Page:History of the Thirty Years' War - Gindely - Volume 1.djvu/104

 and authoritative utterances of the Estates” favored the hereditary right of the reigning dynasty.

The opposition maintained, on the other hand, that the Estates had, in many instances, exercised the elective right, and cited those of Albert II., Ladislas, Matthias Corvinus, Ladislas II., Ferdinand I., and especially that of Matthias. They would not admit, therefore, that the hereditary right in Hungary was a fundamental law of the land, but recognized it only as one of the privileges of the Arpad dynasty, and pertaining to no other family. It is certain that weighty reasons could be brought forward on both sides of the question at issue, and both parties felt especially moved, on the present occasion, to urge their views to a triumph. The majority of the Diet wished to secure for the future by a Royal Diploma an “absolutely” free election, and once for all to remove at the cost of the dynasty all uncertainty from the question of the succession; the dynasty itself designed the opposite.

Pazman, Archbishop of Gran, and Forgach, Chief-Justice, the latter also a Catholic, informed Khlesl of the bad turn things were taking in the Diet, and the Cardinal endeavored to show his informants what was wrong in the position of the majority, in doing which he had no great trouble, as both were of his own opinion. Among the many reasons which he stated for the hereditary right of the Hapsburgs was one, not indeed of a judicial nature, but not therefore the less weighty; it was the immense