Select Speeches of Kossuth · Chapter 25Preface to Kossuth's Speeches. (25)
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And when you feel instinctively that the heart of the Roman must rage with fury when he looks back into the mirror of his past,—that the Venetian cannot help to weep tears of fire and of blood from the Rialto;—when you feel all this, then look back how the Romans have fought in 1849, with a heroism scarcely paralleled in the most glorious day of ancient Rome. And let me tell, in addition, upon the certainty of my own positive knowledge, that the world never yet has seen such complete and extensive revolutionary organization as that of Italy to-day—ready to burst out into an irresistible storm at the slightest opportunity, and powerful enough to make that opportunity, if either foreign interference is checked, or the interfering foreigners occupied at home. The revolution of 1848 has revealed and developed the warlike spirit of Italy. Except a few wealthy proprietors, already very uninfluential, the most singular unanimity exists, both as to aim and to means. There is no shade of difference of opinion, either to what is to be done or how to do it. All are unanimous in their devotion to the Union and Independence of Italy. With France or against France, by the sword, at all sacrifices, without compromise, they are bent on renewing the battle over and over again, with the confidence that, even without aid, they will triumph in the long run.
The difficulty in Italy is not how to make a revolution, but how to prevent its untimely outbreak; and still even in that respect there is such a complete discipline as the world never yet has seen. In Rome, Romagna, Lombardy, Venice, Sicily, and all the middle Italy, there exists an invisible government, whose influence is everywhere discernible. It has eyes and hands in all departments of public service, in all classes of society—it has its taxes voluntarily paid—its organized force, its police, its newspapers regularly printed and circulated, though the possession of a single copy would send the holder to the galleys. The officers of the existing government convey the missives of the invisible government, the diligences transport its agents. One line from one of these agents opens to you the galleries of art, on prohibited days—gives you the protection of uniformed officials.
That this is the condition of all Italy is shown on one side, in the fact that there the King of Naples holds fettered in dungeons 25,000 patriots, and Radetzky has sacrificed nearly 4,000 political martyrs on the scaffold; still the scaffold continues to be watered with blood, and still the dungeons receive new victims, evidently proving what spirit exists in the people of Italy.
And still Americans doubt that we are on the eve of a terrible revolution; and they ask, What use can I make of any material aid? when Italy is a barrel of powder, which the slightest spark may light.
In respect to foreign rule, GERMANY is more fortunate than Italy. From the times of the treaty of Verdun, when it separated from France and Italy, through the long period of more than a thousand years, no foreign power ever has succeeded to rule over Germany; such is the resistive power of the German people to guard its national existence. The tyrants who swayed over them were of their own blood. But to subdue German liberty, those tyrants were always anxious to introduce foreign institutions. First, they swept away the ancient Germanic right, the common law so dear to the English and American, an eternal barrier against the encroachments of despotism, and substituted for it the iron rule of the imperial Roman law. The rule of papal Rome over the minds of Germany crossed the mountains together with the Roman law, and a spiritual dependency was to be established all over the world. The wings of the German eagle were bound, that it should not soar up to the sun of truth. But when the oppression became too severe, the people of Germany rose against the power of Rome;—not the princes,—though they too were oppressed: but the son of the miner of Eisenach, the poor friar, Martin Luther, defied the Pope on his throne, and at his bidding the people of Germany proved, that it is strong enough to shake off oppression; that it is worthy, and that it knows how, to be free. And again, when the French, under their Emperor, whose genius comprehended everything except freedom, extended their moral sway over Germany, when the princes of Germany thronged around the foreign despot, begging kingly crowns from the son of the Corsican lawyer, with whom the Emperors were happy to form matrimonial alliances—with the man who had no other ancestors than his genius,—then it was again the people, which did not join in the degradation of its rulers, but jealous to maintain their national independence, turned the foreigner out though his name was Napoleon, and broke the yoke asunder, which weighed as heavily upon their princes as upon themselves. And still there are men in America who despair of the vitality of the Germans, of their indomitable power to resist oppression, of their love of freedom, and of their devotion to it, proved by a glorious history of two thousand years. The German race is a power, the vitality and influence of which you can trace through the world's history for two thousand years; you can trace it through the history of science and heroism, of industry, and of bold enterprizing spirit. Your own country, your own national character, bear the mark of German vitality. Other nations, now and then, were great by some great men—the German people was always great by itself.
But the German princes cannot bear independence and liberty; they had rather themselves become slaves, the underlings of the Czar, than allow that their people should enjoy some liberty. An alliance was therefore formed, which they blasphemously called the Holy Alliance,—with the avowed purpose to keep the people down. The great powers guaranteed to the smaller princes—whose name is Legion, for they are many,—the power to fleece and torment their people, and promised every aid to them against the insurrection of those, who would find that for liberty's sake it is worth while to risk their lives and property. It was an alliance for the oppression of the nations, not for the maintenance of the princely prerogative. When the Grand-Duke of Baden, in a fit of liberality, granted his people the liberty of the press, the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia abolished the law, though it had been carried unanimously by the Legislature of Baden and sanctioned by the prince.—The Holy Alliance had guaranteed to the princes the power to oppress, but not the power to benefit their people.
But though the great powers interfered often in the principalities and little kingdoms of Germany, indeed as often as the spirit of liberty awoke, yet they themselves avoided every occasion which would have forced them to request the aid of their allies, and especially of Russia. They knew too well, that to accept foreign aid against their own people, was nothing else than to lose independence, and was morally the same as to kneel down before the Czar and to take the oath of allegiance. A government which needs foreign aid against its own people, avows that it cannot stand without foreign aid. Take that foreign aid—interference!—away, and it falls.
The dynasties of Austria and Prussia were aware of this. They therefore yielded, as often as their encroachments met a firm resistance from the people. When my nation so resolutely resisted in 1823 the attempt to abolish the constitution, Prince Metternich himself advised the Emperor Francis to yield, and even humbly to apologize to the Diet of 1825. The King of Prussia granted even a kind of constitution rather than claim the assistance of the Czar. Herein you may find the explanation of the fact that the continent of Europe is not yet republican. The spirit of freedom, when roused by oppression, was lulled into sleep by constitutional concessions. The Czar of Russia was well aware, that this system of compromise prevents his intruding into the domestic concerns of Europe, which would lead him to the sovereign mastership over all; he therefore did everything to push the sovereigns to extremities. But this did not succeed, until by a palace-revolution in Vienna a weak and cruel youth was placed on the throne of Austria, and a passionate woman got the reins of government in her hand, and an unprincipled, reckless adventurer was ready to carry out every imperial whim, regardless of the honour of his country and the interests of his master. Russia at last got her aim. Rather than acknowledge the rights of Hungary, they bowed before the Czar, and gave up the independence of the Austrian throne; they became the underlings of a foreign power, rather than allow that one of the peoples of the European Continent should be really free. Since the fall of Hungary, Russia is the real sovereign of all Germany; for the first time Germany has a foreign master! and you believe that Germany will bear that in the nineteenth century which it never yet has borne? Bear that in fulness of age which it never bore in childhood? Soon after, and through the fall of Hungary, the pride of Prussia was humiliated. Austrian garrisons occupied Hamburg; Schleswig-Holstein was abandoned, Hessia was chastised, and all that is dear to Germans purposely affronted. Their dreams of greatness, their longing for unity, their aspirations of liberty, were trampled down into the dust, and ridicule was thrown upon all elevation of mind, upon all manifestation of patriotism. Hassenburg, convicted of forgery by the Prussian courts, became Minister in Hessia; the once outlawed Schwarzenbeg, and Bach, a renegade republican, Ministers of Austria. The peace of the graveyard, which tyrants, under the name of order, are trying to enforce upon the world, has for its guardians outlawed reprobates, forgers, and renegades. Could you believe that with such elements the spirit of liberty can be crushed? Tyrants know that to habituate nations to oppression, the moral feeling of the people has to be killed. But could you really believe that the moral feeling of such a people as the German, stamped in the civilization of which it was one of the generating elements, can be killed, or that it can bear for a long while such an outrage? Do you think that the people which met the insolent bulls of the Pope in Rome by the Reformation and the thirty years' war, and the numberless armies of Napoleon by a general rising—that this people will tamely submit to the Russian influence, more arrogant than the Papal pretensions, more disastrous than the exactions of the French Empire? They broke the power of Rome and of Paris; will they agree to be governed by St. Petersburg? Those who are accustomed to see in history only the Princes, will say Aye, but they forget that since the Reformation it is no longer the Princes who make the history, but the People; they see the tops of the trees are bent by the powerful northern hurricane, and they forget that the stem of the tree is unmoved. Gentlemen, the German princes bow before the Czar, but the German people will never bow before him.
Let me sum up the philosophy of the present condition of Germany in these few words: 1848 and 1849 have proved that the little tyrants of Germany cannot stand by themselves, but only by their reliance upon Austria and Prussia. These again cannot stand by themselves, but only by their reliance upon Russia. Take this reliance away, by maintaining the laws of nations against the principle of interference,—(for the joint powers of America and England can maintain them)—and all the despotic governments, reduced to stand by their own resources of power, must fall before the never yet subdued spirit of the people of Germany, like rotten fruit touched by a gale.
Let me now speak about the condition of my own dear native land. I hope not to meet any contradiction when I say that no condition can and will endure, which is so bad, so insupportable, that, by trying to change it, a people can lose nothing, and may gain everything. No condition can and will endure, the maintenance of which is contrary to every interest of every class. A revolution on the contrary is unavoidable, when every interest of every class wishes and requires it. I will first speak of the lower, and still the most powerful of all, of the material interest.
There are some countries, where, however insupportable the condition of the masses, still the government has an ally in the mighty and influential class of bankers, who lend their money to support despotism, and in those who have invested their fortunes in the shares of these loans, negotiated by bankers, who speculate on and with the fortunes of small capitalists. That class of men, partly tools of oppression, partly the fools of the tools, exists not in Hungary. We have no such bankers in Hungary, and but a very small inconsiderable number who have invested their fortunes in such loan-shares. And even the few who had been playing in the fatal loan-share game have withdrawn from it, at any price, because they feared to lose all. From that quarter therefore the House of Austria has no ally in Hungary.
As to our former aristocracy, a class influential by its connections, and by its large landed property: you remember that, when we succeeded to abolish the feudal charges, and converted millions of our countrymen, of different religion and different language, out of leaseholders into free landed proprietors, we guaranteed an indemnification to the landowners for what they lost. From a farm of about thirty-five to fifty acres of land, the farmer had to work one hundred and two days a year for the landowner; to give him the ninth part of all his crops, half a dollar in ready money, besides particular fees for shopkeeping, brewery, mill, &c. We freed the people from all the encumbrances, and, thanks to God! that benefit never more can be torn from the people's hands. The aristocracy consented to it, because we had guaranteed full indemnification. The very material existence of this class of former landowners is depending on that indemnification, to defray their debts, (which they formerly had the habit wantonly to contract,) and to provide for the cultivation of their own large allodial property, which they formerly cultivated by the hands of their leaseholders, but now have to invest capital into.
Now this indemnification, amounting to one hundred millions of dollars, the House of Austria never can realize. You know, with its centralized government, which is always very expensive, with its standing army of 600,000 men, the only support of its precarious existence, with its army of spies and secret police, with its system of corruption and robbery, with its fourteen hundred millions of debt, with its eternal deficit in its current expenditures, with its new loans to pay the interest of the old, and an unavoidable bankruptcy impending,—this indemnification Austria never can pay to the former aristocracy of Hungary. The only means to get this indemnification is the restoration of Hungary to its independence by a new revolution. Independent Hungary can pay it, because it has no debts, will want no large standing armies, and will have a cheap administration, because not centralized, but municipal, the people governing itself in and through municipalities, the cheapest of all governments.
Hungary has already pointed out the fund, out of which that indemnification can and will be paid, without any imposition upon the people, or any loss to the commonwealth. Hungary has large State lands, belonging to and administered by the commonwealth. I have mathematically proved that the landed property of the State, sold in small parcels to those who have yet no land, connected with a banking operation founded upon that property itself, to facilitate the payment of the price, is more than sufficient for that indemnification; besides, a small land tax (which the new owners of that immense property, divided into small farms, will have to pay, as other landed proprietors), will yield more revenue to the Commonwealth than all the proceeds of domestic administration.
This my proposition, having been submitted to the National Assembly, was accepted and approved, and has attached to the Revolution the numerous class of farm-labourers who have not yet their own farms, but who contemplated with the liveliest joy this benevolent provision, which Austria can never execute; since, financially ruined as she is, she cannot be contented either with the tax revenue or the banking arrangement, to defray the indemnification; she sells the stock whenever she can find a man to buy it.
But here is a remarkable fact, proving how little is the future of Austria contemplated as sure even by its votaries. When any one is willing to sell landed property in Hungary, foreign bankers, Austrian capitalists buy it readily at an enormous price, because they know that private transactions will be respected by our revolution; but from the Government, nobody buys a single acre of land, because every man knows that such a transaction must be considered void. Nay more, not even as a gift is an estate accepted by any one from the present government. Haynau himself was offered in reward a large landed property by the government; he did not accept it, but preferred a comparatively small sum of money, not amounting to one-tenth of the value of the offered land, and he bought from a private individual a landed property, for the money, because that, being a private transaction, is sure to stand: whereas in the future of the Austrian government in Hungary not even its Haynaus have confidence.
The manufacturing interests in Hungary anxiously wish, and must wish, a revolution, because manufacturing industry is entirely ruined now by Austria. All favour, encouragement, and aid, which the national government imparted to industry, is not only withdrawn, but replaced by the old system,—which is, neither to allow Hungary free trade, so as to buy manufactured articles where they can be had in the best quality or at the cheapest price, nor to permit manufacturing at home; but to preserve Hungary in the position of a colonial market—a condition always regarded as insupportable, and sufficient motive for a revolution, as you yourselves from your own history know.
The commercial interest anxiously desire a revolution, because there exists, in fact, no active commerce in Hungary, the Hungarian commerce being degraded into a mere broker-ship of Vienna.
All those who have yet in their hands the Hungarian bank notes issued by my government, must wish a revolution; because Austria, alike foolish as criminal, has declared them to be without value—thus they cannot be restored to value but by a revolution. The amount of those bank notes in the hands of the people is yet about twenty millions of dollars. No menaces, no cruelty can induce the people to give it up to the usurper; they put it into bottles and bury it in the earth. They say: it is good money when Kossuth comes home. But while no menaces of Austria can induce the people to give up this treasure of our impending revolution, a single line of mine, sent home, is obeyed, and the money is treasured up where I have designated.
Do you now understand, gentlemen, by what motive I say that once at home in command—if once our struggle is commenced, I do not want your material aid, and neither wish nor would accept all your millions—but that I want your material aid to get home, and to get home in such a way as will inspire confidence in my people, by seeing me bring home the only thing which it has not—ARMS!
But I am asked, where will I land? That, of course, I will not say—perhaps directly at Vienna, like a Montgolfier, in a balloon; but one thing I may say, because that is no secret:—remember that all Italy is a sea-coast, and that Italy has the same enemy as Hungary—that Italy is the left wing of that army of which Hungary is the right wing, and that in Italy 40,000 Hungarian soldiers exist, as also, in general, in the Austrian army 140,000 Hungarians. More I can, and will not say on the subject.
But I will say that all the amount of taxation the people of Hungary formerly had to pay was but four and a half million dollars, and now it has to pay sixty-five million dollars; that landowners offer their land to the government, to get rid of the land tax, which is larger than all the revenue; that we have raised 600,000 hundredweight of tobacco—now, the monopoly of tobacco being introduced, the people no longer smokes and has burnt its tobacco seed. We have raised 120 million gallons of wine. Gentlemen, I come not to interfere with the domestic concerns of America. I have no opinion about the Maine liquor-law. For myself I am very fond of water, but still may say it is my opinion, it will be many years before the Maine liquor-law will pass through all Europe. Well, gentlemen, I was about to say, one half of the vineyards are cut down;—hundreds of thousands live upon horticulture and fruit cultivation; yet the trees are cut down to escape the heavy taxation laid upon them. The stamp tax is introduced, the most insupportable to freemen—village is divided from village, town from town, city from city, by custom-lines—the poor peasant woman, bringing a dozen of eggs to the market, has to pay the consumption-tax, before she is permitted to enter; and when she brings medicine home for her sick child she has again to pay before permitted to enter her home.
And besides this material oppression, and the daily and nightly vexations connected with it,—the Protestants deprived of the self-government of their church and school, for which they have thrice taken up arms victoriously in three centuries,—the Roman Catholics deprived of the security of their church property,—the people of every race deprived of its nationality, because there exists no public life wherein to exert it, no national existence, no constitution, no municipalities, no native law, no native officials, no security of person and of property, but arbitrary power, martial law, and the hangman and the jail,—and on the other side Hungarian patriotism, Hungarian honour, Hungarian heroism, Hungarian vitality, stamped in the vicissitudes of one thousand years, and the consciousness that we have beaten Austria, when we had no army, no money, no friends, and the knowledge that now we have an army, and for home purposes have money in the safe-guarded bank notes, and have America for a friend; and in addition to all this, the confidence of my people in my exertions, and the knowledge of these exertions; of which my people is quite as well informed as yourselves, nay, more, because it sees and knows what I do at home, whereas you see only what I do here—well, if with all this you still doubt about the struggle in Europe being nigh, and still despair of its chance of success, then God be merciful to my poor brains, I know not what to think.
Some here take me for a visionary. Curious, indeed, if that man who, a poor son of the people, took the lead in abolishing feudal injustices a thousand years old, created a currency of millions in a moneyless nation, and suddenly organized armies out of untrained masses of civilians; directed a revolution so as to fix the attention of the whole world upon Hungary, beat the old, well-provided power of Austria, and crushed its future by his very fall, and forsaken, abandoned, in his very exile is feared by Czars and Emperors, and trusted by foreign nations as well as his own—if that man be a visionary, then for so much pride I may be excused that I would like to look face to face into the eyes of a practical man on earth.
Gentlemen, I had many things yet to say. The condition, change, and prospects of Europe are not spoken of so easily, as you have seen, when only the condition of my own country is touched. I don't know that I shall succeed, but I will try to say something about TURKEY.
Turkey! which deserves your sympathy because it is the country of municipal institutions, the country of religious toleration. Turkey, when she extended her sway over Transylvania and half of Hungary, never interfered with the way in which the inhabitants chose to govern themselves; she even allowed those who lived within her dominions to collect there the taxes voted by independent Hungary, with the aim to make war against the Porte. Whilst in the other parts of Hungary, Protestantism was oppressed by the Austrian policy, and the Protestants several times compelled to take up arms for the defence of religious liberty in Transylvania, under the sovereignty of the Porte the Unitarians got political rights, and Protestantism grew up under the protecting wings of the Ottoman power.
The respect for municipal institutions is so deeply rooted in the minds of the Turks, that at the time when they became masters of the Danubian provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia, they voluntarily excluded themselves from all political rights in the newly acquired provinces; and up to the present day, they do not allow that a mosque should be built, or that a Turk should dwell and own landed property across the Danube. They do not interfere with the taxation or with the internal administration of these provinces; and the last organic law of the Empire, the Tanzimat, is nothing but the re-declaration of the rights of municipalities, guaranteeing them against the centralizing encroachment of the Pashas. Whilst Czar Nicholas is about to convert the Protestant population of Livonia and Estland to the Greek church by force and by alluring promises, the liberal Sultan Abdul Medjid grants full religious liberty to all sects of Protestantism. But we are accustomed to look upon Turkey as upon a third-rate power, only because in 1828 it was defeated by Russia. Let us now see how the balance stood at that time, and how it stands now.
In 1828 the Turkish population was full of hatred on account of the extermination of the Janissaries. The Christian population were ready to rise against the government, on account of the events of the Greek war. Albania was in revolt, because it was opposed to the system of conscriptions for regular military service. Anatolia was discontented on the same ground. Mehemet Ali possessed Egypt, and paralyzed the action of the government in Arabia and Syria. Servia had just laid down arms, but had not yet concluded peace. The Danubian principalities, though unfavourable to Russia, were not hearty in support of the Porte, and remained apathetic under the occupation of Russia. The revenue did not exceed 400,000,000 piastres (20,000,000 dollars), and was insufficient for a second campaign. The new army was not yet organized, and amounted only to 32,000 men, without tried generals. The fleet had been destroyed at Navarino. The foreign diplomatists had left the empire, and the capital was exposed to an attack of the enemy. In such a position no European government could have risked a war.
Russia had just defeated Persia, and by this victory got access to the Asiatic provinces of the Turkish empire; it had therefore to defend the frontiers on both sides. Russia had not yet entered into Circassia, and could therefore rally all her forces; she had not yet abolished the Poland of 1815, and could leave it without garrisons; she had not yet roused the hatred or the jealousies of Europe. She had engaged all the natural allies of the Porte into a combination for rousing the populations of her enemy, and by her diplomacy she gained the power of bringing her fleet into the Mediterranean, for blockading the ports of Turkey; and Navarino opened for her the Black Sea, where she had thirteen men-of-war. Not disturbed by the Porte, by Circassia, by Poland, by France, or by England, she had prepared two years for this war, whilst her enemy, passing through a terrible crisis, was without money, without an organized army, without a fleet, without other resources than the feeble Mussulman population on the seat of war.
Twenty-four years have altered the balance.—Turkey has now the enthusiastic support of her Mussulman population. The Christian population, with the only exception of Bulgaria, partakes of this enthusiasm. All the warlike tribes, from Albania to Kurdistan, are now supporting the authority of the Sultan. Mehemet Ali is gone; Arabia and Syria are again under the dominion of the Sultan. Servia has made peace, and has become the support of Turkey, offering her, in case of a Russian war, 80,000 men. The Principalities have become the enemies of Russia; they had too long to suffer from her oppression. The public revenue has doubled. Turkey has organized a regular army of 200,000 men, equal to any other, and besides, the militia, She has distinguished generals—Omer Pasha, Gruyon. Her fleet is equal to the Russian fleet in the Black Sea, and her steam-fleet superior to the Russian. She has for allies all the people from the Caucasus to the Carpathians. The Circassians, the Tartars under Emir Mirza, the Cossacks of the Dobroja, by whom the electric shock is transmitted to Poland and Hungary, form an unbroken chain, by which the spark is carried into the heart of Europe, where all the combustible elements wait for the moment of explosion. Twenty-four years ago Turkey was believed to be in a decaying state; it is now stronger than it has been for the last hundred years.