Reconstruction of the Hungarian Parliament

Since the revolution of 1918 the Hungarian Chamber of Magnates, noted among upper chambers for its longevity, has been in a state of suspended animation. Unlike the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, which disappeared under the tidal wave of revolution at the outset of the Karolyist régime, it never was formally dissolved. Both houses of the Hungarian parliament, yielding to political realities, suspended their sessions and disbanded, many of the members of the upper chamber scurrying to regions under Allied occupation for protection against possible excesses of the revolution. Following the brief interlude of extra-constitutional Karolyist republicanism, under the legislative auspices of the Hungarian National Council, came the communist revolution which swept before it all remnants of the older constitutional structure. But not for long. On the collapse of the Hungarian Commune it became the onerous task of the Allied Governments to find, or to create, a constituent authority capable of assuming unreservedly the obligations of peace-making and domestic reconstruction. The First National Assembly, elected by decree of Stephen Friedrich, then the liaison between the Hungarian nationalists and the Great Powers in Paris, was the result. This single-chambered body, distinctly smaller than the old Chamber of Deputies because of the territorial reduction of Hungary, became, for the purposes of the Allied Governments, the sole repository of national power, and was acknowledged by them, as well as by the nation itself, to have constituent authority.