AZ ORSZÁGOS SZÉCHÉNYI KÖNYVTÁR ÉVKÖNYVE 1978. Budapest (1980)

III. Az OSZK gyűjteményeiből és történetéből - B. Lukács Ágnes: Egy ismeretlen szerző kéziratos munkájának agrár-történeti és népesedési vonatkozásai - Agro-Historical and Demographical Concerns of the Manuscript of an Unknown Author

The author of the present work has picked out two aspects from among the many interesting themes of the manuscript, namely, "The origin of the waste lands and farming on these territories in the author's opinion" and "Demographic data and measures to be taken". Both themes provide an opportunity for us to understand not only the author's opinion but by means of various data and quotations we can also feel the atmosphere of the era and see the problems to be solved as they were looked upon by contemporaries. This is of great importance concerning historical demography as well as the realistic interpretation of the decade that immediately preceded 1848. Finally, the paper deals with the unknown author's personality as it could be conceived on the basis of the manuscript. The author deserves interest so much the more as at the end of his work he draws up a settling-Bill of 16§ for populating waste lands, however well he knows that only the Diet has authority to do so. Moreover, he is very much aware of the fact that his paper enumerates much more data concerning wider range of themes than it has been expected of a competition essay. We can safely say that this competition paper has been written by a Josephinianetatist member of smaller nobility of Protestant confession who was trained in legal and agricultural affairs and spoke or at least had a passive knowledge of Latin, German, French and English languages, and who, at the same time, was "a democrat in the heart" even more deeply than KÖLCSEY in his attitude to the life of the serfs and the nobility without means. It cannot be proved but seems highly probable that the author was either Elek FÉNYES or one of his later colleagues at the Department of Statistics of the 1848. Government. 288