Page:Edvard Beneš – Bohemia's case for independence.pdf/36

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BOHEMIA'S CASE FOR INDEPENDENCE

financial, and judicial administration in the Bohemian lands. By an autocratic and most arbitrary act she put an end to the existence of the Czech State.

Hungary in the course of her historic evolution found herself in a totally different situation. The Turkish peril, the existence of national and somewhat independent sovereigns in Transylvania, and the necessity of the Habsburgs to treat with consideration the Hungarian feudal Estates, assured the Magyars a form of government much in their favour, which soon became traditional, and thus spared them the fate of Bohemia.

The Czechs, who had twice rebelled, were always a target for hostilities on the part of the Crown, and were reduced to impotence. The relations between the Habsburgs and Hungary, however, were very different, and thus the first foundations of the Austro-Hungarian dualism were laid.

This dualism, which only received its official shape in 1867, and which was a concomitant of the centralisation and Germanisation of Austria (Cisleithania), was only the consequence of a very natural and very slow evolution, and the result of special conditions in the past.

Thus the actual Austro-Hungaria Empire, in its dualistic form, is the logical result of those fatalities and injustices which have gradually eaten away the political organism governed by the