král Lávra” (King Lávra). Practically a dying man he was permitted to return to his native land where he found that in the meantime his wife