Our people who travelled in England
and elsewhere came back imbued with new ideas. We in Transylvania assume
the credit of taking the lead in liberal politics. Baron Wesselenyi was
one of the first to advise a radical reform, and others--Count Bethlen,
Baron Kemeny, and Count Teleki--were all agreed as to the necessity of
bringing about the manumission of the serfs. It is an old story now. I
am speaking of the third and fourth decades of the century, and
political excitement was at white-heat. The extreme views of Wesselenyi
raised a host of opponents among his own class, who regarded the
prospect of reform as nothing short of class suicide. Everything else
might go to the devil as long as they retained their privileges; the
devil, however, is apt to make a clean sweep of the board when he has
got the game in his own hands, but these noble wiseacres could not see
that. In other parts of the country good men and true were working up
the leaven of reform. The great patriot Szechenyi, as long ago as 1830,
when he published his work on 'Credit,' had shown his countrymen their
shortcomings. He had proved to them that their laws and their
institutions were not marching with the spirit of the age; that, in
short, the 'rights of humanity' called for justice. What this truly
great man did for the material improvement of his country could hardly
be told between sunrise and sundown. You practical English were our
teachers and our helpers in those days, when bridges had to be built,
roads to be made, and steam navigation set up in our rivers.
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