rights which hang, like stars eternal, in high heaven."
A few more speeches in the Diet brought Deak fully to the front. In the Parliament of 1839-40, he acted already as a prominent party-leader. If the effect of Eötvös' harangues was often marred by rhetorical involution; if Stephan Szechenyi — upon whose mind, in later days, dark clouds lowered —had alternate accesses of sanguine hope and deep despondency, Deak always gave his temperate counsel with clearness and unchanging force. He neither hoped beyond measure, nor ever did despair. The even strength of his nature came out when he fought, at one and the same time, the battle of his country's charter against Habsburg encroachment, and of popular enfranchisement against the harsh feudal rule of the nobles.
Aristocratic privilege, at that time, stalked about rampant and fierce in Hungary, whilst the country was ever and anon the prey of an absolutistic court whose rule was upheld by the sword, by the executioner's axe, by prison torture, and by an inquisitorial censorship of the press. It is difficult for the present generation to understand the character of that sad epoch, when the personal security of every prominent opponent daily trembled in the balance. Deak, from patriotic motives, as well as from noble sympathy with the sufferings of the masses, earnestly strove to bring about home reforms, all the while resisting Metternich's attacks upon his country's constitution. It was a difficult task—this double struggling. The question was, how to combine the existing political forces, which dwelt in a narrow aristocratic circle, against Metternich's system, and, at the same time, so to conduct the campaign against the misgovernment of the magnates as not to weaken too much the cohesion of the Magyar ranks.
Deak's wisdom and energy were equal to both tasks. In open Parliament, and in committee, he was an indefatigable worker. By word of mouth, and by the press, he laboured for the emancipation of the peasantry; for a reform in the administration of justice, for a more equitable distribution of political rights; for the mitigation of social tyranny. Yet, while using the trowel for the building up of a better State structure at home, he had to keep ready the weapon wherewith to hold the despotic foe at bay.
In those days, Hungarian deputies had to go by the instructions of their constituencies, similar to the cahiers of the pre-revolutionary era in France. When the comitat which Deak represented gave it as its instruction that he should vote for the continued exemption of the aristocracy from taxation, he threw up his mandate, and indignantly withdrew for a time from public life. A true Horatian "just man, tenacious of his aim," he would not buy a distinguished position at the price of his principles. But such was already then his influence that nobody dared to fill the place which he had left; so the comitat was for a while represented by a single member. In those years of retirement he was not inactive. A well-read jurisconsult, he continued working at a reformed law code, the first draft of which he had elaborated in company with Szalay, and which earned great praise from the eminent German legist, Mittermaier. Studies connected with the Parliamentary system also filled Deak's political leisure. An effort was made to bring him back to Parliament by altering the offensive portion of the instruction. He refused, because questionable means had been employed in a second electoral contest, and because blood had been spilt during the angry excitement of political passions. Above all things he abhorred any act of violence.
Only by fair and pure means would he obtain a success. His aversion to the use of force went so far as to render him, afterwards, when the revolutionary tempest came, more a victim of the foes than a help to the friends of his country's cause. He had all the law-abiding perseverance, all the unbending firmness, all the qualities of mixed modesty and courage of Hampden and Pym. No better parallel could be found for him, as regards the main substance of his character, than among the doughty men who preceded the English Commonwealth. But as soon as the ground of strict legality was left, he felt out of his place, and became practically powerless.
Towards the end of 1847, when the signs of a coming tempest broke forth on the European horizon, Deak came back to the Diet. Its leading members had often, during his non-appearance in public, sought his private counsel. Now, a powerful party again placed itself under his acknowledged leadership. Already the drift of the movement began, however, to set towards a different goal. We find him acting together with Kossuth; but even then it might have been seen that the paths of the two men would soon diverge.
After the revolution of March 1848,
