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394
A HISTORY OF BOHEMIAN LITERATURE

under discussion. Hungary claimed almost complete independence, and Palacký rightly maintained that the establishing new small states was contrary to the tendency to union that then prevailed in Europe. Palacký advised the Hungarians, as well as the Bohemians, to make considerable concessions to the Central Government of Vienna. He seems already to have foreseen, what actually occurred six years later, that Hungary would be granted almost complete independence, and Bohemia considered a mere Austrian province.

Though Palacký, always favourable to the preservation of the Austrian empire, was prepared to concede to the Central Government in Vienna far more extensive powers than the Hungarians were, he yet claimed for Bohemia and the Parliament of Prague a very extensive autonomy, on lines similar, though not identical, with those of the ancient Bohemian constitution, which perished on the day of the battle of the White Mountain. When Palacký found that the Parliament of Vienna was discussing matters that he considered beyond its competency, and encroaching on the rights of the Bohemian representative body, he left Vienna on September 30, 1861, and never again took his seat in the Austrian Upper House. Of the Bohemian Parliament Palacký was a member from the time that it first met in 1861. He attended its meetings whenever the National or Bohemian party took part in its deliberations, which they, from political reasons, often refused to do. From 1861 to his death in 1876, Palacký was the recognised leader of the National party in Bohemia. A detailed account of his life during that time would be a record of the political struggles of Bohemia during those years, and would be out of place here. The admiration and venera-