also had included the representations laid before Wenzel to secure a revocation of his orders. It closed by stating that a refusal on the part of Wenzel to accept the conditions offered having been avoided by his candid avowal of non-complicity except under duress, the guilt became transferred to the court of Vienna.
This memorandum contained statements of such high political importance at the time, that it was forwarded to Hungary by Wenzel’s direct order, without being submitted to his Aulic council.
Ladislaus received this communication with deep concern, and ordered its formal portions to be read to his chief advisers. The paper created intense agitation, especially the following passage: “Thus by profound dissimulation, the abandonment of that unity whereon alone can states establish permanence, or acquire cohesion of their essential elements, has the guilt of this crime been transferred from the persons really culpable to the crown of Bohemia. Such is the tendency of that insidious policy that I observe is being established in modern kingdoms. The royal power is constituted the executioner of decrees that it does not formulate, and is rendered the active oppressor of its own subjects by appeals to its overstrained religious sentiment. A sensitiveness hostile to the ordinary pursuits of men is cultivated that mistakes inquiry into nature’s truths for enmity to spiritual conceptions.
“The beneficence that supplies its myriad blessings to us from the limitless store of nature’s sweets and
