Századok – 2011
KÖZLEMÉNYEK - Fenyő István: Reform és nemzeti önállóság. Csengery Antal és T. B. Macaulay angliai történelmének fordítása III/711
722 FENYŐ ISTVÁN sen, bezárni törvénytelenül senkit sem szabad. Ki kell irtani azt a „veszélyes" eszmét, miszerint a királyi kiváltság fenségesebb az alaptörvényeknél. E minden forradalmak közt legkevésbé erőszakos forradalom — hirdette Macaulay, a megingathatatlan szabadelvű — a legjótékonyabb volt minden forradalom között. A végrehajtó hatalom a nemzet képviselőinek nézeteivel egyezőleg fog eljárni, a fejedelem semmiféle szükséges reformnak nem fog ellenszegülni. A Declaration of Rights máig sem avult el. ANTAL CSENGERY AND THE ENGLISH HISTORY OF T. B. MACAULAY by István Fenyő (Summary) The Hungarian centralist politicians had followed with attention the work of T. B. Macaulay from the 1830s. József Eötvös and László Szalay must surely have read his brilliant articles in the Edinburgh Review. The first to mention Macaulay by the name was Ágoston Trefort, who referred to him on 9 May 1845 in the Pesti Hírlap as „the best English essayist". His companion of ideas, Antal Csengery, translated and published in 1853 the firsrt 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 emphasised 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.
