After 1840, however, the bulk of the nation, and especially the small gentry whose preponderating influence was making itself continually felt, were unwilling to follow Szechenyi in his one-sided policy.  The reformatory work of Szechenyi during the preceding fifteen years had educated public opinion up to new and great ideas, but the leaders of that public opinion were now to be found in the House of Representatives in the persons of Francis Deak and Louis Kossuth.  They wished to obtain for their country both political liberty and material prosperity.  They knew the effect of political institutions upon the material well-being and civilization of a nation, and they no longer deemed it possible to attain these objects without a modern constitutional government.

Louis Kossuth, who was born in 1802, was the very incarnation of the great democratic ideas of his age.  He was entirely a man of work and entered the legal profession, after he had completed his studies with great distinction, for the purpose of supporting himself by it.  Kossuth was present at the Diet of 1832, when the Government, which conducted itself most brutally and arbitrarily toward the press, refused to allow the newspapers to print reports of the deliberations of the Diet in spite of the repeated urgings by the Deputies for such an authorization, and it was owing to his ingenuity that this prohibition was evaded.  The censorship was exercised on printed matter only and did not extend to manuscripts.  Kossuth wrote out the reports of the Diet himself, had numerous copies made of them in writing, and circulated them, for a slight fee, in every part of the country, where they were looked for with feverish expectation, and, owing to the spirit of opposition with which they were colored, were read with the greatest eagerness.

This manuscript newspaper produced quite a revolutionary movement among the people, frightening even the Austrian Government.  The latter now attempted to silence Kossuth by gentle means, promising him high offices and a pension, but he refused the enticing offers and continued his work for the benefit of the nation.  Foiled in the attempt to lure Kossuth from his duty, the Government resorted to violence, seized the lithographic apparatus by means of which Kossuth planned to multiply his manuscript newspaper, and gave directions to the postmasters to detain and open all those sealed packages which were supposed to contain the reports.  But these arbitrary proceedings of the Government could not put an end to the circulation of the newspaper; the country gentlemen, by their own servants, continued to send each other single copies, and the matter was given up only when the Diet ceased to be in session.