a constitutional ministry.  Then it was that a circumstance occurred, to which I heard an allusion in the toast offered to me.  I was told the King would grant our request; only, there was agitation in Vienna, and it would look as if the King were yielding to pressure.  If the people would be quiet, the King would sanction our laws.  Then I said, that if the King would give his sanction to our legislative measures, peace would be made for the House of Austria in twenty-four hours.  But when that consent was given in one Chamber, in another Chamber that wicked woman, Sophia, the mother of the present Emperor, who calls himself King of Hungary—­no, he does not call himself King of Hungary, for he thinks the national existence of Hungary is blotted out—­plotted how to ruin my people and destroy that sanction which was nothing but a necessary means to secure a just cause.  Next came the Hungarian ministry—­and, strange to say, I saw myself placed close to the throne.

When in Vienna, after the sanction was granted, steps were taken to retract it; I went to the Arch-Duke Stephen, the Palatine of Hungary, the first constitutional authority of Hungary,—­the elective viceroy, and told him he ought to return to Hungary if he wished to preserve his influence.

He answered that he could not return to Hungary, for if the King did not sanction our laws—­he (the Arch-Duke Stephen) might be proclaimed King instead of the Emperor of Austria, and he would never dethrone his cousin.

I answered, that he spoke like an honest man, but perhaps the time would come when he would find an empty seat on that throne, and he had better take it, for I could assure him, if he did not, no other man ever would with the consent of the people.  When five months later, in Hungary, we met for the last time, he called me to his house on a stormy night, and desired of me to know what would be the issue of matters.  I answered:  I can see no issue for you, but the crown or else the scaffold, and then for the people a Republic.  But even from this alternative I will relieve you:  for you the crown, for me the scaffold, if the Hungarian independence is not achieved.—­I make no hesitation here to confess that such was the embarrassed state of Hungarian affairs that I should have felt satisfied for him to have accepted the crown.  Remember that your fathers did not design at first to sever the ties which bound the colonies to England, but circumstances forced the issue.  So it was with us.  We asked at first only Democratic institutions, but when it was possible we were glad to throw away our Kings.