Page:The New Europe, volume 1.pdf/32

 German, and the Roumanian Orthodox Church receiving a definite charter, under its own hierarchy and elective assembly. This alarmed and angered the patriots of Budapest, and among the foremost concessions extracted from the Crown, as an earnest of the Austro-Hungarian Ausgleich of 1867, were the dissolution of the Transylvanian Diet, the consequent annulment of its concessions to the Roumanians, and the ratification of the forced union of 1843 by a new Diet, which was specially "packed" for the purpose, and which overrode the vigorous protests of both Roumanians and Saxons.

Since 1867, then, Transylvania has been merged in Hungary, and the Roumanian population has shared in the benefits conferred by a constitution which the Magyars are never tired of comparing to the British. To the Roumanians, as to the Slavs of Hungary, the chief pledge of political liberty has been the law of 1868 guaranteeing "the Equal Rights of all Nationalities." But this law, though for years past it has been held up to the uninformed outside world as a pattern of unexampled tolerance, has all the time, as a result of the deliberate policy of the entire Magyar ruling caste, remained a dead letter in the most literal sense of the word. It would be easy to take the document, paragraph by paragraph, and, by comparison with official statistics and the admissions of leading statesmen, to prove that, in all matters of administration, justice, education. etc., its provisions have been deliberately disregarded in favour of a ruthless policy of Magyarisation. For example, there are no state schools, secondary or primary, where the language of instruction is Roumanian, and though the Roumanians have been able to maintain their own denominational schools, this has been in addition to their liability to the state, and by the almost unaided efforts of a very poor community. The scandalous Education Laws introduced in 1907 by that false prophet of constitutional liberty, Count Apponyi, were designed above all to effect the forcible Magyarisation of the denominational schools, the last stronghold of the nationalities. The Magyar point of view was brought out very well some twelve years ago during an education debate, when the well-known dramatist and newspaper proprietor, Mr. Rákosi, declared that the proper educational policy was to allow no teaching of any kind for three years