Reform es nemzeti onallosag. Csengery Antal es T.B. Macaulay angliai tortenelmenek forditasa. (Hungarian)

Reform and national independence: Antal Csengery and the translation of the English history of T. B. Macaulay. (English)

The Hungarian centralist politicians had followed with the attention the work of T. B. Macaulay from the 1830s. Jozsef Eotvos and Laszlo Szalay must surely have read his brilliant articles in the Edinburgh Review. The first to mention Macaulay by the name was Agoston Trefort, who referred to him on 9 May 1845 in the Pesti Hirlap as "the best English essayist". His companion of ideas, Antal Csengery, translated and published in 1853 the first two volumes of the whig historian's world famous history of England. This work was, as he put it himself, a "manual of constitutional ideas" for him (and his generation), a real guideline of parliamentarism which was missing in Hungary at that time. In the course of translation, Csengery noticed a good amount of crosstalk and analogies between the magisterial work of Macaulay and contemporary Hungarian conditions. Little distinction could then be made between Francis Joseph and Charles II, or rather James II. Csengery emphasized forcefully the observation that revolution was but a response to tyranny, and that in case reforms were not forthcoming, the situation would be violently changed by the people themselves. The English history of Macaulay confirmed the most important ideological initiatives of the reform era in the minds of Antal Csengery and his generation. It was a proof that the value of the Bill of Rights did not wane in Hungary even in the period of counter-revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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