It is the most wonderful
case of suicide known to mankind.
The Austrian aristocracy behaved almost as unwisely as the American
aristocracy. As the Republic of the United States is a union of States,
which in reality was governed by the slaveholders down to 1861, so is
the Austrian Empire a collection of countries, governed by a few great
families, at the head of which stand the imperial family,--the House of
Austria, or, as it is now generally called, the House of
Hapsburg-Lorraine. That aristocracy might have prevented the occurrence
of war last summer, by ceding Venetia to Italy; and that it did not make
such cession early in June, when we know it was ready to make it early
in July, but plunged into a contest which, according to the apologists
for its terrible defeat, it was wholly unprepared to wage, speaks but
poorly for its prudence, though that is claimed to be _the_ virtue of
aristocracies. The Austrian aristocrats behaved as senselessly in 1866
as the Prussian aristocrats in 1806, but with less excuse than the
latter had. By their action they caused their country's degradation.
From the rank of a first-rate power that country has been compelled to
descend, not so much through loss of territory and population as through
loss of position.
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