This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
GERMANY AND AUSTRIA.
305

other race, the Slavs, inhabiting Bohemia and many other parts of the empire, who have not hitherto had much influence in administration, but who are gradually awakening to a consciousness of their political importance. There are millions of Slavs under Russia, and the Slavs of Turkey are shaking off the Musalman yoke; so that it is easy to foresee, the Slavs will yet be a great power in Europe. But the Magayrs will not let their supremacy and independence go without a struggle to the death, and the Germans who virtually form the reigning house and the government of Austria will not allow themselves to be extinguished. The future of the Dual, or rather Triple Government is a problem therefore which I leave to wiser heads than mine to conjecture. It is possible to conceive a complete disruption of the Austrian Empire,—the Germans merging in Germany, the Slavs combining with the Russian and Turkish Slavs, and the Magayr Hungarians forming a little Switzerland of Hungary, guarding their independence like a tiger at bay, by a struggle to death. But these are wild conjectures. What is certain is that the heterogeneous constitution of what is called the Austrian Empire makes her weak alike for attack and for defence; and as local and race-patriotism grows more and more among the Hungarians and the Slavs, as it is doing year by year, the continued unity of the Austrian Empire will be more and more difficult.