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10 ..................................................................... THE AUSTRALIAN

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justice ...(applause). ... Speaking on entail, he said
the object of the law was to enable people to
keep their lands, whether they deserved them or
not. Absenteeism arose from an utter want of
any moral sense on the part of landed proprie-
tors. Every professional had duties, but a
landed proprietor had no duties except to gather
his rent with as little trouble as possible, to shoot
grouse in August, and partridges in September
... (laughter). ... The factor was one of the most om-
nipotent despots out of Turkey. They were
gods. In one parish he remarked to a woman
that a factor was a perfect God, when she re-
plied "Our factor is both God and the devil" ...
(laughter). ... Touching on the Poor Laws, the
professor said they were essentially bad, and in a
well-regulated State there should be none. He
resumed his seat amid loud applause, and on the
motion of the chairman he was awarded a vote
of thanks for his lecture.

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AUSTRIA

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The Australian Chancellor.

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(From the Pall Mall Gazette.)

"The constellation of the three stars rises
once more above the foreign horizon," said a
Viennese journalist on hearing of the selection
of Count Kalnoky as Baron Haymerle's succes-
sor; and the telegrams of the last few days show
that "the constellation of the Holy Alliance" is
still in the ascendant. Count Kalnoky, who osten-
sibly went to St. Petersburg merely to say good-
bye to the sovereign to whom he had been ac-
credited, has been holding protracted interviews
with M. de Giers. It does not take several
hours to say adieu, much less au revoir; and the
general opinion on the Continent is that these
interviews at St. Petersburg mean business.
The decoration of the New Austro-Hungarian
Minister with a Russian order may not mean
much, for Count Kalnoky was in high favour
with Alexander the Third, but it helps to con-
firm the universal impression that his transfer
from the Austrian Embassy on the Neva to the
Ballplatz Palace at Vienna is nothing more or
less than the outward and visible sign of the
recent re-establishment of the Three Emperors'
Alliance. It is not necessary to credit the sen-
sational stories circulated of late as to the mo-
mentous mission with which he has been charged
on his farewell visit to St Petersburg in order
to justify the attention it has excited on the Con-
tinent. The substitution of the Triple Alliance
for the alliance of Austria and Germany marks
a distinct change in the grouping of the Powers,
which can hardly fail to exercise a decided in-
fluence upon the future both of the East and
West of Europe. Russia, no longer isolated, is
under less temptation to dream of a French
alliance. Germany reassured on that point, can
devote herself to her international troubles; while
Austria, almost for the first time since 1876, dis-
plays an anxious desire to arrange a modus vi-
vendi with her gigantic neighbour. For the
moment, and so long as it lasts, the Triple Al-
liance is the most important factor in foreign
politics; and the Minister who has been chosen
to arrange the imperial interview which is to
apprise the world of the readmission of Russia
to the Austro German entente is one of the most
conspicuous figures on the stage of contemporary
politics.

Count Kalnoky is amongst the youngest of
the "statesmen and sovereigns" of Europe.
Prince Bismarck is sixty-eight, Mr. Gladstone
seventy-two, Prince Gortschakoff eighty-three.
Count Kalnoky was born in 1832, and is con-
sequently of the same age as Count Ignatieff.
He is six years older than M. Gambetta, and
seven years younger than Count Andrassy.
Like most of the men who are now in Europe,
always excepting M. Gambetta, his birthplace
must be sought near the Northern boundary of
the empire over which he presides. The Kal-
nokys are an ancient Moravian house, at whose
ancestral seat in Letowitz Gustave Sigismund
Kalnoky was born on the 29th of December,
1832. He was a younger son of Count Gustave
Kalnoky, of Koros-Patak, who, besides his
family estate in Moravia, owned large domains
in Hungary and Transylvania --- a fact which
contributed to fill the chorus of praises with
which the appointment of his son to the Foreign
Office was hailed on both sides of the Leitha.
Like other young nobles, he entered the army at
an early age. His first commission was dated
1849, but he quitted the army when twenty-two
for the diplomatic profession. In 1854, when
Count (then Captain) Ignatieff was preparing for
his first experience of actual war, in the dull and
dreary defiance of the Baltic forts against the
allied fleet, Count Gustave Sigismund Kalnoky
was serving his time in the lowest grades of the
diplomatic service, as Austrian attache at
Munich. Two years later, when the Crimean
war was ending, he was sent to Berlin, and three
years later, in 1859, he joined the staff of the
Austrian Embassy as Secretary of Legation at
the Court of St. James. There are very few in
London who retain any deep impression of the
young Austrian Secretary --- he was then only
seven-and-twenty; nor could even the more far-

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[far-]seeing diplomatist have predicted that in less
than a quarter of a century after he would be
directing the foreign policy of Austro-Hungary.
Little is known of the doings of diplomatists
outside the Chancelleries, and of subordinate
diplomatists there is nothing to record save
their successive promotions. It was about the
year 1867 that the Count attained the grade of
Councillor of Legation and Charge d' Affaires.
Four years later he received his first important
appointment, when he was entrusted with the
ad interim management of the Legation at Rome,
with the titles of Envoy Extraordinary and
Minister Plenipotentiary. His selection for such
a post at such a time --- immediately after the
Italians had entered the Sacred City --- is a proof
that even then, before he had attained his
fortieth year, his ability had attracted the at-
tention of the Foreign Office at Vienna. After
his mission at the Italian capital had terminated,
he spent two years in retreat. In 1874 he re-
ceived his first appointment as Abassador
when he was sent by Count Andrassy to the
Danish Court, which is much more closely con-
nected with that of the present Czar than any
other court in Europe. --- He acquitted himself so
much to the satisfaction of his Government
that, after undertaking a temporary mission to
St. Petersburg, he was on the 10th of February
last appointed to the first-class Embassy on the
Neva.

Within a month of his appointment the poli-
tical earthquake in England, for such it ap-
peared to Austrian observers, swallowed up the
Beaconsfield Cabinet and deprived the Austro-
German alliance of its chief extraneous support.
Twelve months later the Czar was blown up in
the streets of his capital, and the accession of a
Slavophil Emperor placed Count Kalnoky in a
position of extreme delicacy, which was not im-
proved when Count Ignatieff became Minister
of the Interior. Thanks, however, to his tact
his address, his sympathetic manners, and his
diplomatic skill, he speedily became a persona
gratissima with the new Czar, and when he was
selected for his present post the Journal de St.
Petersburg spoke of him with admiration and
regret, as "a diplomatist eminently correct
and conciliatory, still young, of great firmness,
but an enemy of all precipitation and commo-
tion." The first time his name appeared
prominently before Europe was only two
months ago, in the famous Haymerle telegram
to the Emperor-King, which, being published in
the Hungarian journal Eggertetes, gave to the
world Count Kalnoky's account of the Dan-
zig interview. The despatch, after being deci-
phered, was flung into the Emperor's waste-
paper basket at Miskolez Palace, whence it was
subsequently conveyed to the newspaper office.
Thus, as a French journalist remarks, Count
Kalnoky owes to the Miskolez waste-paper
basket the only notoriety he has hitherto en-
joyed in Europe. His merits, however, had
long been known to his Imperial and Royal
Apostolic Majesty, and when Baron Haymerle
died he was selected, on the 20th of November,
as Minister of Foreign Affairs and of the Im-
perial Household, amid a chorus of congratula-
tions broken by hardly a single word of dissent.

Among the statesman popularly nominated for
his post were Count Andrassy, Count Beust,
Baron Hubner, Count Trautsmandorf, and M.
de Kalley. Count Andrassy, however, who
still plays a leading part in the politics of
Austria-Hungary, nominated Count Kalnoky for
the post. Count Taafe concurred, and for once
both sides of the Leitha agreed in commending
the choice of the Emperor-King. M. de Kalley
the Under Secretary, an intimate friend of
Count Kalnoky's, will, it is rumoured, succeed
him at St Petersburg. Should this be the case
it will strengthen the popular conviction that
Count Kalnoky owes his appointment to a
desire to make friends with Russia. Count
Beust is not likely to return to office. Baron
Hubner is a Conservative, and, like Count
Trautsmandorf, the Catholic candidate, he has
been too much mixed up in internal politics to
be eligible for the neutral but commanding posi-
tion to which they both aspired. Count Kal-
noky's appointment is regarded by men of all
shades of politics in Austria-Hungary as indica-
tive of a desire to effect a rapprochement with
Russia. As Baron Haymerle was summoned
from Rome, they say, to bring about the good
understanding with Italy which has been at-
tested by the visit of the King to Vienna, so
Count Kalnoky has been sent for from St.
Petersburg to come to terms with Russia, and
which is soon to be attested by an Imperial
interview. The Russian press exults over the
sudden transformation which has taken place in
the tone of the Austrian and Hungarian papers,
all sections of which hail the appointment as
a pledge of European peace. The only note of
uneasiness has been sounded in quarters where
it is feared that the drawing closer together of
the three great Imperial Powers bodes no good
to Liberalism in Europe, and indicates an
anxiety in the East as the the possible results of
M. Gambetta's accession to power in the West.
At present, however, the efforts of Count
Kalnoky will be directed to preserve the status
quo, to keep the peace, and probably to propitiate
the Slavs.