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The Conservative Answer:Law, Order, and Stability
- Central European University Press
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The Conservative Answer: Law, Order, and Stability What to Preserve, What to Give Up, and What to Modernize? (1839–1842) The Figure of Founding Father The poet Mihály Vörösmarty wrote a poem about Aurél Dessewffy in the summer of 1844: You walked a dubious path, understood by few, and if your goal was grand, untimely death has veiled it. Without reward your merit, without penalty your fault, You left the national venue buried alive. We ask ourselves anxiously now: Isn’t our loss great? And the angel of holy nationality whispers: It is. Mihály Vörösmarty, Aurél Dessewffy1 István Széchenyi wished to put Aurél Dessewffy to eternal rest in his proposed Hungarian Pantheon. A year later a liberal publicist, László Szalay, declared he had been the Alexander the Great of the Hungarians, after whom only the diadochi (his unworthy successors) could come. In 1851 another liberal, Antal Csengery, asserted that Aurél Dessewffy would have been the Hungarian Robert Peel, had he lived long enough. A third, also liberal journalist, archeologist, and art historian, Ferenc Pulszky, only cited the last two lines of Vörösmarty’s poem in 1874, as did a contemporary conservative reviewer of his work in 2007. In 1876 a conservative publicist, János Asbóth, hailed him and his comrades as the committed guards of the nation and the constitution, and nine years later he was praised by Farkas Deák as the greatest theoretical politician of the nation 1 Vörösmarty (1972), 1:512. 32 Conservative Ideology in the Making who superseded party differences.2 At the onset of the twentieth century a new conservative lawyer and political science professor, Mihály Réz, claimed, “History has verified him … and disproved his opponents. What appeared as success was only the prelude to a terrible disaster. What appeared as power melted into thin air under the weight of the events. So does the popularity that used to envelope his opponent [Kossuth] but has been losing much of its radiance before the tribunal of history.”3 Then in the 1920s, the conservative historian Gyula Szekfű endorsed with the stamp of science the conservative political efforts of nineteenth-century Hungary and rehabilitated the conservative politicians, first of all Aurél Dessewffy.4 Posterity’s judgement of the highly talented leader of the “cautious progressives” of the Hungarian conservatives ranges from reservation to glorification. Today it is very fashionable again to idealize Dessewffy, who died unexpectedly at a young age.5 The imperial government’s confidential qualification dated 1840 of Aurél Dessewffy, the eldest son of gravaminalist opposition leader Count József Dessewffy, reads as follows: With his behavior at the … [1839/40] diet and some assemblies of Pest county earlier, he has proved that he wishes to serve the interests of the ruling dynasty and is capable of supporting them with great acumen, aptitude, competence, courage, and energy … Until the closing hour of the diet he was a pillar of the conservatives. As the deputy of Sáros county in the lower house (from which function he was ousted by the machinations of the főispán [lord lieutenant], Baron Ignác Eötvös) he would have been far more useful to the right cause, because lacking apt speakers, the party of the loyalists was overshadowed by the opposition there. There can be no knowing whether his efforts are motivated by a true devotion to the ruling house or by his poor financial standing. However, in private conversation he has always spoken favorably and faced the temptations of the liberal magnates … with indifference. Thereby he has won not only the praise but also the admiration of all decent people.6 2 Széchenyi (1843), 114–128, Szalay (1845), Csengeri (1851), 282, Pulszky (1874), 41–56, and Asbóth (1876), 121–162. See also, Szécsen (1882), cf. (1883), 132–151, and Farkas Deák (1885). 3 Réz (1909), 355. 4 Szekfű (1922), 195–198, (1933), 153, 162–166, 428, Menczer (1972), 219–240, esp. 226– 229. Cf. Schlett (1999), 266–291, Takáts (2007), 49–50, and Gyurgyák (2007), 51–54. 5 In Vörösmarty’s poem which suggests ambivalence, only the clearly positive last two lines are cited by Gyurgyák (2007), 51, similarly to Pulszky (1874), 41–56. 6 MOL, Bécsi levéltárakból kiszolgáltatott iratok. Jelentések a magyar országgyűlések t...