But while I acknowledge the wisdom of your attachment to fundamental doctrines, I beg leave with equal frankness to state, that, in my opinion, there can be scarcely anything more dangerous to the progressive development of a nation, than to mistake for a basis that which is none; to mistake for a principle that which is but a transitory convenience; to take for substantial that which is but accidental; or to take for a constitutional doctrine that which is but a momentary exigency of administrative policy. Such a course of action would be like to a healthy man refusing substantial food, because when he was once weak in stomach his physician ordered him a severe diet. Let me suppose, gentlemen, that that doctrine of non-interference was really bequeathed to you by your Washingtons (and that it was not, I will essay to prove afterwards), and let me even suppose that your Washingtons imparted to it such an interpretation, as were equivalent to the words of Cain, "Am I my brother's keeper?" (which supposition would be, of course, a sacrilege; but I am forced to such suppositions:) I may be entitled to ask, is the dress which suited the child, still suitable to the full grown man? Would it not be ridiculous to lay the man into the child's cradle, and to sing him to sleep by a lullaby? In the origin of the United States you were an infant people, and you had, of course, nothing to do but to grow, to grow, and to grow. But now you are so far grown that there is no foreign power on earth from which you have anything to fear for your existence or security. In fact, your growth is that of a giant. Of old, your infant frame was composed of thirteen states, and was restricted to the borders of the Atlantic: now, your massive bulk is spread to the gulf of Mexico and the Pacific, and your territory is a continent. Your right hand touches Europe over the waves; your left reaches across the Pacific to eastern Asia; and there, between two quarters of the world, there you stand, in proud immensity, a world yourselves. Then you were a small people of three millions and a half; now you are a mighty nation of twenty-four millions. Thus you have fully entered into the second stadium of national life, in which a nation lives at length not for itself separately, but as a member of the great family of human nations; having a right to whatever is due from that family towards every one of its full-grown members, but also engaged to every duty which that great family may claim from every one of its full-grown members.

A nation may, either from comparative weakness, or by choice and policy, as Japan and China, or by both these motives, as Paraguay under Dr. Francia,—be induced to live a life secluded from the world, indifferent to the destinies of mankind, in which it cannot or will not have any share. But then it must be willing to be also excluded from the benefits of progress, civilization and national intercourse, while disavowing all care about all other nations in the world. No citizen of the United States has, or ever will have, the wish to see this country degraded to the rotting vegetation of a Paraguay, or the mummy existence of a Japan and China. The feeling of self-dignity, and the expansiveness of that enterprizing spirit which is congenial to freemen, would revolt against the very idea of such a degrading national captivity. But if there were even a will to live such a mummy life, there is no possibility to do so. The very existence of your great country, the principles upon which it is founded, its geographical position, its present scale of civilization, and all its moral and material interests, would lead on your people not only to maintain, but necessarily more and more to develop your foreign intercourse. Then, being in so many respects linked to mankind at large, you cannot have the will, nor yet the power, to remain indifferent to the outward world. And if you cannot remain indifferent, you must resolve to throw your weight into that balance in which the fate and condition of man is weighed. You are a power on earth. You must be a power on earth, and must therefore accept all the consequences of this position. You cannot allow that any power in the world should dispose of the fate of that great family of mankind, of which you are so pre-eminent a member: else you would resign your proud place and your still prouder future, and be a power on earth no more.

I hope I have sufficiently shown, that should even that doctrine of non-interference have been established by the founders of your republic, that which might have been very proper to your infancy would not now be suitable to your manhood. It is a beautiful word of Montesquieu, that republics are to be founded on virtue. And you know that virtue between man and man, as sanctioned by our Christian religion, is but an exercise of that great principle—"Thou shalt do to others as thou desirest others to do to thee." Thus I might rely simply upon your generous republican hearts, and upon the consistency of your principles; but I beg to add some essential differences in material respects, between your present condition and that of yore. Of your twenty-four millions, more than nineteen are spread over yonder immense territory, the richest of the world, employed in the cultivation of the soil, that honourable occupation, which in every time has proved to be the most inexhaustible and most unfailing source of public welfare and private happiness, as also the most unwavering ally of freedom, and the most faithful fosterer of all those upright, noble, generous sentiments which the constant intercourse with ever young, ever great, ever beautiful virtue, imparts to man. Now this immense agricultural interest, desiring large markets, at the same time affords a solid basis to your manufacturing industry, and in consequence to your immensely developed commerce. All this places such a difference between the republic of Washington and your present grandeur, that though you may well be attached to your original principles (for the principles of liberty are everlastingly the same), yet not so in respect to the exigencies of your policy. For if it is to be regulated by interest, your country has other interests to-day than it had then; and if ever it is to be regulated by the higher consideration of principles, you are strong enough to feel that the time is already come. And I, standing here before you to plead the cause of oppressed humanity, am bold to declare that there may never again come a crisis, at which such an elevation of your policy would prove either more glorious to you, or more beneficial to man: for we in Europe are apparently on the eye of that day, when either the hopes or the fears of oppressed nations will be crushed for a long time.

Having stated so far the difference of the situation, I beg leave now to assert that it is an error to suppose that non-interference in foreign matters has been bequeathed to the people of the United States by your great Washington as a doctrine and as a constitutional principle. Firstly, Washington never even recommended to you non-interference in the sense of indifference to the fate of other nations. He only recommended neutrality. And there is a mighty diversity between these two ideas. Neutrality has reference to a state of war between two belligerent powers, and it is this case which Washington contemplated, when he, in his Farewell Address, advised the people of the United States not to enter into entangling alliances. Let quarrelling powers, let quarrelling nations go to war—but do you consider your own concerns; leave foreign powers to quarrel about ambitious topics, or narrow partial interests. Neutrality is a matter of convenience—not of principle. But while neutrality has reference to a state of war between belligerent powers, the principle of non-interference, on the contrary, lays down the sovereign right of nations to arrange their own domestic concerns. Therefore these two ideas of neutrality and non-interference are entirely different, having reference to two entirely different matters. The sovereign right of every nation to rule over itself, to alter its own institutions, to change the form of its own government, is a common public law of nations, common to all, and, therefore, put under the common guarantee of all. This sovereign right of every nation to dispose of itself, you, the people of the United States must recognize; for it is the common law of mankind, in which, because it is such, every nation is equally interested. You must recognize it, secondly, because the very existence of your great republic, as also the independence of every nation, rests upon this ground. If that sovereign right of nations were no common public law of mankind, then your own independence would be no matter of right, but only a matter of fact, which might be subject, for all future time, to all sorts of chances from foreign conspiracy and violence. And where is the citizen of the United States who would not revolt at the idea that this great republic is not a righteous nor a lawful existence, but only a mere accident—a mere matter of fact? If it were so, you were not entitled to invoke the protection of God for your great country; for the protection of God cannot, without sacrilege, be invoked but in behalf of justice and right. You would have no right to look to the sympathy of mankind for yourselves; for you would profess an abrogation of the laws of humanity upon which is founded your own independence, your own nationality.

Now, gentlemen, if these be principles of common law, of that law which God has given to every nation of humanity—if to organize itself is the common lawful right of every nation; then the interference with this common law of all humanity, the violent act of hindering, by armed forces, a nation from exercising that sovereign right, must be considered as a violation of that common public law upon which your very existence rests, and which, being a common law of all humanity, is, by God himself, placed under the safeguard of all humanity; for it is God himself who commands us to love our neighbours as we love ourselves, and to do towards others as we desire others to do towards us. Upon this point you cannot remain indifferent. You may well remain neutral to war between two belligerent nations, but you cannot remain indifferent to the violation of the common law of humanity. That indifference Washington has never taught you. I defy any man to show me, out of the eleven volumes of Washington's writings, a single word to that effect. He could not have recommended this indifference without ceasing to be wise as he was; for without justice there is no wisdom on earth. He could not have recommended it without becoming inconsistent; for it was this common law of mankind which your fathers invoked before God and man when they proclaimed your independence. It was he himself, your great Washington, who not only accepted, but again and again asked, foreign aid—foreign help for the support of that common law of mankind in respect to your own independence. Knowledge and instruction are so universally spread amongst the enlightened people of the United States, the history of your country is such a household science at the most lonely hearths of your remotest settlements, that it may be sufficient for me to refer, in that respect, to the instructions and correspondence between Washington and the Minister at Paris—the equally immortal Franklin—the modest man with the proud epitaph, which tells the world that he wrested the lightning from heaven, and the sceptre from the tyrant's hands.

I will go further. Even that doctrine of neutrality which Washington taught and bequeathed to you, he taught not as a constitutional principle—a lasting regulation for all future time, but only as a matter of temporary policy. I refer in that respect to the very words of his Farewell Address. There he states explicitly that "it is your policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world." These are his very words. Policy is the word, and you know that policy is not the science of principle, but of exigencies; and that principles are, of course, by a free and powerful nation, never to be sacrificed to exigencies. The exigencies pass away like the bubbles of a shower, but the nation is immortal: it must consider the future also, and not only the egotistical dominion of the passing hour: it must be aware that to an immortal nation nothing can be of higher importance than immortal principles. Again, in the same address Washington explicitly says, in reference to his policy of neutrality, that "with him a predominant motive has been to gain time to your country to settle and mature its institutions, and to progress without interruption to that degree of strength and consistency which is necessary to give it the command of its own fortunes." These are highly memorable words, gentlemen. Here I take my ground; and casting a glance of admiration over your glorious land, I confidently ask you, gentlemen, are your institutions settled and matured or are they not? Are you, or are you not, come to such a degree of strength and consistency as to be the masters of your own fortunes? Oh! how do I thank God for having given me the glorious view of this country's greatness, which answers this question for me! Yes! you have attained that degree of strength and consistency in which your less fortunate brethren may well claim your protecting hand.

One word more on Washington's doctrines. In one of his letters, written to Lafayette, he says:—"Let us only have twenty years of peace, and our country will come to such a degree of power and wealth that we shall be able, in a just cause, to defy any power on earth whatsoever." "In a just cause!" Now, in the name of eternal truth, and by all that is dear and sacred to man, since the history of mankind is recorded, there has been no cause more just than the cause of Hungary. Never was there a people, without the slightest reason, more sacrilegiously, more treacherously attacked, or by fouler means than Hungary. Never has crime, cursed ambition, despotism, and violence, united more wickedly to crush freedom, and the very life, than against Hungary. Never was a country more mortally aggrieved than Hungary is. All your sufferings—all your complaints, which, with so much right, drove your forefathers to take up arms, are but slight grievances in comparison with those immense deep wounds, out of which the heart of Hungary bleeds! If the cause of our people is not sufficiently just to insure the protection of God, and the support of right-willing men—then there is no just cause, and no justice on earth. Then the blood of no new Abel will moan towards Heaven. The genius of charity, Christian love, and justice will mourningly fly the earth; a heavy curse will fall upon morality—oppressed men will despair, and only the Cains of mankind walk proudly with impious brow about the ruins of liberty on earth.

Now, allow me briefly to consider how your Foreign Policy has grown and enlarged itself. I will only recall to your memory the message of President Monroe, when he clearly stated that the United States would take up arms to protect the American Colonies of Spain, now free republics, should the Holy (or rather unholy) Alliance make an attempt either to aid Spain to reduce the new American republics to their ancient colonial state, or to compel them to adopt political systems more conformable to the policy and views of that alliance. I entreat you to mark this well, gentlemen. Not only the forced introduction of monarchy, but in general the interference of foreign powers in the contest, was declared sufficient motive for the United States to protect the colonies. Let me remind you that this declaration of President Monroe was not only approved and confirmed by the people of the United States, but that Great Britain itself joined the United States, in the declaration of this decision and this policy. I further recall to your memory the instructions given in 1826 to your Envoys to the Congress of Panama, Richard Anderson and John Sergeant, where it was clearly stated that the United States would have opposed, with their whole force, the interference of the continental powers in that struggle for independence. It is true, that this declaration to go even to war, to protect the independence of foreign States against foreign interference, was restricted to the continent of America; for President Monroe declares in his message that the United States can have no concern in European straggles, being distant and separated from Europe by the great Atlantic Ocean. But I would remark that this indifference to European concerns is again a matter, not of principle but of temporary exigency—the motives of which have, by the lapse of time, entirely disappeared—so much that the balance is even turned to the opposite side.

President Monroe mentions distance as a motive of the above-stated distinction. Well, since the prodigious development of your Fulton's glorious invention, distance is no longer calculated by miles, but by hours; and, being so, Europe is of course less distant from you than the greater part of the American continent. But, let even the word distance be taken in a nominal sense. Europe is nearer to you than the greatest part of the American continent—yea! even nearer than perhaps some parts of your own territory. President Monroe's second motive is, that you are separated from Europe by the Atlantic. Now, at the present time, and in the present condition of navigation, the Atlantic is no separation, but rather a link; as the means of that commercial intercourse which brings the interest of Europe home to you, connecting you with it by every tie of moral as well as material interest.

There is immense truth in that which the French Legation in the United States expressed to your government in an able note of 27th October past:—"America is closely connected with Europe, being only separated from the latter by a distance scarcely exceeding eight days' journey, by one of the most important of general interests—the interest of commerce. The nations of America and Europe are at this day so dependent upon one another, that the effects of any event, prosperous or otherwise, happening on one side of the Atlantic, are immediately felt on the other side. The result of this community of interests, commercial, political, and moral, between Europe and America—of this frequency and rapidity of intercourse between them, is, that it becomes as difficult to point out the geographical degree where American policy shall terminate, and European policy begin, as it is to trace out the line where American commerce begins and European commerce terminates. Where may be said to begin or terminate the ideas which are in the ascendant in Europe and in America?"

It is chiefly in New York that I feel induced to urge this, because New York is, by innumerable ties, connected with Europe—more connected than several parts of Europe itself. It is the agricultural interest of this great country which chiefly wants an outlet and a market. Now, it is far more to Europe than to the American continent that you have to look in that respect. On this account you cannot remain indifferent to the fate of freedom on the European continent: for be sure, gentlemen—and I would say this chiefly to the gentlemen of trade—should absolutism gain ground in Europe, it will, it must, put every possible obstacle in the way of commercial intercourse with republican America: for commercial intercourse is the most powerful convoyer of principles, and be sure the victory of absolutism on the European continent will in no quarter have more injurious national consequences than against your vast agricultural and commercial interests. Then why not prevent it, while it is still possible to do so with comparatively small sacrifices, rather than abide that fatal catastrophe, and have to mourn the immense sacrifices it would then cost?

Even in political considerations, now-a-days, you have stronger motives to feel interested in the fate of Europe than in the fate of the Central or Southern parts of America. Whatever may happen in the institutions of these parts, you are too powerful to see your own institutions affected by it. But let Europe become absolutistical (as, unless Hungary be restored to its independence, and Italy become free, be sure it will)—and your children will see those words, which your national government spoke in 1827, fulfilled on a larger scale than they were meant, that "the absolutism of Europe will not be appeased, until every vestige of human freedom has been obliterated even here." And oh! do not rely too fondly upon your power. It is great, assuredly. You have not to fear any single power on earth. But look to history. Mighty empires have vanished. Let not the enemies of freedom grow too strong. Victorious over Europe, and then united, they would be too strong even for you! And be sure they hate you most cordially. They consider you as their most dangerous opponent. Absolutism cannot sleep tranquilly, while the republican principle has such a mighty representative as your country is. Yes, gentlemen, it was the fear of driving the absolutists to fanatical effort, which induced your great Statesmen not to extend to Europe the principle on which they acted towards the New World, and by no means the publicly avowed feeble motives. Every manifestation of your public life in those times shows that I am right to say so. The European nations were, about 1823, in such a degraded situation, that indeed you must have felt anxious not to come into any political contact with that pestilential atmosphere, when, as Mr. Clay said in 1818, in his speech about the emancipation of South America, "Paris was transferred to St. Petersburg." But scarcely a year later, the Greek nation came in its contest to an important crisis, which gave you hope that the spirit of freedom was waking again, and at once you abandoned the principle of political indifference for Europe. You know, your Clays and your Websters spoke, as if really they were speaking for my very cause. You know how your citizens acted in behalf of that struggle for liberty in a part of Europe which is more distant than Hungary: and again when Poland fell, you know what spirit pervaded the United States.

I have shown you how Washington's policy has been gradually changed: but one mighty difference I must still commemorate. Your population has, since Monroe's time, nearly doubled, I believe; or at least has increased by millions. And what sort of men are these millions? Are they only native-born Americans? No European emigrants? Many are men, who though citizens of the United States are, by the most sacred ties of relationship, attached to the fate of Europe. That is a consideration worthy of reflection with your wisest men, who will, ere long agree with me, that in your present condition you are at least as much interested in the state of Europe, as twenty-eight years ago your fathers were in the fate of Central and Southern America. And really so it is. The unexampled sympathy for the cause of my country which I have met with in the United States proves that it is so. Your generous interference with the Turkish captivity of the Governor of Hungary, proves that is so. And this progressive development in your foreign policy, is, in fact, no longer a mere instinctive ebullition of public opinion, which is about hereafter to direct your governmental policy; the opinion of the people is already avowed as the policy of the government. I have a most decisive authority to rely upon in saying so. It is the message of the President of the United States. His Excellency, Millard Fillmore, made a communication to Congress, a few days ago, and there I read the paragraph:—"The deep interest which we feel in the spread of liberal principles, and the establishment of free governments, and the sympathy with which we witness every struggle against oppression, forbid that we should be indifferent to a case in which the strong arm of a foreign power is invoked to stifle public sentiment and repress the spirit of freedom in any country."

Now, gentlemen, here is the ground which I take for my earnest endeavours to benefit the cause of Hungary. I have only respectfully to ask: Is a principle which the public opinion of the United States so resolutely professes, and which the government of the United States, with the full sentiment of its responsibility, declares to your Congress to be a ruling principle of your national government—is that principle meant to be serious? Indeed, it would be a most impertinent outrage towards your great people and your national government, to entertain the insulting opinion, that what the people of the United States and its national government profess in such a solemn diplomatic manner could be meant as a mere sporting with the most sacred interests of humanity. God forbid that I should think so. Therefore, I take the principle of your policy as I find it established—and I come in the name of oppressed humanity to claim the unavoidable, practical, consequences of your own freely chosen policy, which you have avowed to the whole world; to claim the realization of those expectations which you, the sovereign people of the United States, have chosen, of your own accord, to raise in the bosom of my countrymen and of all the oppressed.

You will excuse me, gentlemen, for having dwelt so long upon that principle of non-interference with European measures: but I have found it to be the stone of stumbling thrown in my way when I spoke of what I humbly request from the United States. I have been charged as arrogantly attempting to change your existing policy, and since I cannot in one speech exhaust the complex and mighty whole of my mission, I choose on the present opportunity to develop my views about that fundamental principle: and having shown, not theoretically, but practically, that it is a mistake to think that you had, at any time, such a principle, and having shown that if you ever entertained such a policy, you have been forced to abandon it—so much, at least, I hope I have achieved. My humble requests to your active sympathy may be still opposed by—I know not what other motives; but the objection, that you must not interfere with European concerns—this objection is disposed of, once and for ever, I hope. It remains now to inquire, whether, since you have professed not to be indifferent to the cause of European freedom—the cause of Hungary is such as to have just claims to your active and effectual assistance and support. It is, gentlemen.

To prove this I do not now intend to enter into an explanation of the particulars of our struggle, which I had the honour to conduct, as the chosen Chief Magistrate of my native land. It is highly gratifying to me to find that the cause of Hungary is—excepting some ridiculous misrepresentations of ill-will—correctly understood here. I will only state now one fact, and that is, that our endeavours for independence were crushed by the armed interference of a foreign despotic power—the principle of all evil on earth—Russia. And stating this fact, I will not again intrude upon you with my own views, but recall to your memory the doctrines established by your own statesmen. Firstly—I return to your great Washington. He says, in one of his letters to Lafayette, "My policies are plain and simple; I think every nation has a right to establish that form of government under which it conceives it can live most happy; and that no government ought to interfere with the internal concerns of another." Here I take my ground:—upon a principle of Washington—a principle, not a mere temporary policy calculated for the first twenty years of your infancy. Russia has interfered with the internal concerns of Hungary, and by doing so has violated the policy of the United States, established as a lasting principle by Washington himself. It is a lasting principle. I could appeal in my support to the opinion of every statesman of the United States, of every party, of every time; but to save time, I pass at once from the first President of the United States to the last, and recall to your memory this word of the present annual message of his Excellency President Fillmore:—"Let every people choose for itself, and make and alter its political institutions to suit its own condition and convenience." I beg leave also to quote the statement of your present Secretary of State, Mr. Webster, who, in his speech on the Greek question, speaks thus:—"The law of nations maintains that in extreme cases resistance is lawful, and that one nation has no right to interfere in the affairs of another." Well, that precisely is the ground upon which we Hungarians stand.

But I may perhaps meet the objection (I am sorry to say I have met it already)—"Well, we own that it has been violated by Russia in the case of Hungary, but after all what is Hungary to us? Let every people take care of itself, what is that to us?" So some speak: it is the old doctrine of private egotism, "Every one for himself, and God for us all." I will answer the objection again by the words of Mr. Webster, who, in his speech on the Greek question, having professed that the internal sovereignty of every nation is a law of nations—thus goes on, "But it may be asked 'what is all that to us?' The question is easily answered. We are one of the nations, and we as a nation have precisely the same interest in international law as a private individual has in the laws of his country." The principle which your honourable Secretary of State professes, is a principle of eternal truth. No man can disavow it, no political party can disavow it. Thus happily I am able to address my prayers, not to a party, but to the whole people of the United States, and will go on to do so as long as I have no reason to regard one party as opposed or indifferent to my country's cause.

But from certain quarters it may be avowed, "Well, we acknowledge every nation's sovereign right; we acknowledge it to be a law of nations that no foreign power interfere in the affairs of another, and we are determined to respect this common law of mankind; but if others do not respect that law it is not ours to meddle with them." Let me answer by an analysis:—Every nation has the same interest in international, law as a private individual has in the laws of his country. That is an acknowledged principle with your statesmen. What then is the latter relation? Does it suffice that an individual do not himself violate the law? Must he not so far as is in his power also prevent others from violating the law? Suppose you see that a wicked man is about to rob—to murder your neighbour, or to burn his house, will you wrap yourself in your own virtuous lawfulness, and say, "I myself neither rob, nor murder, nor burn; but what others do is not my concern. I am not my brother's keeper. I sympathize with him; but I am not called on to save him from being robbed, murdered, or burnt." What honest man of the world would answer so? None of you. None of the people of the United States, I am sure. That would be the damned maxim of the Pharisees of old, who thanked God that they were not as others were. Our Saviour was not content himself to avoid trading in the hall of the temple, but he drove out those who were trading there.

The duty of enforcing observance to the common law of nations has no other limit than the power to fulfil it. Of course the republic of St. Marino, or the Prince of Monaco, cannot stop the Czar of Russia in his ambitious annoyance. It was ridiculous when the Prince of Modena refused to recognize the government of Louis Philippe—"but to whom much is given, from him will much be expected," says the Lord. Every condition has not only its rights, but also its own duties; and whatever exists as a power on earth, is in duty a part of the executive government of mankind, called to maintain the law of nations. Woe, a thousandfold woe to humanity, should there be no force on earth to maintain the laws of humanity. Woe to humanity, should those who are as mighty as they are free, not feel interested to maintain the laws of mankind, because they are rightful laws,—but only in so far as some partial money-interests would desire it. Woe to mankind if every despot of the world may dare to trample down the laws of humanity, and no free nation make these laws respected. People of the United States, humanity expects that your glorious republic will prove to the world, that republics are founded on virtue—it expects to see you the guardians of the laws of humanity.

I will come to the last possible objection. I may be told, "You are right in your principles, your cause is just, and you have our sympathy, but, after all, we cannot go to war for your country; we cannot furnish you armies and fleets; we cannot fight your battle for you." There is the rub! Who can exactly tell what would have been the issue of your own struggle for independence (though your country was in a far happier geographical position than we, poor Hungarians), had France given such an answer to your forefathers in 1778 and 1781, instead of sending to your aid a fleet of thirty-eight men-of-war, and auxiliary troops, and 24,000 muskets, and a loan of nineteen millions? And what was far more than all this, did it not show that France resolved with all its power to espouse the cause of your independence? But, perhaps, I shall be told that France did this, not out of love of freedom, but out of hatred against England. Well, let it be; but let me then ask, shall the curse of olden times—hatred—be more efficient in the destinies of mankind than love of freedom, principles of justice, and the laws of humanity? And is America in the days of steam navigation more distant from Europe to-day, than France was from America seventy-three years ago? However, I most solemnly declare that it is not my intention to rely literally upon this example. It is not my wish to entangle the United States in war, or to engage your great people to send out armies and fleets to raise up and restore Hungary. Not at all, gentlemen; I most solemnly declare that I have never entertained such expectations or such hopes; and here I come to the practical point.

The principle of evil in Europe is the enervating spirit of Russian absolutism. Upon this rests the daring boldness of every petty tyrant to trample upon oppressed nations, and to crush liberty. To this Moloch of ambition has my native land fallen a victim. It is with this that Montalembert threatens the French republicans. It was Russian intervention in Hungary which governed French intervention in Rome, and gave German tyrants hardihood to crush all the endeavours for freedom and unity in Germany. The despots of the European continent are leagued against the freedom of the world. That is A MATTER OF FACT. The second matter of fact is that the European continent is on the eve of a new revolution. It is not necessary to be initiated in the secret preparations of the European democracy to be aware of that approaching contingency. It is pointed out by the French constitution itself, prescribing a new Presidential election for the next spring. Now, suppose that the ambition of Louis Napoleon, encouraged by Russian secret aid, awaits this time (which I scarcely believe), and suppose that there should be a Republic in France; of course the first act of the new French President must be, at least, to recall the French troops from Rome. Nobody can doubt that a revolution in Italy will follow. Or if there is no peaceful solution in France, but a revolution, then every man knows that whenever the heart of France boils up, the pulsation is felt throughout Europe, and oppressed nations once more rise, and Russia again interferes.

Now I humbly ask, with the view of these circumstances before your eyes, can it be convenient to such a great power as this glorious Republic, to await the very outbreak, and not until then to discuss and decide on your foreign policy? There may come, as under the last President, at a late hour, agents to see how matters stand in Hungary. Russian interference and treason achieved what the sacrilegious Hapsburg dynasty failed to achieve. You know the old words, "While Rome debated, Saguntum fell." So I respectfully press upon you my FIRST entreaty: it is, that your people will in good time express to your central government what course of foreign policy it wishes to be pursued in the case of the approaching events I have mentioned. And I most confidently hope that there is only one course possible, consistently with the above recorded principles. If you acknowledge that the right of every nation to alter its institutions and government is a law of nations—if you acknowledge the interference of foreign powers in that sovereign right to be a violation of the law of nations, as you really do—if you are forbidden to remain indifferent to this violation of international law (as your President openly professes that you are)—then there is no other course possible than neither to interfere in that sovereign right of nations, nor to allow any other powers whatever to interfere.

But you will perhaps object to me, "That amounts to going to war." I answer: no—that amounts to preventing war. What is wanted to that effect? It is wanted, that, being aware of the precarious condition of Europe, your national government should, as soon as possible, send instructions to your Minister at London, to declare to the English government that the United States, acknowledging the sovereign right of every nation to dispose of its own domestic concerns, have resolved not to interfere, but also not to let any foreign power whatever interfere with this sovereign right in order to repress the spirit of freedom in any country. Consequently, to invite the Cabinet of St. James's into this policy, and declare that the United States are resolved to act conjointly with England in that decision, in the approaching crisis of the European continent. Such is my FIRST humble request. If the citizens of the United States, instead of honouring me with the offers of their hospitality, would be pleased to pass convenient resolutions, and to ratify them to their national government—if the press would hasten to give its aid, and in consequence the national government instructed its Minister in England accordingly, and by communication to the Congress, as it is wont, give publicity to this step, I am entirely sure that you would find the people of Great Britain heartily joining this direction of policy. No power could feel peculiarly offended by it; no existing relation would be broken or injured: and still any future interference of Russia against the restoration of Hungary to that independence which was formally declared in 1849 would be prevented, Russian arrogance and preponderance would be checked, and the oppressed nations of Europe soon become free.

There may be some over-anxious men, who perhaps would say, "But if such a declaration of your government were not respected, and Russia still did interfere, then you would be obliged by this previous declaration, to go to war; and you don't desire to have a war." That objection seems to me as if somebody were to say, "If the vault of heaven breaks down, what shall we do?" My answer is, "But it will not break down." Even so I answer. But your declaration will be respected—Russia will not interfere—you will have no occasion for war—you will have prevented war. Be sure Russia would twice, thrice consider, before provoking against itself, besides the roused judgment of nations—(to say nothing of the legions of republican France)—the English "Lion" and the star-surrounded "Eagle" of America. Remember that you, in conjunction with England, once before declared that you would not permit European absolutism to interfere with the formerly Spanish colonies of America. Did this declaration bring you to a war? quite the contrary; it prevented war. So it would be in our case also. Let me therefore most humbly entreat you, people of the United States, to give such practical direction to your generous sympathy for Hungary, as to arrange meetings and pass such resolutions, in every possible place of this Union, as I took the liberty to mention above.

The SECOND measure which I beg leave to mention, has reference to commercial interest. In later times a doctrine has stolen into the code of international law, which is as contrary to the commercial interests of nations as to their independence. The pettiest despot of the world is permitted to exclude your commerce from whatever port he pleases. He has only to arrange the blockade, and your commerce is shut out; or, if captured Venice, bleeding Lombardy, or my prostrate but resolute Hungary, rises to shake off the Austrian tyrant's yoke (as surely they will), that tyrant believes he has the right, from that very moment, to exclude your commerce from the uprisen nation. Now, this is an absurdity—a tyrannical invention of tyrants violating your interest—your independence. The United States have not always regarded things from the despotic point of view. I find, in a note of Mr. Everett, Minister of the United States in Spain, dated "Madrid, Jan. 20, 1826," these words:—"In the war between Spain and the Spanish American colonies, the United States have freely granted to both parties the hospitality of their ports and territory, and have allowed the agents of both to procure within their jurisdiction, in the way of lawful trade, any supplies which suited their convenience." Now, gentlemen, this is the principle which humanity expects, for your own and for mankind's benefit, to see maintained by you, and not yonder fatal course, which permits tyrants to draw from your country every facility for the oppression of their nations, but forbids nations to buy the means of defence. That was not the principle of your Washington. When he speaks of harmony, of friendly intercourse, and of peace, he always takes care to apply his ideas to nations, and not to governments—still less to tyrants who subdue nations by foreign arms. The sacred word Nation, with all its natural rights, should not be blotted out, at least from your political dictionary: and yet I am sorry to see that the word nation is often replaced by the word Government. Gentlemen, I humbly wish that the public opinion of the people of the United States, conscious of its own rights, should loudly and resolutely declare that the people of the United States will continue its commercial intercourse with any or every nation, be it in revolution against its oppressors or be it not; and that the people of the United States expect confidently, that its government will provide for the protection of your trade. I feel assured, that your national government, seeing public opinion so pronounced, will judge it convenient to augment your naval forces in the Mediterranean: and to look for some such station for it as would not force the navy of republican America to make disavowals inconsistent with republican principles or republican dignity, only because King So-and-So, be he even the cursed King of Naples, grants the favour of an anchoring place for the naval forces of your republic. I believe your illustrious country should everywhere freely unfurl the star-spangled banner of liberty, with all its congenial principles, and not make itself in any respect dependent on the glorious smiles of the Kings Bomba et Compagne.

The THIRD object of my wishes, gentlemen, is the recognition of the independence of Hungary when the critical moment arrives. Your own declaration of independence proclaims the right of every nation to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which "the laws of nature and nature's God" entitle them. The political existence of your glorious republic is founded upon this principle, upon this right. Our nation stands upon the same ground: there is a striking resemblance between your cause and that of my country. On the 4th July, 1776, John Adams spoke thus in your Congress, "Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I am for this declaration. In the beginning we did not go so far as separation from the Crown, but 'there is a divinity which shapes our ends.'" These noble words were present to my mind on the 14th April, 1849, when I moved the forfeiture of the Crown by the Hapsburgs in the National Assembly of Hungary. Our condition was the same; and if there be any difference, I venture to say it is in favour of us. Your country, before this declaration, was not a self-consisting independent State. Hungary was. Through the lapse of a thousand years, through every vicissitude of this long period, while nations vanished and empires fell, the self-consisting independence of Hungary was never disputed, but was recognized by all powers of the earth, sanctioned by treaties made with the Hapsburg dynasty, at the era when this dynasty, by the freewill of my nation, which acted as one of two contracting parties, was invested with the kingly crown of Hungary. Even more, this independence of the kingdom was acknowledged to make a part of the international law of Europe, and was guaranteed not only by foreign European governments, such as Great Britain, but also by several of those once constitutional states which belonged formerly to the German, and after its dissolution, to the Austrian empire.

This independent condition of Hungary is clearly defined in one of our fundamental laws of 1791, in these words:—"Hungary is a free and independent kingdom, having its own self-consistent existence and constitution, and not subject[*] to any other nation or country in the world." This therefore was our ancient right. We were not dependent on, nor a part of, the Austrian empire, as your country was dependent on England. It was clearly defined that we owed to Austria nothing but good neighbourhood, and the only tie between us and Austria was, that we elected to be our kings the same dynasty which were also the sovereigns of Austria, and occupied the same line of hereditary succession as our kings; but by accepting this; our forefathers, with the consent of the King, again declared, that though Hungary accepts the dynasty as our hereditary kings, all the other franchises, rights, and laws of the nation shall remain in full power and intact; and our country shall not be governed like the other dominions of that dynasty, but according to our constitutionally established authorities. We could not belong to "the Austrian Empire," for that empire did not then as yet exist, while Hungary had already existed as a substantive kingdom for many centuries, and for some two hundred and eighty years under the government of that Hapsburgian dynasty. The Austrian Empire, as you know, was established only in 1806, when the Rhenish confederacy of Napoleon struck the deathblow of the German empire, of which Francis II. of Austria, was not hereditary but elected Emperor. That Hungary had belonged to the German empire is a thing which no man in the world ever imagined yet. It is only now that the Hapsburgian tyrant professes an intention to melt Hungary into the German Confederation; but you know this intention to be in so striking opposition to the European public law, that England and France solemnly protested against it, so that it is not carried out even to-day. The German Empire having died, its late Emperor Francis, also King of Hungary, chose to entitle himself Austrian Emperor, in 1806; but even in that fundamental charter he solemnly declared that Hungary and its annexed provinces are not intended to make, and will not make, a part of the Austrian Empire. Subsequently he entered with this empire into the German Confederation, but Hungary, as well as Lombardy and Venice, not making part of the Austrian empire, still remained separated, and were not received into the confederacy.

[Footnote *: In the original Latin, obnoxium, "not entangled, or compromised, with any other."]

The laws which we succeeded to carry in 1848, of course altered nothing in that old chartered condition of Hungary. We transformed the peasantry into freeholders, and abolished feudal incumbrances. We replaced the political privileges of aristocracy by the common liberty of the whole people; gave to the people at large representation in the legislature; transformed our municipalities into democratic corporations; introduced equality before the law for the whole people in rights and duties, and abolished the immunity of taxation which had been enjoyed by the class called Noble; secured equal religious liberty to all, secured liberty of the press and of association, provided for public gratuitous instruction of the whole people of every confession and of whatever tongue. In all this we did no wrong. All these were, as you see, internal reforms which did not at all interfere with our allegiance to the king and were carried lawfully in peaceful legislation with the king's own sanction. Besides this there was one other thing which was carried. We were formerly governed by a Board of Council, which had the express duty to govern according to our laws, and be responsible for doing so; but we found by long experience that a Corporation cannot really be responsible; and that this was the reason why the absolutist tendency of the dynasty succeeded in encroaching upon our liberty. So we replaced the Board of Council by Ministers; the empty responsibility of a Board by the individual responsibility of men—and the king consented to it. I myself was named by him Minister of the Treasury. That is all. But precisely here was the rub. The dynasty could not bear the idea that we would not give to its ambition the life sweat of our people; it was not contented with the 1,500,000 dollars which were generously appropriated to it yearly. It dreaded that it would be disabled in future from using our brave army, against our will, to crush the spirit of freedom in the world. Therefore it resorted to the most outrageous conspiracy, and attacked us by arms, and upon receiving a false report of a great victory this young usurper issued a proclamation declaring that Hungary shall no more exist—that its independence, its constitution, its very existence is abolished, and it shall be absorbed, like a farm or fold, into the Austrian Empire. To all this Hungary answered, "Thou shalt not exist, tyrant, but we will;" and we banished him, and issued the declaration of the deposition of his dynasty, and of our separate independence.

So you see, gentlemen, that there is a very great difference between your declaration and ours—it is in our favour. There is another difference; you declared your independence of the English crown when it was yet very doubtful whether you would be successful. We declared our independence of the Austrian crown only after we, in legitimate defence, were already victorious; when we had actually beaten the pretender, and had thus already proved that we had strength to become an independent power. One thing more: our declaration of independence was not only overwhelmingly voted in our Congress, but every county, every municipality, solemnly declared its consent and adherence to it; so it became sanctioned, not by mere representatives, but by the whole nation positively, and by the fundamental institutions of Hungary. And so it still remains. Nothing has since happened on the part of the nation contrary to this declaration. One thing only happened,—a foreign power, Russia, came with its armed bondsmen, and, aided by treason, has overthrown us for a while. Now, I put the question before God and humanity to you, free sovereign people of America, can this violation of international law abolish the legitimate character of our declaration of independence? If not, then here I take my ground, because I am in this very manifesto entrusted with the charge of Governor of my fatherland. I have sworn, before God and my nation, to endeavour to maintain and secure this act of independence. And so may God the Almighty help me as I will—I will, until my nation is again in the condition to dispose of its government, which I confidently trust,—yea, more, I know,—will be republican. And then I retire to the humble condition of my former private life, equalling, in one thing at least, your Washington, not in merits, but in honesty. That is the only ambition of my life. Amen. Here, then, is my THIRD humble wish: that the people of the United States would, by all constitutional means of its wonted public life, declare that, acknowledging the legitimacy of our independence, it is anxious to greet Hungary amongst the independent powers of the earth, and invites the government of the United States to recognize this independence at the earliest convenient time. That is all. Let me see the principle announced: the rest may well be left to the wisdom of your government, with some confidence in my own respectful discretion also.

So much for the people of the United States, in its public and political capacity. But if that sympathy which I have the honour to meet with is really intended to become beneficial, there is one humble wish more which I entertain: it is a respectful appeal to generous feeling. Gentlemen, I would rather starve than rely, for myself and family, on foreign aid; but for my country's Freedom, I would not be ashamed to go begging from door to door. I have taken the advice of some kind friends whether it be lawful to express such a humble request, for I feel it an honourable duty neither to offend nor to evade your laws. I am told it is lawful. There are two means to see this my humble wish accomplished. The first is, by spontaneous subscription; the second is, by a loan. The latter may require private consultation in a narrower circle. As to subscriptions, the idea was brought home to my mind by a plain but very generous letter, which I had the honour to receive, and which I beg to read. It is as follows:—

CINCINNATI, O., Nov. 14, 1851.

M. LOUIS KOSSUTH, Governor of Hungary:—Sir—I have authorized the office of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company, in New York, to honour your draft on me for one thousand dollars. Respectfully yours, W. SMEAD.

I beg leave here publicly to return my most humble thanks to the gentleman, for his ample aid, and the delicate manner in which he offered it; and it came to my mind, that where one individual is ready to make such sacrifices to my country's cause, there may perhaps be many who would give their small share to it, if they were only apprised that it will be thankfully accepted, however small it may be. And it came to my mind, that millions of drops make an ocean, and the United States number many millions of inhabitants, all warmly attached to liberty. A million dollars, paid singly, would be to me far more precious than paid in one single draft; for it would practically show the sympathy of the people at large. Would I were so happy as your Washington was, when he also, for your glorious country's sake, in the hours of your need, called to France for money.

Sir, I have done. I came to your shores an exile: you have poured upon me the triumph of a welcome such as the world has never yet seen. And why? Because you took me for the representative of that principle of liberty which God has destined to become the common benefit of all humanity. It is glorious to see a free and mighty people so greet the principle of freedom, in the person of one who is persecuted and helpless. Be blessed for it! Your generous deed will be recorded; and as millions of Europe's oppressed nations will, even now, raise their thanksgiving to God for this ray of hope, which by this act you have thrown on the dark night of their fate; even so, through all posterity, oppressed men will look to your memory as to a token of God that there is a hope for freedom on earth, since there is a people like you to feel its worth and to support its cause.

* * * * *

VIII.—ON NATIONALITIES.

[Speech at the Banquet of the Press, New York.]

At this Banquet, Mr. Bryant, the poet, presided, and numerous speeches were delivered, among which was one by the well-known author, Mr. Bancroft, lately ambassador in England. This gentleman closed by saying, that when the illustrious Governor of Hungary uttered the solemn truth, that Europe had no hope but in republican institutions—that was a renunciation to the world that the Austrian monarchy was sick and dying, and that vitality remained in the people alone. And as he uttered that truth, not his own race only—not the Magyars only, but every nationality of Hungary, all the fifteen or twenty millions within its limits—all cried out that he was the representative of their convictions—that he was the man of their affections, that he was the utterer of truths on which they relied.

Our guest crosses the Atlantic, and he is received; and what is the great fact that constitutes his reception? He finds there the military arranged to do him honour. And among those who, on that day, bore arms, were men of every tongue that is spoken between the steppes of Tartary, eastward, towards the Pacific ocean. The great truth that was pronounced on that occasion—I do not fear to utter it—was, let who will cavil, la solidarite des peuples—the sublime truth that all men are brothers—that all nations, too, are brethren, and are responsible for one another.

The chairman also spoke eloquently in introducing the third toast, which was briefly, LOUIS KOSSUTH. As Mr. Bryant pronounced his name, Kossuth rose, and was received with multifarious demonstrations of enthusiasm. At last he proceeded as follows:—

Gentlemen.—I know that in your hands the Independent Republican Press is a weapon to defend truth and justice, a torch lit at the fire of immortality, a spark of which glisters in every man's soul and proves its divine origin: and as the cause of my country is just and true, and wants nothing but light to secure support from every friend of freedom, every noble-minded man,—for this reason I address you with joy, gentlemen.

Though it is sorrowful to see how Austrian intrigues, distorting plain open history into a tissue of falsehood, find their way even into the American press, I am proud and happy that the immense majority of you, conscious of your noble vocation and instinct with the generosity of freedom, protect our sacred rights against the dark plots of tyranny. Your Independent Press has likewise proved that its freedom is the most efficient protection even against calumny; a far better one than restrictive prevention, which condemns the human intellect to eternal minority.

I address you, gentlemen, with the greater joy, because through you I have the invaluable benefit of reaching the whole of your great, glorious, and free people.

Eighty years ago the immortal Franklin's own press was almost the only one in the colonies: now you have above three thousand newspapers, with a circulation of five millions of copies. I am told that the journals of New York State alone exceed in number those of all the rest of the world outside of your great Union, and that the circulation of the newspapers of this city alone nearly reaches that of the whole empire of Great Britain! But, what is more,—I boldly declare that, except in the United States, there is scarcely anywhere a practical freedom of the press. Indeed, concerning Norway I am not quite aware. But throughout the European continent you know how the press is fettered. In France, under nominally republican government, all the fruits of victorious revolutions are nipt by the blasting grip of centralized power,—legislative and administrative omnipotence. The independence of the French press is crushed; the government cannot bear the free word of public opinion; and in a republic, the shout "Vive la republique" is become almost a crime. This is a mournful sight, but is an efficient warning against centralization. It is chiefly Great Britain which boasts of a free press; and assuredly in one sense the freedom is almost unlimited: for I saw placards with the printer's name stating that Queen Victoria is no lawful queen, and all those who rule ought to be hanged; but men only laughed at the foolish extravagance. Nevertheless, I hope the generous people of Great Britain will not be offended when I say that their press is not practically free. Its freedom is not real, for it is not a common benefit to all: it is but a particular benefit, that is, a privilege. Taxation there forbids the use of newspapers to the poor. Absence of taxation enables your journals to be published at one tenth, or even one twentieth, of the English price: hence several of your daily papers reach from thirty to sixty thousand readers, while in England one paper alone is on this scale,—the London 'Times,' which circulates thirty thousand, perhaps. Such being the condition of your press, in addressing you I address a whole people; nor only so, but a whole intelligent people.

The wide diffusion of intelligence among you is in fact proved by the immense circulation of your journals. It is not solely the cheap price which renders your press a common benefit, and not a mere privilege to the richer; but it is the universality of public instruction. It is glorious to know that in this flourishing young city alone nearly a hundred thousand children receive public education annually. Do you know, gentlemen, what I consider to be your most glorious monument? if it be, as I have read, that, when your engineers draw geometrical lines to guide your wandering squatters in the solitudes where virgin Nature adores her Lord, they place on every thirty-sixth square of the district marked out to be a township, a modest wooden pole with the glorious mark, POPULAR EDUCATION. This is your proudest monument. In my opinion, not your geographical situation, not your material power, not the bold enterprizing spirit of your people, is the chief guarantee of their future; but the universality of education: for a whole people, once become intelligent, never can consent not to be free. You will always be willing to be free, and you are great and powerful enough to be as good as your will.

My humble prayers in my country's cause I address to your entire nation: but you, gentlemen, are the engineers through whom my cause must reach them. It is therefore highly gratifying to me to see, not isolated men, but the powerful complex of the great word PRESS, granting me this important manifestation of generous sentiment. I beg you to consider, that whatever and wherever I speak, is always spoken to the press; and for all the imperfections of my language let me plead for your indulgence, as one of your professional colleagues: for indeed such I have been.

Yes, gentlemen; I commenced my public career as a journalist. You, under your happy institutions, know not the torment of writing with hands fettered by an Austrian censor. To sit at the desk, with a heart full of the necessity of the moment, a conscience stirred with righteous feeling, a mind animated with convictions and principles, and a whole soul warmed by a patriot's fire;—to see before your eyes the scissors of the censor ready to lop your ideas, maim your arguments, murder your thoughts, render vain your laborious days and sleepless nights;—to know that the people will judge you, not by what you have felt, thought, written, but by what the censor will let you say;—to perceive that the prohibition has no rule or limit but the arbitrary pleasure of a man who is doomed by profession to be a coward and a fool;—oh! his little scissors suspended over one are a worse misery than the sword of Damocles. Oh! to go on, day by day, in such a work of Sisyphus, believe me, is no small sacrifice of any intelligent man to fatherland and humanity. And this is the present condition of the press, not in Hungary only, but in all countries cursed by Austrian rule. Indeed, our recent reforms gave freedom of the press, not to my fatherland only, but indirectly to Vienna, Prague, Lemberg; in a word, to the whole empire of Austria and this must ensure your sympathy to us. Contrariwise, the interference of Russia has crushed the press on the whole European continent. Freedom of the press is incompatible with the preponderance of Russia, and with the very existence of the Austrian dynasty, the sworn enemy of every liberal thought. This must engage your generous support to sweep away those tyrants, and to raise liberty where now foul oppression rules.

Some time back there appeared in certain New York papers systematic falsehoods, which went so far as to state that we, the Hungarians, had struggled for oppression, while it was the Austrian dynasty which stood up for liberty! Such effrontery astonishes even one who has seen Russian treacheries. We may be misrepresented, scorned, jeered at, censured. Our martyrs, whose blood cries for revenge, may be laughed at as fools. Heroes, who will command the veneration of history, may be called Don Quixotes. But that among freemen and professed republicans even the honour of an unfortunate nation, in its most mournful suffering, should not be sacred,—that is indeed a sorrowful page in human history.

You cannot expect me to enter into a special refutation of this compound of calumnies. I may reserve it for my pen. But inasmuch as the basis of all the calumnies lies in general ignorance concerning the relation of the Magyars to other races of Hungary, permit me to speak on the question of NATIONALITIES, a false theory of which plays so mischievous a part in the destinies of Europe. No word has been more misrepresented than the word Nationality, which is become in the hands of absolutism a dangerous instrument against liberty.

Let me ask you, gentlemen: are you, the people of the United States, a nation, or not? Have you a national government, or not? You answer, yes: and yet you are not all of one blood, nor of one language. Millions of you speak English; others French, German, Italian, Spanish, Danish, and even several Indian dialects: yet you are a nation. Neither your central government, nor those of separate states, nor your municipalities, legislate or administer in every language spoken among you; yet you have a national government.

Now, suppose many of you were struck with the curse of Babel, and exclaimed, "This union is an oppression! our laws, our institutions, our state and city governments, are an oppression! What is union to us? what are rights? what avail laws? what is freedom? what is geography? what is community of interests to us? They are all nothing; LANGUAGE is everything. Let us divide the Union, divide the states, divide the very cities, divide the whole territory, according to languages. Let the people of every language become a separate state: for every nation has a right to national life, and to us, the language, and nothing else, is the nationality. Unless the state is founded upon language, its organization is tyranny."

What then would become of your great Union? What of your constitution, the glorious legacy of your greatest man? What of those immortal stars on mankind's moral sky? What would become of your country itself, whence the spirit of freedom soars into light, and rising hope irradiates the future of humanity? What would become of this grand, mighty complex of your republic, should her integrity ever be rent by the fanatics of language? Where now she walks among the rising temples of liberty and happiness, she soon would tread upon ruins, and mourn over human hopes. But happy art then, free nation of America, founded on the only solid basis,—liberty! a principle steady as the world, eternal as the truth, universal for every climate, for every time, like Providence. Tyrants are not in the midst of you to throw the apple of discord and raise hatred in this national family, hatred of races, that curse of humanity, that venomous ally of despotism. Glorious it is to see the oppressed of diverse countries,—diverse in language, history, habits,—wandering to these shores, and becoming members of this great nation, regenerated by the principle of common liberty.

If language alone makes a nation, then there is no great nation on earth: for there is no country whose population is counted by millions, but speaks more than one language. No! It is not language only. Community of interests, of rights, of duties, of history, but chiefly community of institutions; by which a population, varying perhaps in tongue and race, is bound together through daily intercourse in the towns, which are the centres and home of commerce and industry:—besides these, the very mountain-ranges, the system of rivers and streams,—the soil, the dust of which is mingled with the mortal remains of those ancestors who bled on the same field, for the same interests, the common inheritance of glory and of woe, the community of laws and institutions, common freedom or common oppression:—all this enters into the complex idea of Nationality.

That this is instinctively felt by the common sense of the people, nowhere is more manifestly shown than at this very moment in my native land. Hungary was declared by Francis Joseph of Austria no more to exist as a Nation, no more as a State. It was and is put under martial law. Strangers, aliens to our laws and history as well as to our tongue, rule now, where our fathers lived and our brothers bled. To be a Hungarian is become almost a crime in our own native land. Well: to justify before the world the extinction of Hungary, the partition of its territory, and the reincorporating of the dissected limbs into the common body of servitude, the treacherous dynasty was anxious to show that the Hungarians are in a minority in their own land. They hoped that intimidation and terrorism would induce even the very Magyars to disavow their language and birth. They ordered a census of races to be made. They performed it with the iron rule of martial law; and dealt so arbitrarily that thousands of women and men, who professed to be Magyars, who professed not to know any other language than the Magyar, were, notwithstanding all their protestation, put down as Sclaves, Serbs, Germans, or Wallachians, because their names had not quite a Hungarian sound. And still what was the issue of this malignant plot? That of the twelve millions of inhabitants of Hungary proper, the Magyars turned out to be more than eight millions, some two millions more than we know the case really is. The people instinctively felt that the tyrant had the design through the pretext of language to destroy the existence of the complex nation, and it met the tyrannic plot as if it answered, "We are, and must be, a nation; and if the tyrant takes language only for the mark of nationality, then we are all Magyars." And mark well, gentlemen! this happened, not under my governorship, but under the rule of Austrian martial law. The Cabinet of Vienna became furious; it thought of a new census, but prudent men told them that a new census would give the whole twelve millions as Magyars; thus no new census was taken.

But on the European continent there unhappily has grown up a school, which bound the idea of nationality to the idea of language only, and joined political pretensions to it. There are some who advocate the theory that existing States must cease, and the territories of the world be divided anew by languages and nations, separated by tongues.

You are aware that this idea, if it were not impracticable, would be a curse to humanity—a deathblow to civilization and progress, and throw back mankind by centuries. It would be an eternal source of strife and war: for there is a holy, almost religious tie, by which man's heart is bound to his home, and no man would ever consent to abandon his native land only because his neighbours speak another language than himself. His heart claims that sacred spot where the ashes of his fathers lie—where his own cradle stood—where he dreamed the happy dreams of youth, and where nature itself bears a mark of his manhood's toil. The idea were worse than the old migration of nations was. Nothing but despotism would rise out of such a fanatical strife of all mankind.

And really it is very curious. Nobody of the advocates of this mischievous theory is willing to yield to it for himself—but others he desires to yield to it. Every Frenchman becomes furious when his Alsace is claimed to Germany by the right of language—or the borders of his Pyrenees to Spain—but there are some amongst the very men who feel revolted at this idea, who claim of Germany that it should yield up large territory because one part of the inhabitants speak a different tongue, and would claim from Hungary to divide its territory, which God himself has limited by its range of mountains and the system of streams, as also by all the links of a community of more than a thousand years; to cut off our right hand, Transylvania, and to give it up to the neighbouring Wallachia, to cut out like Shylock one pound of our very breast—the Banat—and the rich country between the Danube and Theiss—to augment by it Turkish Serbia and so forth. It is the new ambition of conquest, but an easy conquest not by arms, but by language.

So much I know, at least, that this absurd idea cannot, and will not, be advocated by any man here in the United States; which did not open its hospitable shores to humanity, and greet the flocking millions of emigrants with the right of a citizen, in order that the Union may be cut to pieces, and even your single States divided into new-framed, independent countries according to languages.

And do you know, gentlemen, whence this absurd theory sprang up on the European Continent? It was the idea of Panslavismus—that is the idea that the mighty stock of Sclavonic races is called to rule the world, as once the Roman did. It was a Russian plot—it was a dark design to make out of national feelings a tool to Russian preponderance over the world.

Perhaps you are not aware of the historical origin of this plot. It was after that most immortal act of tyranny, the third division of Poland, that the chance of fate brought the Prince Czartorinsky, to the Court of Catherine of Russia. He subsequently became minister of Alexander the Czar. It was in this quality that, with the noble aim to benefit his fallen fatherland, he claimed from the young Czar the restoration of Poland, suggesting for equivalent the idea of Russian preponderance over all nations of the old Sclavonic race. I believe his intention was sincere; I believe he did not mean to overlook those natural borders, which, besides the affinity of language, God himself has drawn between the nations. But he forgot that he might be no longer able to master the spirits which he would raise, and that an undesired fanaticism might force sundry fantastical shapes into his framework, by which the frame itself must burst in pieces. He forgot that Russian preponderance cannot be propitious to liberty; he forgot that it cannot be favourable even to the development of the Sclave nationality, because Sclavonic nations would by this idea be degraded into mere Russians, that is, absorbed by despotism.

Russia got hold of the fanciful idea very readily! May be that young Alexander had in the first moment noble inclinations; the warm heart of youth is susceptible to noble instincts. It is not common in history to find young princes so premature in tyranny as Francis-Joseph of Austria. But a few years of power were sufficient to extinguish every spark of noble sentiment, if there was one, in Alexander's heart. Upon the throne of the Romanoffs the man is soon absorbed by the Autocrat. The traditional policy of St. Petersburg is not an atmosphere in which the plant of regeneration can grow, and the fanciful idea became soon a weapon of oppression and of Russian preponderance—Russia availed herself of the idea of Panslavism to break Turkey down, and to make an obedient satellite out of Austria. Turkey still withstands her, but Austria has fallen into the snare. Russia sent out its agents, its moneys, its venomous secret diplomacy; it whispered to the Sclave nations about hatred against foreign dominion—about independence of religion connected with nationality under its own supremacy; but chiefly it spoke to them of Panslavism under the protectorate of the Czar. The millions of his large empire also, all oppressed—all in servitude—all a tool to his ambition; them too he flattered with the idea of becoming rulers of the world, in order that they might not think of liberty: he knew that man's breast cannot maintain in ascendancy two great passions at once. He gave them ambition and excluded the spirit of liberty. This ambition got hold of all the Sclave nations through Europe; so Panslavism became the source of a movement, not of nationality, but of the dominion of languages. That word "language" replaced every other sentiment, and so it became a curse to the development of liberty.

Only one part of the Sclavonic races saw the matter clear, and withstood the current of this dark Russian plot. These were the Polish Democrats—the only ones who understood that to fight for liberty is to fight for nationality. Therefore they fought in our ranks, and were willing to flock in thousands upon thousands to aid us in our struggle; but we could not arm them, so I would not accept them. We ourselves had a hundredfold more hands ready to fight than arms—and there was nobody in the world to supply us with arms.

Now let me see what was the condition of Hungary under these circumstances.

Eight hundred and fifty years ago, when the first King of Hungary, St. Stephen, becoming Christian himself, converted the Hungarian nation to Christianity, it was the Roman Catholic clergy of Germany whom he invited to assist him in his pious work. They did assist him, but the assistance, as happens with human nature, was accompanied by some worldly designs. Hungary offered a wide field to the ambition of foreigners, and they persuaded the King to adopt a curious principle, which he laid down in his last Will and Testament—that it is not good for the people of a country to be but of one extraction and speak but one tongue. A second rule was, to adopt the language of the Church—Latin—for the language of government, legislature, law and all public proceedings. This is the origin of that fatality, that Democracy did not grow up for centuries in Hungary. The public proceedings being in Latin, the laws given in Latin, public instruction carried on in Latin, the great mass of the people, who were agriculturists, did not partake in any of this; and the few who in the ranks of the people partook in it, became severed and alienated from the people's interests. This dead Latin language, introduced into the public life of a living nation, was the most mischievous barrier against liberty. The first blow to it was stricken by the Reformation. The Protestant Church, introducing the national language into the divine services, became a medium to the development of the spirit of liberty, and so our ancient struggles for religious liberty were always connected with the maintenance of political rights. But still, Latin public life went on down to 1780. At that time, Joseph of Hapsburg, aiming at centralization, replaced the Latin by the German tongue. This roused the national spirit of Hungary; and our forefathers seeing that the dead Latin language, excluding the people from the public concerns, cannot be propitious to liberty, and anxious to oppose the design of the Viennese Cabinet to Germanize Hungary, and so melt it into the common absolutism of the Austrian dynasty—I say, anxious to oppose this design by a cheerful public life of the people itself, from the year 1790 began to pass laws in the direction that by-and-by, step by step, the Latin language should be replaced in the public proceedings of the Legislature and of the Government by a living language familiar to the people itself. And what was more natural, than that, being in the necessity to choose one language, they choose the Magyar? the more so, since those who spoke Hungarian were not only more than those who spoke any one of the other languages, but were if not more than, at least equal to, all those who spoke several other languages together.

Be so kind to mark well, gentlemen; no other language was oppressed—the Hungarian language was enforced upon nobody. Wherever another language was in use even in public life; of whatever Church—whatever popular school—whatever community—it was not replaced by the Hungarian language. It was only the dead Latin, which by-and-by became eliminated from the diplomatic public life, and replaced by the living Hungarian in Hungary.

In Hungary, I say. Gentlemen, be pleased to mark: never was this measure extended into the municipal life of Croatia and Sclavonia, which, though belonging for 800 years to Hungary, still were not Hungary, but a race with distinct local institutions.

The Croatians and Sclavonians themselves repeatedly urged us in the common parliament to afford them opportunity to learn the Hungarian language, that, having the right, they might also enjoy the benefit, of being employed in the government offices of our common Hungary. This opportunity was afforded to them, but nobody was forced to make use of it; while neither with their own municipal and public life, nor with the domestic, social, religious life, of any other people in Hungary itself, did the Hungarian language ever interfere. It replaced only the Latin language, which no people spoke, and which was contrary to liberty, because it excluded the millions from public life. Willing to give freedom to the people, we expelled that Latin tongue; which was an obstacle to its future. We did what every other nation in the old world has done, clearing by it the way to the universal liberty.

Your country is happy even in that respect. Being a young nation, you did not find the Latin tongue in your way when you established this Republic; so you did not want a law to eject it from your public life. You have a living language, which is spoken in your Congress, in your State Legislatures, and by which your Government rules. It is not the native language of your whole people—and yet no man in the Union takes it for an oppression that legislature and government is not carried on in every language spoken in the United States.

And one thing I have to mention yet. This replacing of the Latin language by the Hungarian was not a work of our recent measures, it was done before, step by step, from 1791. When we carried in 1848 our democratic reforms, and gave political, social, civil, and full religious freedom to the whole people, we extended our cares to the equal protection of every tongue and race, affording to all equal right to aid out of the public funds, for the moral, religious, and scientific development in churches and in schools. Nay, we extended this even to political affairs, sanctioning the free use of every tongue, in the municipalities and communal corporations, as well as in the administration of justice. The promulgation of the laws in every tongue, the right to petition and to claim justice in each man's tongue, the duty of the government to answer in the same, all this was granted, and thus far more was done in that respect also, than any other nation ever accorded to the claims of tongues; by far more than the United States ever did, though there is no country in the world where so many different languages are spoken as here.

It is therefore the most calumnious misrepresentation to say that the Hungarians struggled for the dominion of their own race. No; we struggled for civil, political, social, and religious freedom, common to all, against Austrian despotism. We struggled for the great principle of self-government against centralization; because centralization is absolutism; and is inconsistent with constitutional rights. Austria has given the very proof of it. The House of Austria had never the intention to grant constitutional life to the nations of Europe. I will prove that on another occasion. But the friends of the Hapsburgs say, it has granted a constitution—in March, 1849. Well, where is that Constitution now? It was not only never executed, but it was, three months ago, formally withdrawn. Even the word Ministry is blotted out from the Dictionary of the Austrian government! Schwarzenberg is again House, Court, and State Chancellor, as Metternich was; only Metternich ruled not with the iron rule of martial law over the whole empire of Austria as Schwarzenberg does. Metternich encroached upon the constitutional rights of Hungary, Transylvania, Croatia, and Slavonia. Schwarzenberg has abolished them, and young Francis-Joseph has melted all the nations together into common bondage, where the promised equality of nationalities is carried out most literally, to be sure, for they are all equally oppressed, and all are equally ruled by absolutist principles and by the German language. And why was that illusory constitution withdrawn? Because it was a lie from the beginning; an impossibility. It was founded on the principle of centralization. It centralized thirteen different nations, which had had no political history in common, except to have groaned under Austrian rule. Under such circumstances to have a common life was an absurdity augmented by deceit.

I cannot exhaust this vast topic in one speech. We want Republican institutions, so founded on self-government everywhere, that the people themselves may be sovereign everywhere. This is the cause, for which I humbly request your protecting aid. It is the cause of oppressed Europe. It is the cause of Germany, bleeding under some thirty petty tyrants who lean on that league of despots, the basis of which is Petersburg. It is the cause of fair, but unfortunate Italy, which in so many respects is now dear to our heart. We have a common enemy; so we are brothers in arms for freedom and independence. I know how Italy is situated; and I dare confidently to declare, there is no hope for Italy, but in that great republican party, at the head of which Mazzini stands. It has nothing to do with communistical schemes, or the French doctrines of Socialism: but it wills, that Italy be free and republican. Whither else could Italy look for freedom and independence, if not to that party which Mazzini leads? To the King of Naples perhaps? Let me be silent about that execrated man. Or to the dynasty of Sardinia and Piedmont? This professes to be constitutional; yet it captures those poor Hungarian soldiers who seek an asylum in Piedmont,—captures, and delivers them to Austria to be shot: and they are shot, increasing the number of those 3742 martyrs whom Radetzky murdered on the scaffold during three short years. The House of Savoy is become the blood-hound of Austria against fugitive Hungarians.

Gentlemen, the generous sympathy of public opinion here (God be blessed!) is strongly aroused to the wrongs and sufferings of Hungary. I look to your aid to keep that sympathy alive,—to urge the formation of societies to collect funds and support a loan,—to move in favour of the propositions which I had the honour to express at the Corporation Banquet. Consider not the weakness of my address, but only the strength of my cause; and following the generous impulse of your republican hearts, accord to it the protective aid of the free independent Press. Then I may yet see fulfilled the noble words of your Chairman's poetry:—

Truth crush'd to earth shall rise again; The eternal years of God are hers; But error, wounded, writhes in pain, And dies among.... (let me add, Sir,).. with all her worshippers.

In the course of the same evening, one of the toasts drunk was, "To the Political Exiles of Europe," to which Michael Doheny, Esq., an Irish exile, first responded, in a speech full of animosity against England. After him Mr. DANA made the following speech, which may be a useful comment on that of Kossuth.

My friend, who has taken his seat, spoke in his own right as a political exile from Ireland, a country than which none has more deeply suffered from the woes of foreign domination. I speak here by no such title. And yet if any man may without presumption claim to speak in behalf of the political exiles and rebels against tyranny, of several nations, of all nations, indeed it is an American. For he is not only himself the heir of a nation of rebels, but his whole lineage is cosmopolitan, and he may boast that he is akin to all the races of Europe. We have no exclusive origin, thank God! In the veins of our country there flows the blood of a thousand tribes, just as our language is made up of a thousand idioms. We hear a good deal from certain quarters about the greatness of races, the practical energy of this race, the artistic genius of the other, and the great intellectual qualities of another. America disproves of all these dogmas, and establishes in their stead the higher principle that all races are capable of a noble development under noble institutions. Give freedom to the Celt, the Slavon, or the Italian, or whatever other people; give them freedom and independence; establish among them the great principle of local self-government, and the earth does not more surely revolve in its orbit than they will in due time ripen into all the excellence and all the dignity of humanity. Men make and control institutions, but institutions in their turn make men. And if a people under Providence are endowed with institutions that have given free play and healthy growth to the most useful and admirable powers of man, it is not for that people to boast of its race as better than other races, and thank God, like the Pharisee, that it is not as other men. No, it is for that people to see the cause of its good fortune in its institutions, and to remember that it has responsibilities, and that it owes a helping hand to others that honestly struggle for such benefits. Especially is this the case with the American people, made up as they are from all races, and absorbing yearly as they do so much of the best blood of all. America has thriven and grown strong upon the misfortunes of Europe. Our toast specially refers to the political exiles of Europe, but the truth is, that all the exiles of that continent are political. Every shipload of emigrants that seeks our shores has been banished by political causes; for had the institutions of their country been such as to secure to them freedom and the prosperity of freedom, do you think they would have forsaken their homes and the homes of their fathers to seek new homes beyond the ocean? We owe then to Europe a debt for all this population and power that it has flung upon our shores, and how else can we pay it except by doing what we can to help the European nations to gain their freedom and form institutions under which there will be no political exiles? For one I go for paying that debt, according to our means and opportunities. I saw the other day in the streets a large body of Europeans of various nations, marching along with a red flag. In Paris, or Rome, or Vienna, such a procession would have been impossible, or if it could have got into the streets, it would have been assailed by the soldiery, and its members either shot down or flung into prison. Yet in New York they went peacefully on their way, made their demonstration in all freedom, and no trouble or harm came of it. Very many of those men were political exiles. And why? Not because they were bad men, for here in New York nothing could be more quiet and appropriate than their behaviour. But they prove, that from whatever country there are political exiles, there the institutions are bad. I know we are in the habit of hearing about Red Republicans and Socialists as men who are dangerous on account of their opinions, and who have deserved to be banished from France, from Germany, from Italy. I will not now say anything about those opinions, but this I do say, that a country where all opinions and every opinion cannot be held and freely discussed, has a bad system of government and bad institutions. It is not the men nor their opinions that stand condemned, but the government and institutions. Therefore it is that we must sympathize with such exiles, without regard to their opinions, and pray earnestly and labour earnestly for the elevation of all countries to freedom.

* * * * *

IX.—ON MILITARY INSTITUTIONS.

[Speech to the New York Militia, December 16th.]

The First Division, consisting of four brigades, was presented to Kossuth in the Castle Garden. Major-General Sandford then proceeded to address Kossuth as follows:—

Governor Kossuth:—It is with no ordinary feeling of gratification that I have this opportunity of addressing you, in the name and on behalf of the citizen soldiers of the city of New York. With an unbounded admiration of your devotion to the great cause of constitutional liberty, and of that indomitable firmness with which you have persevered under all circumstances in sustaining it, they were most happy to testify, upon your arrival in our city, their sense of your services in that cause which they are organized to sustain, and now they are again assembled to greet you with a heart-felt welcome, and to listen to the voice of one whom they have learned to respect, to love, and to venerate. The body of men now presented to you, about five thousand in number, represents the First Division of New York State Militia. The division enrols about fifty thousand men in this city and upon Staten Island, and the law of our State only imposes upon the general body the duty of appearing armed and equipped once in each year, at an annual parade appointed for that purpose. But out of this large number the law provides for the organization of those who are willing and desirous to acquire that degree of military science, to fit them, upon any sudden emergency of domestic insurrection or of foreign aggression, to sustain the laws and support the institutions of our country. They uniform and equip themselves at their own expense, and they serve without pay, satisfied with the consciousness that they are discharging a duty to their country, and qualifying themselves to sustain the honour of our flag and the freedom won by our fathers. They represent fairly all classes of our citizens. Our hard-working and ingenious mechanic—our enterprising and energetic merchant—our intelligent professional men—our grocers, butchers, bakers, and cartmen, are all to be found in our ranks, exhibiting in public spirit, energy, and intelligence, a body of men not to be surpassed, even in this country of active enterprise and widely diffused intelligence. It is amongst such men, devoted to such a service, that, you may feel well assured, the intelligence of the noble struggle of the Hungarian people for their rights and liberties was received with the deepest feeling, and the progress of your contest watched with the most earnest solicitude. They exulted in your victories as the triumph of freedom over oppression and despotism—they saw in your almost superhuman energies and dauntless courage the hearts of a people determined to be free. They rejoiced that a great nation, with kindred principles and institutions, was established as an independent republic amidst the despotisms of Europe. But, alas! all their hopes and anticipations were blasted. Such an example amidst the down-trodden subjects of the arbitrary governments of Europe, was viewed with alarm by their despotic rulers, and the enslaved hordes of the imperial Russian were hurled upon the free sons of Hungary. Even with such mighty odds, we should not have despaired for Hungary, had she been afforded but one year of peaceful preparation to complete her organization and develop her resources. Her gallant sons upon her own soil, and battling for their homes, their altars, and their independence, would have been unconquerable. But treason and despotism combined, triumphed over freedom. Then commenced a scene of horrors and cruelty, such as despots only and the minions of despots can perpetrate.