The Village Notary Part 78

In 1764, the Empress Maria Theresa proposed a law to the Diet regulating and determining the duties and rights of the peasantry. The Diet found fault with the details of the bill, and rejected it. The Empress convoked no other Diet, but, deviating from the course of the law, she decreed that the bill should be enforced throughout Hungary by means of Royal Commissioners. The Estates of Hungary demurred against this decree, not only because the clauses of the bill were utterly impracticable, but also because the interference of Royal Commissioners was a source of great annoyance to the Hungarian magistrates and landed proprietors. The Hungarian Chancery and the Home Office supported the Diet in the question of details, because it was impossible to make one rule suffice for the whole country. One councillor only, M. Izdenczy, declared that the thing could be done, and he volunteered to prepare the code, if the Empress consented to let him have an unlimited quant.i.ty of Tokay from her cellars. His wish was complied with, and he undertook and finished his gigantic task in the year 1771. His code was that very year introduced throughout Hungary under the name of _Urbarium_.

Izdenczy's work has a strong resemblance to the Doomsday Book. Every village within the Hungarian countries and crownlands has its own Urbarium put down in it, stating the number of cessions, and describing the various tenures, burdens, and local rights (right of wood and turf-cutting, of pasturage, &c.) of the peasants.

The next Diet met in 1790, and memorialised the Crown about the _manner_ in which the law had been introduced; but no complaints were made of the law itself, which obtained a provisional ratification under the condition of a future revision. But the French wars compelled the Diet to devote all its energies to matters of greater urgency, viz. to the defence and preservation of the House of Hapsburg. At a later period the subject would have been resumed but for the necessity under which the Hungarians were to struggle for their const.i.tution against the attacks of the Emperor Francis; but still the revision of the Urbarium, though long delayed, was at length finished in 1836 and 1839. The revised work was far more liberal than the Urbarium of Maria Theresa: it tended to equalise the rights and duties of the peasants; and its leading principle was, that in no single case the condition of the peasantry should be harder than it was in the most favoured localities in the times of Maria Theresa. Exceptional rights were thus made general; emanc.i.p.ation was henceforth possible, and attainable even by common energy and industry. But the act of the free and unfettered emanc.i.p.ation was voted by the Diet of 1848, on the motion and by the influence of M.

Kossuth, who, while he abolished the Urbarium, induced the Diet likewise to provide for the indemnification of the landowners. The present emperor of Austria has revoked all the laws of 1848; but he did not venture to repeal the Emanc.i.p.ation Bill. Nothing has, indeed, transpired as to what the Austrian government proposes to do respecting the indemnification of the landed proprietors.

NOTE IV.

TRIPARt.i.tUM.

Hungary had at no time a systematic code of civil laws, although several jurists attempted to codify the Hungarian common law and the cases in which it was modified by statutes. Their zeal was great, for, from the earliest times, the Hungarian lawyers found it necessary to protect their inst.i.tutions against the encroachments of the royal prerogative, which were the more frequent and formidable as several of the kings were not only princes in Hungary, but also sovereigns of other countries.

Sigismund, for instance, was emperor of Germany, and king of Bohemia and Hungary. Uladislaw I. ruled over Poland and Hungary; while Ladislaw Posthumus, Uladislaw II., and Louis II., united the two crowns of Bohemia and Hungary. At length Uladislaw II., who was a weak prince, and who was nicknamed _Doborze_, from his habit of saying "Well! well!" to everything which happened, consented to the urgent entreaties of the Diet that the common law should be codified; and _Verbotzi_, the leader of the opposition and a good lawyer, was instructed to compile a code of laws. He published his work under the t.i.tle of "_Opus Tripart.i.tum juris Hungarici_."

Verbotzi was afterwards appointed to the post of Palatine; but he was overthrown by a junta of magnates, because they considered him as a radical and a friend to the _bourgeoisie_. They protested that his work was injurious to their privileges. Before the Tripart.i.tum could be submitted to the Diet, King Louis II. (Uladislaw's successor) died in the battle of Mohatsh (1526). His death was the cause of a war of succession between King John Zapolya, Prince of Grosswarasdin, and King Ferdinand of Hapsburg. Verbotzi, who exerted himself on King John's behalf, and who was banished by King Ferdinand, took refuge with the Turks, who appointed him to the post of Cadi for the Christian inhabitants of the district of Buda, where he eventually died. After his death, the work of the exiled outlaw became the highest authority of Hungarian jurisprudence and the standard of common law. It was never formally enacted by the Diets; but as the kings of Austrian extraction considered the Tripart.i.tum as injurious to the privileges of the Crown, they compiled another code of laws, which they published under the name of "_Quadripart.i.tum_" and in which they set forth and enlarged upon the royal prerogatives. But the Quadripart.i.tum was rejected by the Diet, who thus acknowledged the authority of Verbotzi's Tripart.i.tum, which since that time has not only been considered as law, but as an integral part of the const.i.tution; and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries we meet with various statutes of the Diet, interpreting or repealing certain paragraphs of the Tripart.i.tum.

The most important parts of the Tripart.i.tum are those treating of the rights of the n.o.bility (Trip. part i. ch. 4-9.); part ii. chap. 3., "Qui possint condere leges et statuta;" and part iii. chap. 2. "Utrum quilibet populus vel comitatus possit per se condere statuta."

The theory of voting in Verbotzi's work is extraordinary in its way. He has a maxim that the votes are to be weighed and not counted ("non numeranda sed ponderanda"), and consequently he speaks of a "pars sanior" of the community, and defends his doctrine by the following reasoning:--

"Verum si populus (_i. e._ n.o.bilitas, part ii. ch. 4.) in duas divideretur partes, tunc const.i.tutio _sanioris_ et potioris partis valet. Sanior et potior pars autem ilia dicitur, in qua _dignitate_ et _scientia_ fuerint _praestantiores_ atque _notabiliores_"--Verbotzi, Trip. part iii. ch. 8. s. 2.

Among the numerous peculiarities of the work, we find "capital punishment with a vengeance" (pna mortis c.u.m exasperatione) p.r.o.nounced against those who maliciously kill any member of the Diet in the course of the session.

"Praemissorum nihilominus malitiosi sub Diaeta occisores aut occidi procurantes praevia tamen citatione _pna mortis c.u.m exasperatione_ condemnentur."

Another obsolete punishment is that of making a man an "Aukarius." It is provided by law that the slanderers of magistrates shall be condemned to the "pna infamiae;" and, in explanation of this punishment, we learn that the culprit shall be made "ut omni humanitate exuatur." He is struck with what the Code Napoleon would term "mort civile," and, in token of his condemnation, a _rope_ is tied round the culprit's body (the rope being the mark of infamy, which monks wear to show that they have resigned the pomps and vanities of this wicked world), and as the sentence is being publicly read to him, a _goose_ is placed into his hands. The Hungarian word for goose is _oeke_, and from thence the Latin name of the person so treated is _Aukarius_.

NOTE V.

HAIDUKS ON HORSEBACK.

The hussars are the Hungarian cavalry, while the haiduks or pandurs are foot-soldiers. Both hussars and pandurs act as county police. Whenever the _statarium_ was proclaimed in any county, the _persecutor_, or chief of the county police, was instructed to provide horses for a reasonable number of haiduks, and to send them in quest of robbers.

END OF THE THIRD VOLUME.