Gergely András: Reform and Revolution 1830 - 1849 - East European Monographs 736. Atlantic Studies on Society Change 130. (New York, 2009)
2. The Birth of Hungarian Liberalism - The Emergence of Hungarian Liberalism
András Gergely 68 will grow and become stronger. For us, the nobility, the issue is not to descend to the people, but to raise them up. The distribution of a treasure that will not be diminished to ten million fellow citizens can only be opposed by envy, and how can we found liberty on such an ugly sin?”22 argued Kossuth in 1833. The issue of property involved the right of a serf to own property, even including noble property, but also the redemption of the plot that he cultivated and held so that he might acquire it free of feudal services. In the pre-revolutionary decade and a half most arguments addressed the question of how this could be accomplished: compulsorily or voluntarily, with land or with payment, and privately or with state involvement. The arguments based on rationality to liberate serfs from their bondage, such as the people providing a strong social and political base, the mutual dependence of social classes, and the unification of interests, did not mean the acceptance of the serfs by the nobility in a social or psychological sense. The serfs were simply a social underclass providing labor and taxes: misera plebs contribuens. Acceptance of the serfs in a social-psychological sense required a long process of rethinking, conceptualization and literary reorientation. The philanthropic conceptions of the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century considered the serfs as human individuals. Hungarian feudal law recognized them as able to hold limited legal rights. Those holding feudal attitudes wanted to preserve the serfs’ prevailing status, while the proponents of the Enlightenment wanted to help them. Ferenc Kolcsey, the prominent writer and reformer of the age, recognized the limitations of this conception when he stated “While some concessions may protect the serf, they will never raise him up.”23 The conception accepting the social mobility of serfs emerged gradually in the context of the “unification of interests” approach. The nobles of Nograd declared that the program of labor for convicts was designed to promote “the welfare of humanity, national glory and their own [the county’s] reputation.” Csanad County referred to serfs in 1833 as “poor people with burdens and compatriots,” considering nobles and non-nobles as belonging to one community.24