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CHAPTER XVI.

Judicial Injustice

"It became a second nature of the Hungarian national character not to take the law seriously, not to comply with, but to evade it. Even to-day we are still suffering from this fact."

Count Julius Andrassy (now Minister of the Interior) in 1897.[1]

IN Hungary justice moves at an Asiatic pace. An interval of many, months separates the offence from its trial, and meanwhile the accused person only too often languishes untried in prison. The abuses of this system, which are mainly due to those dilatory and easy-going habits which are innate in every Magyar, are specially flagrant in the case of political offences. Persons charged with instigation "against the Magyar nationality" (instigation against other nation­alities goes unpunished) or with "class hatred" (which of course means hatred of the upper classes) are kept in sus­pense for months and occasionally even imprisoned pending trial, until the Public Prosecutor has taken a leisurely survey of the facts. Those who take the trouble to study the law­court reports in any Hungarian newspaper will find that even most of the Press offences for which legal proceedings were taken, are eight, ten, fifteen, even eighteen months old before they come into court.

These judicial delays are sufficiently reprehensible ; but if they formed the only complaint against Hungarian justice it would have been obviously unfair to mention them. A far more serious charge consists in the disagreeable fact that two kinds of justice exist in Hungary to-day — one for "pat­riots," that is for Magyars, but of course only such Magyars as refrain from active resistance to the ruling clique and from open sympathy with the oppressed proletariat — and another for the non-Magyar races and the working classes, the helots of the Magyar oligarchy. That this is no mere sweeping assertion will become abundantly clear from the details contained in this chapter.

The linguistic provisions of the Law of Nationalities in the matter of justice, remained from the first a dead letter, and their non-observance has led to the gravest abuses and in­justice. Under sections 7 and 8 of this law, every citizen has the right to employ his mother tongue in all petitions and applications to the communal and district courts, and if he avails himself of this right, the judge is bound to answer the complaint in the language of the appellant, and to conduct the trial in the language of the plaintiff or witnesses, while the official record must be drawn up in the language chosen by mutual agreement between the rival parties.[2] The judge is further bound to issue all summonses in the language of the parties concerned, to interpret to them all essential docu­ments which are written in a language of which they are ignorant, and finally to interpret his decision to each party in whatever Hungarian language they may desire. The sentence must be pronounced in the same language as that in which the record of the trial has been conducted.[3]

Now except in certain cases among the Saxons of Transyl­vania — and not always even among them — these provisions are set at open defiance thoughout the length and breadth of Hungary. Petitions are not accepted by the courts unless they are drawn up in Magyar[4]; and even when the non­Magyars submit to this illegality, a Saxon or Roumanian will have no chance of obtaining a hearing if he dares to sign his name after the manner of his nation. Ferdinand Strauss and Joan Lucaciu must masquerade as Strausz Nándor and Lukács János, before their case can be considered. Not merely are the inscriptions and notices in all Hungarian courts of justice posted exclusively in the Magyar language, even in counties where 90 per cent, of the population is non­Magyar ; but all summonses are issued exclusively in Magyar, regardless of whether the person summoned knows that lan­guage. Many of the judges are entirely ignorant of the local language, or have a very inadequate knowledge of it, and thus in their intercourse with the people are dependent upon some half-educated junior clerk. Persons who are rash enough to insist upon the letter of the law merely bring down the wrath of the judicial demigods upon their heads. Last April, for instance, when a Roumanian priest declined to answer the questions of the szólgabiró in anything but Roumanian, this was treated as an aggravating circumstance, and the sentence was increased accordingly.

Magyar justice compels all parties at law to prepare and recognize Magyar translations of their plaints and deposi­tions, without their being in a position to convince themselves of the accuracy of the translation. The whole proceedings in court are conducted in Magyar, and sentence is pronounced and published exclusively in Magyar — even if it is a sentence of death ! A characteristic instance of this was cited by the Národnie Noviny in 1900. A blacksmith was condemned for some offence, and requested the judge to explain the sen­tence to him in his native tongue, as he knew no Magyar. "Érti, nem érti, mindegy — " It doesn't matter whether you understand or not," replied the courteous judge.

If there is an interpreter, the defendant can obtain from him a translation of the sentence; but this is a private trans­action, and involves a fee which the peasant may regard as prohibitive.[5] His legal right to an official gratis translation is entirely disregarded. The natural result is that the non­Magyar peasantry have come to regard interpreters' fees as a penalty imposed upon them for the use of their mother tongue, and so long as this continues it is obvious that their suspicion of Magyar j ústíce will remain. The existing grievance is all the more crying, since no modern language — not even English before the days of Bentham — can boast of such a horrible legal jargon as Magyar. Many a legal document, with its labyrinthine sentences and involved constructions, taxes all the ingenuity of an educated Magyar, and is, of course, utterly beyond the comprehension of a Slovak or Roumanian peasant.

Many Magyars are in the habit of boasting of the manner in which the Law of Nationalities is carried out, at the same time emphasizing the equality of all individual citizens before the law, irrespective of race or religion. The sooner this presumptuous boast is withdrawn the better; for where half the population can only obtain justice in an unknown tongue, it is mere hypocrisy to talk of equality before the law. Those who pretend that the law is carried out are either ignorant of the facts or purposely concealing them ; and this was tacitly admitted by the present Premier, Dr. Wekerle, in the summer of 1906, when he publicly declared in the House that he was not in a position to fulfil that pro­vision of the law by which the decision is to be given in the same language in which the petition is handed in.[6]

Open pressure is put upon the judges by the central govern­ment, and only too often their promotion is made dependent upon their so-called " patriotism." When the Law of Nation­alities was passed in 1868, there were a considerable number of non-Magyars in judicial positions ; but within a few years all the Roumanians had been transferred to purely Magyar districts and their places supplied by men who were ignorant of the local language.[7] About the same time the presidents of the various courts were advised from headquarters that in future they should employ the Magyar language only, and should instruct the advocates in their sphere of juris­diction to prepare all documents in that language, since no others would be accepted or recognized. Appeals against this illegal action were rejected by the higher courts ; the central authorities declined to interfere ; and when the matter was brought before Parliament, Perczel, the Minister of Justice, made the significant reply that the action of the judges was not in accordance with the law, but that he would endeavour by means of an amendment bill to bring the law into harmony with their action ! In other words, the mouthpiece of Hun­garian justice openly encouraged his subordinates to set the laws at defiance, and tacitly excluded half the population from their natural rights. Many instances could be adduced to show that this policy has been consistently pursued by all subsequent Governments ; but I prefer to limit myself to one from the last year of the Bánffy Ministry. In February, 1898, Mr. Alexander Erdély, the Minister of Justice, publicly expressed his thanks to the jury courts of Hungary for the manner in which they had checked anti-national agitation, in other words for their brutal attitude towards the non­Magyars and the Agrarian Socialists. When a Cabinet Minister so far forgets his duties, it is no wonder that justice in Hungary tends to become a mere tool in the hands of the executive.

While all the linguistic provisions of the Law of Nation­alities remain a dead letter, and, in the trenchant words of a Slovak patriot, the non-Magyar "stands like an ox" before the courts of his native land, his situation is aggravated by the arbitrary action of the lower courts. Not content with employing all the severity of the law against the non-Magyar "agitators," they endeavour to break their spirit and alienate their supporters by every imaginable kind of petty tyranny and persecution. Actions are brought by the authorities, not so much with a view to enforcing the law, as with the deliberate aim of crushing out all resistance to the policy of Magyarization. Lest the reader should accuse me of exag­geration, I propose to bring forward a considerable number of concrete cases to illustrate my assertion.

On July 31, 1905, as Peter Sokol and several other Magyar canvassers in Liptó St. Miklós were returning home, some one threw a stone at them. The sequel was a trial for violence against the individual; and as it was impossible to prove who had actually thrown the stone, every one in the group of men from which it came was sentenced to one month's imprison­ment ! This decision of Mr. Chudovsky, president of the Sedrial Court in Rózsahegy, was reversed by the Curia. It may be described as a worthy miniature companion to the larger painting of the Csernova trial. (See p. 347.)

This same Peter Sokol, a notary in the county of Liptó, and a violent agitator on the "patriotic" side, was charged on two separate counts with misuse of his official position, having beaten a peasant called Chovanka, and having, on July 14, 1905, shut him up for twenty-four hours in the local gaol, solely because he agitated for the Slovak cause. Though the facts were beyond dispute, the Public Prosecutor declined to take action against a "patriotic" official; and the trial resulted in Sokol's acquittal!

In the Sedrial Court of Trencsén, John Valášek and twenty­four peasants from Predinier were charged with breach of the peace (under §§ 175, 176 of the Criminal Code). Their offence consisted in a demonstration against Father Teselský, the candidate of the People's Party, in the course of which stones were thrown and the lives of the Magyars were said to have been endangered. The case was allowed to drag on for close upon eighteen months, and finally all the defendants were acquitted and the president of the Court reprimanded the procedure of the Crown prosecutor and the examining magistrate.

During the elections in Liptó St. Miklós, two Slovak peasants, Kováčik and Kraliček, were charged with an offence against the "liberty of the individual." They were said to have instigated the gipsy musicians, who were playing at the elec­tion, to kick John Kuchařík out of the village inn. But the leader of the gipsies gave evidence that Kuchařík threw a bottle at one of the fiddlers, and tried to smash another of the instruments, and that this was the sole cause of his ejection. As a result, both defendants had to be acquitted. Their real offence had of course been support of the Slovak candidate.

John Jurečka and nine other villagers of Poruba were accused of threatening the village mayor during these same elections, and of beating a couple of his friends. The action was merely brought forward in order to influence their votes on the day of the poll, and after the usual delays, resulted in their acquittal.[8]

JUDICIAL INJUSTICE

Martin Kelo, the schoolmaster of Jalovec, a man of over seventy, was brought into court on a similar charge of breach of the peace, because he "offered resistance" to a soldier on the day of the election. I wish I could give my readers a true idea of what " resistance to the soldiers " at a Hungarian election means![9]

Francis Veselovsky, a Slovak advocate and ex-deputy, was some years ago brought to trial for incitement against the Magyar nationality. His offence consisted in not hoisting any flags on his house in Nagy Szombat (Tyrnau) during the public reception of a prominent Magyar statesman, and in using the word "Emperor" instead of "King" in a public speech. The latter is certainly a highly improper phrase in the mouth of a Hungarian citizen, but by no stretch of the imagination can it be described as incitement against the Magyars ; and in any case the pettiness and spite of the authorities in prose­cuting him on such grounds cannot be stigmatized too strongly. The Corporation of Dublin would find Hungary a most un­congenial place of abode.

In Hrádek (Liptóujvár) John Králik, the mayor of a neigh­bouring village, was brought before the szólgabiró for the terrible crime of hoisting the colours of the Slovak candidate, Dr. Stodola, on the church tower! Strangely enough he was acquitted.

Less fortunate was a Roumanian priest, Father John Popovici, who was sentenced last April to eight days and 200 crowns for "action hostile to the State" (államellenes cseleke­detért). At the funeral of a parishioner he had decorated the little acolytes with Roumanian national colours.[10] The szólgabiró in passing sentence treated as an aggravating circumstance the priest's refusal to answer questions in any save his mother tongue. Here is a practical example, if any were needed, of how the law of Nationalities is observed in non-Magyar communities.

E. Málek

A church interior.

(the lutheran church of velka paludza.)

One of the most outrageous cases of recent years is that of Francis Pollakovič, a young Slovak who had become an Ameri­can citizen and after ten years' residence in the United States had returned to Hungary in the summer of 1907. On October 9 of that year he was arrested on a charge of "incitement against the Magyar nationality." A few days before, he had distri­buted copies of a Slovak national song among a number of friends at the skittle alley of the inn of Bobró, and had then urged them "to hold together as Slovaks, not to give up their mother-tongue, to battle for their Slovak language and their rights." After remaining in jail from October 9 till December 17, he was on the latter date brought for trial before the Court of Rózsahegy, and sentenced by Mr. Chudovszky to seven months' state prison. Pending the appeal, he was detained in an unhealthy cell, and fell ill with bronchitis. The representa­tions of the American Embassy failed to secure his release. At the end of his term of imprisonment he was removed across the frontier, without even being allowed to say good-bye to his relations.[11]

In Kova cica (Antalfalva), a large Slovak community in the County of Torontál in South Hungary, an attempt was made in April, 1907, to introduce a Magyar service into the Lutheran Church, although in a population of 6,000 there were not twenty Magyars in all, and of these only a single individual who knew no Slovak. Mr. Čaplovič, the clergy­man, received an order to preach in Magyar once or twice every month, in direct violation of the constitution of the Church, which gives every congregation the absolute right to choose the language in which its services are to be con­ducted. Instead of complying, he brought the matter before the church session, which unanimously decided against the innovation ; but at length yielding to the reiterated orders of the Superintendent, he consented to deliver a Magyar sermon at the close of the ordinary Slovak service. The congregation, however, were equal to the occasion, and by remaining in its pews and singing the Slovak version of Luther's "Feste Burg," compelled him to abandon the attempt. A week later the same tactics were tried, but on this occasion the szólgabiró introduced gendarmes and cleared the church at the point of the bayonet! As a result of this incident, in May, 1908, 30 men and 5 women were sentenced to a total of 6 years and 8 months' imprisonment and 5980 crowns in fines, on a charge of forcible hindrance of a religious service.[12] Mr. Čaplovič, despite his weak compliance with an illegal order, was deposed by the Superintendent, and a Magyar clergyman was sent in his place, but since his appearance the great mass of the congregation has boycotted the church, and threats of secession from the Lutheran Church have begun to be heard.[13]

In the Greek Catholic parish of Izé (Máramaros county), the priest was an elderly and tactless man, a bad preacher and a bad reader of Mass. By his personal qualities and by his Mag­yar leanings he earned the dislike of his parishioners, some of whom actually insulted him in church. He brought the culprits before the szólgabiró and had them punished ; but naturally this course destroyed the last shreds of his popularity, and the Bishop was more than once besought to replace him by another priest, but without effect. The consequent discontent at length took the form of a secession of 370 Ruthene peasants to the Greek Oriental Church in the course of the year 1903. The villagers applied to the Serb Patriarch, who sent a doctor of theology to be their priest; but the Ministry, taking alarm at this development, telegraphed to the local authorities to detain the intruder on arrival, and then demanded from the Patriarch his prompt recall. The seceders have ever since been denied the ministrations of an Orthodox priest, at the instance of the Government; yet they have stubbornly maintained a boycott of the church, burying their own dead and dispensing with the sacraments ; and early in 1907 a deputation of women went to the Serb Bishop of Budapest, bringing their children, some as old as three years, for baptism. In April, 1904, the leaders of the Secession movement were tried at Husztfor "incitement against a confession." MaximVassili Pleska, who was accused of extolling the "Little Father" as their overlord, and of fore­telling his people's deliverance by Russia from the yoke of the szólgabiró, was sentenced by the court to one year's imprison­ment and 500 crowns ; Vakaró, Lazar and Kemény to 14 months each, three others to two months and 180 crowns each, and five to a week each. On appeal, the Court at Debreczen reduced most of the sentences by about half; but they were again raised by the Curia, and one of the unfortunate men (Vakaró) died in prison.

Perhaps the strangest commentary upon the judicial atti­tude towards the non-Magyars in certain districts of Hungary is supplied by the case of the two Markovič brothers, which attained a certain notoriety owing to the decision of the higher court, and the publication of a lengthy narrative of the trials by one of the victims. The following narrative, which is drawn from this book, is based upon documentary evidence, and has never been called in question ; but I have naturally omitted Dr. Markovič's own comments on the case.[14]

On November 3, 1901,[15] Dr. Rudolf Markovič, advocate, and three other Slovaks met in the Protestant schoolhouse of Lubina (county of Nyitra) to make preliminary arrange­ments as to the foundation of a village co-operative society : and on the 10th the society was formally constituted in the same place. On the ground of evidence given by four Jews of Lubina, none of whom were present on either occasion, Dr. Markovič and his friends were summoned before the szólgabiró for illegally holding a public political meeting without, previous intimation. All four accused denied having discussed any political matters at their meeting, which was not in any way public; and no proof could be adduced. The szólgabiró, however, sentenced them to a fine of twenty crowns each, on the following grounds : " Though the accused denied that the meeting in question was a popular assembly (népgyülés), and maintained that they were holding the opening meeting of a co-operative society: since, however, Dr. Rudolf Markovič admitted that the invitations to vote for the members of the County Committee were drawn up in his own office, and since these invitations[16] were actually sent to the individual electors, it is clear that the popular assembly [here, of course, he begs the question] was held not merely with the object of founding the co-operative society; and since the accused themselves do not pretend to have reported the popular assembly, therefore they must be found guilty." On appeal, the court of second instance dismissed the case, because though the evidence of the Jews made it probable that the meeting in question had the char­acter of a political public assembly, yet probability in the absence of definite proof was no basis for the sentence.

On October 10, 1901, Dr. Rudolf Markovič and his brother Dr. Julius Markovii passed through the little village of Hrussó on their way to Ó-Tura, and stopped half an hour in the house of Adam Szetvák, where they thanked those who had voted for the former at the previous elections. The two brothers ordered a supply of beer for the dozen or so of villagers who had assembled in the house. As a result of this action, they were charged before the szólgabiró for holding an illegal political assembly. The inquiry dragged on for ten months, all the men in Hrussó were summoned to give evidence, and the Markovič brothers had to appear no fewer than eight times. At last, on September 6, 1902, they were sen­tenced to ten days and 200 crowns each. In his verdict the szólgabiró, Dr. Csenkey, argued that the evidence of the accused could not be taken into account, and that those who were present on the occasion could not be heard in evidence, " because they had themselves committed the same offence by their presence." He graciously added that "no action was taken against them, having been led astray (the bad grammar is in the original) by the accused, and in consequence of their low standard of education and their ignorance."[17] On appeal, the Vice-Sheriff of the county confirmed this judgment (September 26,1902). A final appeal was made to the Minister of the Interior, who replied, in April, 1903 (i.e., after seven months' further delay), that the facts on which the sentence of the lower court is based "seem" (látszik) to be proved, since the notary overheard the sentence, "Let us hold together; there is no power on earth which can crush us." He then ordered a retrial of the case. Comment on this incident would be an insult to the intelligence of the reader.

On September 22, 1901, Dr. Rudolf Markovič, as candidate of the Slovak National Party, held speeches at the villages of Hrussó, Lubina, and Bottfalu, and was supported on the platform by his brother and the Rev. J. Csulik. The notary Brhlovics summoned the local justice Svondrk as incriminating witness with regard to the meeting in Hrussó, but as Svondrk deposed that he was absent at the time on official business, this part of the charge had to be dropped for lack of evidence. In the case of the other two meetings the principal witnesses for the prosecution were Brhlovics the notary, who was not present himself and could only speak from hearsay, and three Jewish usurers belonging to the district. The three defendants were charged with inciting their audiences against the Magyars, misrepresenting the Magyar attitude towards the Slovaks, and saying — "Let us hold together, so that we may get the better of the Magyars and oppress them as they are now oppressing us." Needless to say, all three denied having used such childishly improbable expressions. They had spoken in favour of a reduction of taxes, of the use of Slovak as well as Magyar in the taxation schedules, of Slovak schools : they had condemned civil marriage and the non­execution of the Law of the Nationalities, but they were not guilty of incitement against the Magyars. The indict­ment went so far as to maintain, in flagrant defiance of the facts, that the witnesses were unanimous[18] in regarding these speeches of the defendants "as so incendiary as to endanger the property and persons of their opponents." In reality, sixteen witnesses were summoned for the defence, among others, two clergymen, and all these emphatically denied that any inflammatory expressions had been employed by the speakers. After a delay of sixteen months, the trial was opened before the District Court of Nyitra, on Janu­ary 26, 1903, and was conducted in a highly illegal manner. A number of essential witnesses had not been heard at all at the preliminary inquiry, and others though heard were not cited at the trial. The appeal of the defence against this was disallowed on the ground that after so long a time had elapsed, these witnesses could no longer recollect clearly the course of events ; yet at the last moment one of these very witnesses was admitted at the instance of the prosecution.

The speech of Mr. Chudovsky, the Public Prosecutor, deserves special attention, in view of his subsequent record. He of course accused the defendants of glowing hatred towards the Magyars, without making any effort to conceal his own hatred of his Slovak compatriots, declared "that a good patriot does not go to Prague," and threw doubt upon the evi­dence of one of the witnesses for Markovié, since he was born in Prague and had been an official in Russia. Not content with this, he denied that the Law of Nationalities secured to the Slovaks any kind of linguistic rights, and argued that in claiming the Slovak language of instruction in primary and secondary schools (under section seventeen of that law) the Slovaks were guilty of incitement against the Magyar nation­ality ! In Hungary, said Mr. Chudovsky, it was unpatriotic to desire more than one language, since this must mean the partition of the country into several provinces, which in the Magyar language was justly described as Panslavism.

One of the principal witnesses for the prosecution was the under-notary Barancsik, a man who had formerly been sentenced by the same court to seven months' imprison­ment for a common burglary committed in a railway cloak­room, but who had none the less been appointed to the responsible post of a village notary. The defence claimed that in accordance with section 222 of the Criminal Code, a convicted criminal could not be heard on oath, and Barancsik, when questioned by the judge, made no attempt to deny the facts. None the less the presiding judge ordered the oath to be administered to Barancsik, because though once a criminal, he had atoned for his misdeed by his patriotic actions and opinions, and because his evidence in this case had proved him to be an honourable Magyar ![19] The objections of the defence to Pless and Deutsch, two Jewish usurers, upon whose evidence the chances of a conviction depended, were over­ruled by the court, though both were admittedly bitter enemies of the accused, and were known to have suffered materially from the societies which Dr. Julius Markovič had founded. Indeed Deutsch, who had previously been prosecuted by Markovii; for libel, actually expressed in court the wish that the father of the Markovič brothers had died[20] before he had bred two such men, since then the district would have been free of them.

On Febuary 7, 1903, the decision of the court was announced. "The objections raised by the defence against the witnesses for the prosecution were not valid ; for instance, the fact that the president had allowed Barancsik's evidence, invali­dated their complaint against him. Baranscik, Pless, Deutsch and Herzog were entirely trustworthy, while the ten witnesses for the defence could not be relied upon, some because they admitted that they did not remember the whole of the speech, two others (Krafta and Pisny) because they were officials in Markovič's bank in Vágujhely, another (Hrušovsky) because he was an enthusiastic adherent of the Slovak party and edited a Slovak paper, another (Dr. Duchany) because he helped Dr. Markovič to compose his speech." In other words, the process of reasoning followed by the judge may be summed up as follows : A "Pansláv" always lies, a patriotic Magyar or Jew never lies : therefore the accused are guilty. Dr. Rudolf Markovič was sentenced to five months and 500 crowns, Dr. Julius Markovič to two months and 200 crowns, and Rev. Louis Csulik to three months and 3,000 crowns.

The defendants appealed against this decision, and on August 6, 1903, the court of second instance in Pressburg reversed the sentence of the lower court and acquitted all three defendants. The verdict[21] admitted the objections of the defence to be valid, on the grounds that the evidence in the trial conflicted with that brought forward in the pre­liminary inquiry, that Pless, Deutsch and Herzog were notori­ously hostile to the accused, that Herzog had been obliged to withdraw part of his evidence as unfounded, that Barancsik's criminal conviction debarred him from appearing on oath, and that the evidence of these four witnesses could not be relied upon more than that of the twelve witnesses for the defence. In thus reversing all the grounds on which the previous decision rested, the court tacitly cast the gravest possible censure upon the conduct of the trial in the lower court ; but no steps were taken against the officials involved, and indeed Mr. Chudovsky (who was not of course respon­sible for the illegalities of the judge, but whose indictment of the accused had clearly transgressed the legal limits) was only a year later promoted to the position of judge of the Sedrial Court of Rózsahegy. (See p. 335.)

The offence of laudatio criminis is a special feature of the Hungarian criminal code, and the manner in which it is inter­preted is without parallel in other civilized countries. Need­less to say, even in Hungary it has not yet been found neces­sary to prosecute any one for the glorification of murder or other bestial actions ; the paragraph exists, and is applied merely for political purposes. A few startling instances will suffice to enlighten the reader.

On June 11, 1894, twelve Roumanian priests were brought to trial at Kolozsvár, for having sent an address of sympathy to the victims of the "Replique" trial (seep. 301), which was duly reported in the Tribuna. Of the twelve, one was acquitted, but all the others were sentenced to three months' imprison­ment each for laudatio criminis, and two of them were fined 400 and 200 crowns as additional punishment, while the Tribuna forfeited 600 crowns of its caution money.

On June 23, 1898, Ambrose Pietor, one of the editors of the Národnie Noviny in Turócz St. Márton, was sentenced to eight months' imprisonment for two articles in which he severely criticized the new Bill for the Magyarization of place­names. On his return home from prison, he was greeted at the railway station by a large crowd of friends and admirers; Mr. Dula, a Slovak advocate in Márton, delivered a short speech of welcome, and his daughter and two other girls pre­sented Pietor with a bouquet of flowers. The crowd escorted the carriage at a walking pace as far as Pietor's house, and when gendarmes attempted to surround the vehicle, began to sing national Slovak songs. As a result of this perfectly orderly incident, during which no disturbance of any kind occurred, no fewer than twenty-four persons were sentenced to terms of imprisonment varying from fourteen days to three months, and on appeal most of the sentences were sub­stantially increased. Among others Matthew Dula was con­demned to six months, and Svetozar Húrban to five months, the total sentences amounting to fifty-two months ! The three girls who had presented the flowers were fined £16. In December of the same year eight Roumanians of Salistye were sentenced to eight days each, for going to welcome their priest on his return from prison.

father ferdinand juriga, M.P.

(Now undergoing 2 years imprionment for newspaper ARTICLES.)

Such incidents have grown commoner in recent years. Father Ladislas Moyš, then priest of Lucski, was brought before the court of Rózsahegy on January 29, 1907, on a charge of laudatio criminis. On the festival of Saints Peter and Paul in the previous year (June 28, 1906) he had preached a sermon upon those sick and in prison — according to a very common practice in Catholic countries on that day — and at its close had asked the congregation to join him in prayer for all prisoners. The whole neighbourhood was still under the impression of the arrest of Father Hlinka, the popular priest of Rózsahegy, and Dr. Šrobár, the candidate whose election he had endeavoured to secure; and the authorities, assuming that he had prayed for Hlinka and Šrobár by name, regarded this action as likely to foster hostility to the State ! The prosecution of Moyš on the charge of glorification of a penal act was in itself a flagrant violation of the law; for Hlinka and Srobár were not brought to trial till many months after Father Moyš' sermon, and therefore had not been con­victed of any criminal act which admitted of glorifica­tion. It was found necessary to acquit Father Moyš, since no incriminating evidence could be obtained ; but so far as the authorities are concerned, the will must be taken for the deed, and it is not too much to say that justice and order lose their meaning in a country where such prosecutions are possible.

On the festival of Corpus Christi, 1907, three peasants of Láb (a village in the county of Pressburg) displayed, instead of the usual pictures of the Virgin, the portrait of Father Juriga, the Slovak national priest and deputy, who is at present under­going two years' imprisonment for a couple of articles against the Magyar Chauvinists. For this presumptuous act they were charged with laudatio criminis and sentenced at Press­burg to three months' imprisonment each.

What a farce such prosecutions sometimes become may be gathered from the case of Gideon Turzó, who published in the Slovak comic paper Černokňažník a poem in praise of Hlinka and his companions in prison. Although this poem also appeared before Hlinka had been convicted, the jury none the less sentenced Turzó for glorification of a penal act to four months' imprisonment ![22]

In the same way Father Edward Šándorfi, priest in Verbó, was sentenced in February, 1908, to two months for laudatio criminis: the offence was incurred by an article in Ľudove Noviny praising Father Juriga as a national martyr.

Still more scandalous than these prosecutions for the offence of laudatio criminis, are the occasional attempts of the authori­ties to invalidate wills made in favour of national Slovak aims, or at least to engulf in the expenses of endless litigation most of the money involved. An account will be found in Appendix xxv. of the devices which have been resorted to, to rob the Slovak cause of monetary bequests.

The abuses which we have shown to exist in the Hungarian judicial system must not betray us into rash generalizations. The Hungarian Bench and Bar contain men of as high char­acter and proved ability as those of any other country in Europe ; and the stormy scenes which mark the proceedings of the Chamber of Advocates in Budapest show how keenly many members of the legal profession resent the reactionary policy pursued by the governing classes of the country. Un­happily the low standards of the administration are not without their effect upon the lower courts of justice, whose officials are in certain districts greatly inferior to those in others.* The executive still exercises an unhealthy influence upon the judicature in cases with a political tinge, and Chau­vinism on the part of a public prosecutor or a judge is one of the surest roads to promotion. Even the most fair-minded and scrupulous judge is liable to be infected by the all-pervading racial intolerance ; while with most juries the con­viction of a "Pansláv" or a Socialist is a foregone conclusion. Matters are specially bad in the Slovak districts, where the mass of the population is devoid of political influence and is even shut out from the control of local affairs. But serious as are these judicial grievances, their redress is far less urgent than the reform of the franchise and the grant of free right of assembly and association. When these two concessions have been made, the faults of the judicial system — which are very largely due to overrapid and unforeseen development — will easily be repaired, and the way will be opened for the much needed revision of the Criminal Code and legal forms of procedure.

In the following chapter I propose to describe in greater detail one of the most notorious "Pansláv" trials of recent times, and the lamentable results to which it directly led.