PALACKÝ AND HAVLÍČEK
eventually to accept federalization as a compromise.19 The alternative was subjugation to the dictates of their governments.
Havlíček, too, considered independence for the Czechs unthinkable and federalization the sole positive alternative: “At the present time,” he wrote, “when immense empires have risen in Europe, total independence for us Czechs would be a naked misfortune. We would always be weak, dependent on others, . . . But in conjunction with the other Slavs of Austria, we can utilize as a distinct Czech kingdom every kind of autonomy and still enjoy the advantages . . . of a powerful state.“20
Indeed autonomy, guaranteed constitutionally, could alleviate the Czechs’ concern for their national integrity. And to Havlíček the unhindered development of nationality, particularly through an improved official status for the Czech language, was the greatest of all privileges. “To what end has English liberty benefited the Irish? . . . Wherever your language, your nationality, has no [specific] rights, you are oppressed in even the freest countries. Freedom of speech and press, to be sure, are the bases of many other freedoms. But where your language is barred from public offices and schools, . . . a greater freedom is taken from you than through the police and censorship.”21
This did not mean that federal governments would have no important jurisdiction. Nor did it license unrestrained opposition to authority. As Chalupný points out, Havlíček regarded total, unabated opposition to the State as unnatural.22 Government had a proper function that was regulatory. (Palacký spoke of a “strictly juridical state”–stát pouze právní.)23 It was that agency which, through the application and enforcement of laws, had at all times to balance collective and individual rights, to curb “libertinism” without destroying that “independence natural to the human spirit.”24 This led Havlíček and Palacký alike to reject the negativism of west European liberals who, in distrusting most forms of government, sought maximum restrictions on governmental powers. At the same time, neither man subscribed to the “étatiste” school of liberalism. The latter, born in Jacobin France and with adherents as far east as Russia, considered the State not merely the chief guarantor but the ultimate source of liberty.25 Under certain circumstances the State might actively prescribe forms of liberty rejected by an unenlightened citizenry. To Palacký and Havlíček, such an idea was inadmissible. Individual and national rights per force relected popular will and had first to be secured through a fixed rule of law. Only then could the State govern as an auxiliary power.
When revolution broke out in Prague on March 11, 1848, neither Palacký nor Havlíček became immediately involved. Like other liberals,
