Select Speeches of Kossuth · Chapter 18Preface to Kossuth's Speeches. (18)
This chapter is not translated yet. You are reading the original.
"When vice prevails and impious man bears sway The post of honour is a private station."
So was it even in my own dear fatherland. Before our unfortunate but glorious revolution of 1848, the principle of royalty had so much spoiled the nature and envenomed the character of public office, that (of course except those who derived their authority by election—which we for our municipal life conserved amongst all the corruption of European royalty through centuries) no patriot accepted an office in the government: to have accepted one was to have resigned patriotism.
It was one of the brightest principles of our murdered Revolution—that public office was restored to the place of civic virtue, and opened to patriotism, by being raised from the abject situation of a tool of oppression, to the honourable position of serving the country well. Alas! that bright day was soon overpowered by the gloomy clouds of despotism, brought back to our sunny sky by the freezing gale of Russian violence. And on the continent of Europe there is night again. There is scarcely one country where the wishes and the will of the people are reflected in the government. There is no government which can say:
"My voice is the echo of the people's voice—I say what my people feels; I proclaim what my people wills; I am the embodiment of his principles, and not the controller of his opinion: the people and myself—we are one."
No, on the continent of Europe people and governments are two hostile camps. What immense mischief, pregnant with oppression and with nameless woe, is encompassed within the circle of this single fact!
How different the condition of America! It is not men who rule, but the law; and law is obeyed, because the people is respecting the general will by respecting the law. Public office is a place of honour, because it is the field for patriotic devotion. Governments have not the arrogant pretension to be the masters of the people; but have the proud glory to be its faithful servants. A public officer ceases not to be a citizen; he has doubly the character of a citizen, by sharing in and by executing the people's will. And whence this striking difference? It is because the civilization of America is founded upon the principle of Democracy. It was born when Royalty declined, and Republicanism rose. Hence the delightful view, not less instructive than interesting, that here in America, instead of the clashing dissonance between the words "government" and "people" we see them melting into one accord of harmony.
Thus here the public opinion of the people never can fail to be a direct rule for the government, and reciprocally the word of the government has the weight of a fact by the people's support. When your government speaks, it is the people which speaks.
Sir, I most humbly thank your Excellency, that you have been pleased to afford to me the benefit of hearing and seeing that delightful as well as happy harmony between the people and the government of the State of Indiana, in the support of that noble and just cause which I plead, on the issue of which, not the future of my country only depends, but together with it, the future condition of all those parts of our globe which are confined within the boundaries of Christian civilization, which, be sure of it, gentlemen, in the ultimate issue, will have the same fate.
Sir, it is not without reason, that at Indianapolis in particular,—and to your Excellency, the truly faithful, the high-minded, and the deservedly popular Chief Magistrate of this Commonwealth, I speak that word. It is not the first time that your Excellency, surrounded as now, has spoken as the honoured organ of the public opinion of Indiana. It is not yet two years since your Excellency did the same on the occasion of a visit of the favourite son of Kentucky, Governor Crittenden. I well remember the topic of your eloquence. It was the solicitude of Indiana in regard to the glorious Union of these Republics. May God preserve it for ever! But precisely because you, the favourite son of Indiana and the honoured representatives of the sovereign people of Indiana—in one accord of perfect harmony esteem the Gordian knot of the Union above all, allow me to say once more, that if the United States permit the principle of non-interference to be blotted out from the code of nations on earth, foreign interference mingling with some domestic discord, perhaps with that which two years ago called forth your patriotic solicitude for the Union; yes, foreign interference mingling with some of your domestic discords, will be the Alexander who will cut asunder the Gordian knot of your Union, in this our present century.
Republics exist upon principles: they are secure only when they act upon principles. He who does not accept a principle, asserted by another, will not long enjoy the benefit of it himself; and nations always perish by their own sin. Oh may those whom your united people entrusted with the noble care to be guardians of your Union—be pleased to consider that truth ere it be too late.
Sir, to the State of Indiana I am in many respects particularly obliged. True, I have had invitations to visit many other States, but the invitation from the State of Indiana was first received. Please to accept my warmest thanks. I have seen in other States a harmony between the people and the government, but nowhere has the Governor of a State condescended to represent the people in a public welcome, nowhere stepped out as the orator of the people's sympathy and its sentiment. I most humbly thank you for this honour.
In Maryland, the Governor introduced me to the Legislature. In Pennsylvania the chief Magistrate was the organ of a common welcome of the Legislature and Citizens. In Massachusetts he took the lead as the people's elect in recommending my principles to the Legislature—and in Ohio the chief Magistrate, by accepting the Presidency of the Association of the friends of Hungary, became generally the executive of the people's practical sympathy, which so magnanimously responded to the many political manifestations of its Representatives in the Legislature.
Let me hope, sir, that as you have been generously pleased to be the interpreter of Indiana's welcome and sympathy, you will also not refuse to become the Chief Executive Magistrate to the practical development of the same.
I may cordially thank, in the name of my cause, the people of Indiana, its Governor, and Representatives, for the high honour of the Legislature's invitation, and of this public welcome.
* * * * *
[Speech at Louisville, March 6th.]
At the Court House, Louisville, Kossuth was addressed by Bland Ballard, Esq., and replied as follows:
Whatever be the immediate issue of that discussion about foreign policy, which now so eminently occupies public attention throughout the United States, from the Capitol and White-house at Washington down to the lonely farms of your remotest territories, one fact I have full reason to take for sure, and that is: That when the trumpet-sound of national resurrection is once borne over the waves of the Atlantic announcing to you that nations have risen to assert those rights to which they are called by nature and nature's God—when the roaring of the first cannon-shot announces that the combat is begun which has to decide which principle is to rule over the Christian world—absolutism or national sovereignty—there is no power on earth which could induce the people of the United States to remain inactive and indifferent spectators of that great struggle, in which the future of the Christian world—yes, the future of the United States themselves is to be decided. The people of the United States will not remain indifferent and inactive spectators and will not authorize, will not approve, any policy of indifference. You yourself have told me so, sir.
In the position of every considerable country there is a necessity of a certain course, to adopt which cannot be avoided, and may be almost called destiny. The duty as well as the wisdom of statesmen consists in the ability to steer, in time, the vessel into that course, which, if they neglect to do in time, the price will be higher and the profit less.
There is scarcely anything which has more astonished me than the fact—that, for the last thirty-seven years, almost every Christian nation has shared the great fault of not caring much about what are called foreign matters, foreign policy. Precisely the great nations, England, France, America, which might have regulated the course of their governments for a very considerable period, abandoned almost entirely that part of their public concerns, which with great nations is the most important of all, because it regulates the position of the country in its great national capacity. The slightest internal interest was discussed publicly and regulated previously by the nation, before the government had to execute it; but, as to the most important interest—the national position of the country and its relations to the world, Secret Diplomacy, a fatality of mankind, stepped in, and the nations had to accept the consequences of what was already done, though they subsequently reproved it. In England, I four months ago, avowed that all the interior questions together cannot equal in importance the exterior; there is summed up the future of Britain: and if the people of England do not cut short the secrecy of diplomacy—if it do not in time take this all absorbing interest into its own hands, as it is wont to do with every small home interest, it will have to meet immense danger very soon, as this danger has already seriously accumulated by former neglect. Here too, in the United States, there is no possible question equal in importance to foreign policy, and especially in regard to European matters. And I say that, if the United States do not in due time adopt such a course, as will prevent the Czar of Russia, and his despotic satellites, from believing that the United States give them entirely free field to regulate the condition of Europe, which cannot fail to react morally and materially on your condition, then indeed embarrassments, sufferings, and danger will accumulate in a very short time over you.
Great Britain, it is clear as matters now stand, can avoid a war with the continental powers of Europe only by joining their alliance, or at least by giving them security, that England will not only not support the liberal movement on the Continent, but that it will submit to the policy of the absolutist powers. It is not impossible that England will yield. Do not forget, gentlemen, that an English ministry, be it Tory or Whig, is always more or less aristocratic, and it is in the nature of aristocracy that it may love its country well, but indeed aristocracy more. There is therefore always some inclination to be on good terms with whoever is an enemy to what aristocracy considers its own enemy, that is, democracy. This consideration, together with the above mentioned carelessness of the people about foreign policy, gives you the key to many events which else it would be impossible to understand. People against another people should never feel hatred, but brotherly sympathy. The memory of oppression suffered from governments should never be imparted to nations, and children should never be hated, despised, or punished, because their fathers have sinned. We Hungarians wrestled for centuries with Turkey, and now we are friends, true friends, and natural allies against a common enemy. Several of my own ancestors lost their lives in Turkish wars, or their property in ransom out of Turkish captivity; yet to me it is a Turkish Sultan who saved my life and gave bread to thousands of my countrymen, which no other power did on earth. Such is the change of time. It is Russia which crushed my bleeding fatherland, yet the inexorable hatred of my heart does not extend to the people of Russia. I love that people—I pity its poor, unfortunate instruments of despotism. Wherever there is a people, there is my love. Therefore, let the passionate excitement of past times subside before the prudent advice of present necessities. You are blood from England's blood, bone from its bone, and flesh from its flesh. The Anglo-Saxon race was the kernel around which gathered this glorious fruit—your Republic. Every other nationality is oppressed. It is the Anglo-Saxon alone which stands high and erect in its independence. You, the younger brother, are entirely free, because Republican. They, the elder brother, are monarchical, but they have a constitution, and they have many institutions which even you retained, and, by retaining them, have proved that they are institutions congenial to freedom, and dear to freemen. The free press, the jury, free speech, the freedom of association, the institution of municipalities, the share of the people in the legislature, are English institutions; the inviolability of person and the inviolability of property are English principles. England is the last stronghold of these principles in Europe. Is this not enough to make you stand side by side with those principles in behalf of oppressed humanity?
If the United States and England unite in policy now and make by their imposing attitude a breakwater to the ambitious league of despotism, the Anglo-Saxon race, with all who gathered around that kernel, will not only have the glorious pleasure of having saved the Christian world from being absorbed by despotism, but you especially will have the noble satisfaction of having contributed to the progress and to the development of freedom in England, Scotland, and Ireland themselves: for the principles of national sovereignty, independence, and self-government, when restored on the continent of Europe, must in a beneficent manner reach upon those islands themselves. They may remain monarchical, if it be their will to do so, but the parliamentary omnipotence, which absorbs all that you call State rights and self-government, will yield to the influence of Europe's liberated continent. England will govern its own domestic concerns by its own parliament, and Scotland its own, and Ireland its own, just as the states of your galaxy do; the three countries are destined to mutual connection, by their geographical relations, by far more than New York with Louisiana or Carolina with California. By conserving the state-rights of self-government to all of them they will unite in a common government for the common interest, as you have done. Union, and not unity, must be the guiding star of the future with every power composed of several distinct bodies, and though I am a republican more perhaps than thousands who are citizens of a republic, inasmuch as I have known all the curse of having had a king—still such a development of Great Britain's future, were it even connected with monarchy, I, a true republican, would hail with fervent joy. To contribute to such a future, I indeed should consider more practical support to the cause of freedom, to the cause of Ireland itself, than, out of passionate aversions either for past or present wrongs, to discourage, nay, almost force Great Britain to submit to the threatening attitude of despots or even to side with them against liberty. Out of such a submission there can never result any good to any one in the world, and certainly none to you—none to the nations of Europe—none to Ireland—but increased oppression to Europe and Ireland, and danger to you yourselves.
I therefore say that a war side by side with England against the leagued despots, if war should become a necessity, is not an idea to look on in advance with aversion. You have united with England on a far less important occasion. And should England not yield to the despots, I most confidently ask whoever in the United States inclines to judge matters according to the true interests of his country and not by private passion, whether you could remain indifferent in a struggle, the issue of which either would make England omnipotent on earth, or crush liberty down throughout the world, leave America exposed to the pressure of victorious despotism, and before all, exclude republican America from every political and commercial relation with all Europe. Should England see that she will not stand alone in protesting against interference, she will, she must protest against it, because it is the condition of her own future. But if the United States should again adhere to the policy of indifference (which is no policy at all), then indeed England may perhaps yield to the threatening attitude of the absolutist powers. The policy of the United States may now decide the direction of the policy of England, and thus prevent immense mischief, incalculable in its consequences, even for the future of the United States themselves.
It is here I take the opportunity briefly to refer to an assertion of an American statesman, who holds a high place in your affections and in my respect. He advances the theory, that, should, you now take the course which I humbly claim, the despots of Europe would be provoked by your example to interfere with your institutions and turn upon you in the hour of your weakness and exhaustion, because you have set an example of interference.
I indeed am at a loss to understand that. Is it interference I claim? No; precisely the contrary, if you now declare "that your very existence being founded on that principle of the eternal laws of nature and of nature's God—that every nation has the independent right to regulate its domestic concerns, to fix its institutions and its government"—you cannot contemplate with indifference that the absolutist powers form a league of mutual support against this principle of mankind's common law. You therefore protest against this principle of "foreign interference." I indeed cannot understand by what logic such a protest could be taken up by the despotic powers as a pretext for interference in your domestic concerns. My logic is entirely different. It runs thus; If your country remains an indifferent spectator of the violation of the laws of nations by foreign interference, then it has established a precedent—it has consented that the principle of interference become interpolated into the book of international law, and you will see the time when the league of despots commanding the whole force of oppressed Europe will remind you thus:
"Russia has interfered in Hungary, because it considered the example set up by Hungary dangerous to Russia. America has silently recognized the right of that interference. France has interfered in Rome, because the example of the Roman democracy was dangerous to Prance. America has silently agreed. The absolutist governments, in protection of their divine right, have leagued in a saintly alliance, with the openly avowed purpose to aid one another by mutual interference against the spirit of revolution and the anarchy of republicanism. America has not protested against it; therefore the principle of foreign interference against every dangerous example has, by common consent of every power on earth—contradicted by none, not even by America—become an established international law."
And reminding you thus, they will speak to you in the very words of that distinguished statesman to whom I respectfully allude.
"You have quitted the ground upon which your national existence is founded. You have consented to the alteration of the laws of nations—the existence of your republic is dangerous to us; we therefore, believing that your anarchical (that is, republican) doctrines are destructive of, and that monarchical principles are essential to, the peace and security and happiness of our subjects, will obliterate the bed which has nourished such noxious weeds; we will crush you down as the propagandists of doctrines too destructive to the peace and good order of the world."
I have quoted the very words, very unexpectedly given to publicity,—words, which I out of respect and personal affection, did not answer then, precisely because I took the interview for a private one. Even now I refrain from entering into further discussion, out of the same considerations of respect, though I am challenged by this unlooked for publicity. I will say nothing more. But after having quoted the very words, I leave to the public opinion to judge whether their authority is against or for a national protest against the principle of foreign interference.
Let once the principle become established with your silent consent and you will soon see it brought home to you, and brought home in a moment of domestic discord, which Russian secret diplomacy and Russian gold will skilfully mix. You may be sure of it; and this mighty Union will be shaken by that very principle of foreign interference which you silently let be established as an uncontroverted rule for the despots of the earth.
Great countries are under the necessity of holding the position of a power on earth. If they do not thus, foreign powers dispose of their most vital interests. Indifference to the condition of the foreign world is a wilful abdication of their duty, and of their independence. Neutrality, as a constant rule, is impossible to a great power. Only small countries, as Switzerland and Belgium, can exist upon the basis of neutrality.
Great powers may remain neutral in a particular case, but they cannot take neutrality for a constant principle, and they chiefly cannot remain neutral in respect to principles.
Great powers can never play with impunity the part of no power at all.
Neutrality when taken as a principle means indifference to the condition of the world.
Indifference of a great power to the condition of the world is a chance given to foreign powers to regulate the interests of that indifferent foreign power.
Look in what light you appear before the world with your policy of indifference. Look at the instructions of your navy in the Mediterranean, recently published, forbidding American officers even to speak politics in Europe. Look at the correspondences of your commodores and consuls, frightened to their very souls that a poor exile on board an American ship is cheered by the people of Italy and France, and charging him for the immense crime of having met sympathy without any provocation on his part. Look at the cry of astonishment of European writers, that Americans in Europe are so little republican. Look how French Napoleonist papers frown indignantly at the idea that the Congress of the United States dare to honour my humble self. Look how they consider it almost an insult, that an American Minister, true to his always professed principles, dares to speak about European politics. Look how one of my aristocratical antagonists, who quietly keeps house in France, where I was not permitted to pass, and who, a tool in other hands, would wish to check my endeavours to benefit my country, because he would like to get home in some other way than by a revolution and into a republic—look how he, from Paris in London papers, dares to scorn the idea that America could pretend to weigh anything in the scale of European events.
Do you like this position, free republicans of America? And yet that is your position in the world now, and that position is the consequence of your adhering to your policy of indifference, at a time when you needed to act like a power on earth.
Remember the Sibylline books. The first three were burned when you silently let Russian interference be accomplished in Hungary, and did not give us your recognition when we had achieved and declared our independence.
Six books yet remain. The spirit of the age, the Sibylla of opportunity, holds a second three books over the fire. Do not allow her to burn them—else only the last three remain, and I fear you will have, without profit, more to pay for them than would have bought all the nine, and with them the glory and happiness of an eternal, mighty Republic!
Gentlemen, I humbly thank you for your kindness, and bid you an affectionate farewell.
* * * * *
[At St. Louis, (Missouri.)]
Mr. Kasson addressed Kossuth in an ample speech; in which he said:—
Everywhere have the untrammelled masses of this people, as you passed, lifted up their hands and voices, and supplicated the Almighty to give to you blessing, and to your country redemption. Let this be some recompense for the privations you have encountered, while, like Aeneas, you have been wandering an exile from your native, captured, prostrate Troy.
I should not do my whole duty without saying, in behalf of the thousands assembled here, that we have an unshaken confidence in Hungary's chosen leader. We are not so blind that we cannot observe how no envenomed shaft was fixed to the bow-string against him, in England and America, while he was yet a helpless and powerless refugee, within Turkish hospitality. But when the people were gathering around him in free countries, shoulder to shoulder—when even the hearts of statesmen began to open to him, and hope dawned in the Hungarian sky once more, then it was these arrows of detraction darkened the air, shot from the Court of the French Usurper, or from the pensioners of autocratic bounty. Your patient labours and forbearance in your country's cause, while thus assailed, have won for you, sir, our sincere respect, and another wreath at the hand of the Muse of History.
Kossuth replied:
Gentlemen,—During my brief sojourn in your hospitable city, I have heard so much local pettiness and so much hypocritical tactics of men imported from Austria to advocate the cause of Russo-Austrian despotism in Republican America, and chiefly in your city here, that indeed I began to long for the pure air where the merry sunshine, as well as the melancholy drop of rain, the roaring of the thunder storm, equally as the sigh of the breeze, tell to the oppressors and their tools, and not only to the oppressed, that there is a God in heaven who rules the universe by eternal laws; the Almighty Father of humanity, omnipotent in wisdom, bountiful in His omnipotence, just in His judgment, and eternal in His love; the Lord who gave strength to the boy David against Goliath, who often makes out of humble individuals efficient instruments to push forward the condition of mankind towards that destiny which His merciful will has assigned to it—His will, against which neither the proud ambition of despots, nor the skill of their obsequious tools can prevail—in Him I put my trust and go cheerfully on in my duties. I am in the right way to benefit the cause, noble and just and great, to which I devoted my life; for if there were no success in what I am engaged, the despots would neither fear, nor hate, nor persecute me.
Their persecution imparts more hope to my breast than all your kindness; and I give you my word that if I have the consciousness of having well merited in my past the hatred and the fear of tyrants and their instruments, so may God bless me as I will do all a mortal man can do to merit that hatred and that fear still more.
Why? Am I not standing on the banks of the Mississippi, cheered, welcomed, and supported, as warmly and as heartily as when I stepped first upon your glorious shores? Opposition, hostility, venomous calumny, have exhausted all means to check the sympathy of the people. And has that sympathy subsided? has it abated? is it checked? No, it rolls on swelling as I advance—here I have again an imposing evidence before my eyes, here in St. Louis, my namesake city, where so much, and that so perseveringly, was done to prevent this evidence.
Yes, it rolls, and will roll on, swelling till it will finally submerge all endeavours to mislead the instincts of freemen, to fetter the energies of the nation, to stifle its spirit, and to check the growing aspirations of the people's upright heart.
When the struggle is about principles, indifference is suicide. Nay, indifference is impossible: for indifference about the fate of that principle upon which your national existence and all your future rests—is passive submission to the opposite principle—it is almost equivalent to an alliance with the despots. He who is not for freedom is against freedom. There is no third choice.
The people's instinct feels the danger of losing an irreparable opportunity, and hence the fact, never yet met in history, that a homeless exile becomes an object of such sympathy, rolling on like a sea, in spite of all the passionate rage of my enemies, and all the Christian tolerance of the Reverend Father Jesuits, which they in such an evident manner show to me. It is time to advertise them by a few remarks that I am aware of their hostility, and ready to meet it openly. I make this advertisement by design here, because it is not my custom to attack from behind or in the dark. Mine is not the famous doctrine, that the end sanctifies the means. I like to meet the enemy face to face—a fair field and fair arms.
And in one thing more I will not imitate my reverend opponents. I will never indulge in any personalities, never act otherwise than becoming to a gentleman. If they choose to pursue a different course, let them do so, and let them earn the fruits of it.
My humble person I entirely submit to the good pleasure of their passion. If they tell you, gentlemen, that I am no great man, they speak the truth. Being on good terms with my conscience, I do not much care to be on bad terms with Czars and Emperors, their obedient servants, and the reverend father Jesuits. Nay, if I were on good terms with them, I scarcely could remain on good terms with my conscience. So much for myself—now a few words as to the question between us.