1899.] Austria-Hungary. — The Hungarian Opposition. [297
Bbgistbb, 1898, p. 267). In Hungary, as in Austria, the Opposi- tion, though in a minority, remained masters of the field. They made the cessation of obstruction conditional on the Banffy Cabinet resigning, and they had their way. Baron Banffy resigned on February 18, and a new Cabinet was formed by M. Szell, a representative of the old Deak party, and Minister of Finance in the Tisza Ministry. The Liberal members who had seceded owing to the " ex lex" arrangements of Baron Banffy (see Annual Bbgistbb, 1898, p. 267) then rejoined the Liberal party. The new Cabinet, like the previous one, was Liberal, but it pledged itself to govern constitutionally, and its chief was not personally obnoxious to Count Apponyi and other leading members of the Opposition as Baron Banffy was. Obstruction now ceased, an indemnity was given for the measures put in force during the " ex lex 19 period, and the Ausgleich, or State arrangement with Austria, which had expired in 1897 and had then been provisionally continued from year to year, was finally extended to 1907, the only alteration in it being that the charter to the Austro-Hungarian Bank was to terminate in the year 1907 if the customs and commercial .union with Austria were not renewed beyond that date, on the principle that the expiration of the customs union should coin- cide with that of the commercial treaties with foreign countries, thus giving Hungary a free hand in the renewal of both.
The agitation against the Jews was revived in September by the trial of a Jew named Hilsner for the murder of a Christian girl at Polna, in Bohemia. The anti-Semites repre- sented the crime as an instance of Jewish "ritual murder/ ' ie., murder for the purpose of obtaining Christian blood to be used in some of the Jewish religious rites. No evidence was pro- duced of Hilsner's guilt that could have condemned him in any ordinary case of murder, but the fact of his being a Jew and of the body having been found in a bloodless condition, sufficed to convince the judge and jury that a ritual murder had been committed by him, and he was sentenced to death. Anti- Semitic riots followed in various parts of the country, and the Emperor, on receiving in audience the Babbi of Prague, ex- pressed his indignation at the cruelties perpetrated upon the Jews on these occasions. The Boman Catholic Bishop of Zips, in Hungary, also issued a pastoral letter to his clergy reminding them that it is their duty to impress upon their flocks that the charge of ritual murder cannot be raised against the Jews, as the Jewish Scriptures contain nothing to justify such an accusa- tion, and Jews are not allowed to taste the blood of animals.
Count Goluchowski, the Austro-Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs, made his usual statement of foreign policy to the delegations in December. He gave an unqualified con- tradiction to the speculations tending to cast doubt on the stability of the Triple Alliance. The basis of Austria-Hungary's treaty of alliance with Germany and Italy was too substantial
