Chargé Rives to the Secretary of State .
Vienna , February 28, 1906 .
Sir: I have the honor to report that after fruitless negotiations, continued for months past, between the Crown and the Coalition (Hungarian opposition), with the only result that the political situation [Page 47] became graver than ever before, affairs in Hungary have now reached a deadlock. The King has made a final effort to put an end to this situation by dissolving the Hungarian Parliament sine die on February 19. General Nyiri has been appointed by the King as royal commissioner of Hungary with unlimited powers and was ordered to carry out the decree of dissolution of Parliament. He nominated as his deputy Colonel Fabritius, who, with the assistance of troops and police, entered the Chamber of Deputies after the sitting was closed and read the royal decree of dissolution, and at the same time all the deputies and officials were turned out of the building by troops with fixed bayonets and the building closed indefinitely.
The Government of Hungary is now carried on by the King, the prime minister, Baron Fejervary, and his ministerial colleagues, without a parliament.
I have the honor further to report that the autonomous (general) customs tariff and the commercial treaty with Germany have been enforced in Hungary by a decree of the ministry signed by the prime minister only. This was done with regard to the advanced date, the 21st of February, as both the new customs tariff and the commercial treaty with Germany are to take effect from March 1, 1906, on, and there was no possibility of carrying this out in any other way owing to the present political situation in Hungary as above described.
At the same time the autonomous customs tariff and the commercial treaty with Germany have been put into force in Austria in the regular and legal manner. Also in Austria both the autonomous customs tariff and the commercial treaty with Germany take effect on March 1, 1906.
I have the honor to transmit to the Department of State, under separate cover and addressed to the Diplomatic Bureau, two copies of the autonomous customs tariff and the commercial treaties with Germany, Italy, Belgium, and Russia. (Not printed.)
The negotiations of the Austro-Hungarian Government with Switzerland and Servia for conclusion of commercial treaties are now in progress, and will probably soon be concluded. In the meantime—that is, from March 1 till the conclusion of the new commercial treaties with the said countries—a provisional arrangement on the basis of the most favored nation clause will take the place of the treaties with Switzerland and Servia.
I have, etc.,