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# The Diet of 1810–11

The political elite of the 1790s was passing from the scene when, in 1810, the committee reports finally came up for consideration by the legislature. At its 1810–11 session, the diet took legislative action only with regard to public administration and the judiciary. It enacted the separation of those two spheres, but it proved even more cautious than the committee in reforming the structure of administration. The bill proposed to amalgamate fewer districts than recommended in the report, and abolished districts retained the right to name delegates. With some qualification, the diet endorsed the recommended structure of high offices in Hungarian and Székely local government (the Saxons being content with the existing royal regulations).

On the other hand, the diet went against the committee's recommendation in ruling that local governments had to operate strictly within the rules decreed by the Gubernium, and showed a conservative disposition in leaving unaltered the administrative structure of royal free boroughs and market towns. There was also noticeable backtracking on the reform of the central government. The diet entrenched in law the prevailing structure of the Gubernium. It substituted some very modest requests for the demand that the chancellery's members be chosen from among Gubernium councillors and that the principle of responsible government be confirmed. A few bills were passed dealing with matters of detail: the regulation of domestic service, rural law enforcement, and supplements to the 1791 law on woodlands.

{2-764.} The bill on the status of Jews went beyond the committee's recommendations: it offered right of residence and a six-year tax exemption to those who wished to settle in Transylvania in order to engage in useful manufacturing activities, in farming, or in industrial crafts. Another bill required itinerant Gypsies to settle down within three years, and to remain in place for twenty years before having the right to move again.

The spirit of Türi's judicial reform was undermined by the conservative-minded diet. Amendments did away with the three-tier appeal system. Despite its endorsement of the principle of a separation between public administration and the judiciary, the diet amalgamated the two spheres in the counties and the Székely districts. The diet did not assign to the Gubernium the function of forum superrevisorium; it allowed appeals to the chancellery and assigned itself a broader judicial role than was proposed in the report. The criminal code drafted by Türi on behalf of the estates was also heavily 'amended'. The prison sentences closest to the death penalty in severity were raised to ten years and life imprisonment. The category of crimes against God and religion was expanded; the leaders of rebellions were to be given summary trials and executed. On the other hand, those refusing to abide by official regulations were to incur only mild punishment. The judicial code enacted by the diet allowed individuals to benefit from the exceptio simplex.

To remedy the grievances voiced by Protestants after 1781 and 1791, the estates passed legislation extending the six-week education session to all denominations, allowing mixed marriages to be consecrated by a priest from either Church, and permitting civil courts to deal with matrimonial disputes.

The laws passed in 1810–11 were considerably more conservative and 'loyalist' than the committees' proposals, and this trend became accentuated as the twenty-year period drew to a close. The imperial government grew indifferent to the wishes of the {2-765.} Transylvanian estates. The Transylvanian diet was not convened between 1811 and 1834. Only between 1816 and 1837 (!) did the central government get around to considering the various legislative proposals of the diet, and then it rejected five-sixths of them, arguing that some fell within the jurisdiction of the executive, while others had become outdated (!) and needed revision. Though of uneven quality, the legislative output of the estates' first reform movement included many positive elements. It fell to the reformers of the 1840s to retrieve these from the dustbin of history.