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The Felsőbüki Nagy family 253
IN THE FOCAL POINT OF HUNGARIAN POLITICS: THE DIET
To county assemblies, held a few times a year, all noblemen were
invited in theory, but it was the gentry, especially the bene possses¬
sionati, together with the local representatives of the aristocrats’
great landholdings, who mostly participated. Similary, the diets
held intermittently in the eighteenth century® were the forum for
political discussions and decision-making attended by the lay and
ecclesiastical lords as well as representatives of the gentry. The lat¬
ter had the right to participate in parliamentary discussions, most
importantly as county deputies sent to the lower house, but not only
as those: they could become MPs when absent peers delegated them
as personal representatives, and the complete Royal Court of Justice
participated at the diet, too: the personalis acted as chairman of the
lower house and the judges, the protonotarii, did all the paperwork
—a crucially important task.
Besides county assemblies, sessions of the diet provided the second
real political arena in Hungary - and on the national level. Thus,
in Hungary, there was no need for public opinion to be articulated
in coffee houses, salons and reading societies, that were slowly
transformed in the long run from representing a literary public into
a political public, a process that took a decisive turn in the case of
France only after 1789.’ In Hungary, politics was discussed directly,
similarly to eighteenth-century England,’ and a relatively wide
stratum of society had access to participation in political decisions.
This breadth of political participation was almost exceptional in the
Europe of the ancien régime.
We can say that the three basic features in Hungarian political
life in the eighteenth century, the conservation of the old dualism
of king and estates, the significant role played by the estates in poli¬
tics, and the important positions held vis-a-vis the ruler, all these
represented political anachronisms in the eighteenth century. If we
add to these the possibility of regular participation in political life,
open to a significant section of society, we arrive at a noteworthy
achievement of Hungary in the eighteenth century. In this respect,
the Kingdom of Hungary is, however, not wholly unique. Certain
° Inthe eighteenth century, diets were held in 1708-1715, 1722-1723, 1728-1729,
1741, 1751, 1764-1765, 1790-1791, 1792 and 1796.
7 Habermas 1990: 122-141.
Habermas 1990: 126-133.