in all questions of colonization, steadfastness of purpose is of greater importance than spasmodic effort.
The Austrian Empire was not composed of similar races and was held together not by common blood, but rather by a common fist. This being so, weakness in the leadership would not lead necessarily to torpor in the State, but would arouse all the individualist instincts, due to race, which are deterred from developing in times when there is a will predominating.
Failure to comprehend this is perhaps the tragic crime of the House of Habsburg.
At one period fate held her torch once more high over the land ; then it was extinguished for ever.
Joseph II, Roman Emperor over the German nation, realized with poignant anxiety how his House was being thrust into the uttermost corner of the Empire and was bound to founder in the vortex of a Babylon of races unless the shortcomings of his pre¬ decessors were made good at the eleventh hour. That “friend of man” set out with superhuman energy to repair the neglect of previous rulers and tried to recover in ten years what had been let slip for centuries. His successors were unequal to the task either in mind or will-power.
The Revolution of 1848 was perhaps a struggle of classes everywhere, but in Austria it was the commence¬ ment of a fresh struggle of nationalities. But the German, either forgetting or not realizing that origin, placed himself at the service of the revolutionary move¬ ment, and he sealed his own fate by so doing. He played his part in arousing the spirit of world democracy, which in a short time robbed him of the principles underlying his own existence.
The formation of a representative parliamentary body, without previous establishment of the principle of a common State language, laid the