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Select Speeches of Kossuth · Chapter 29Preface to Kossuth's Speeches. (29)

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Machiavel says, that it is now and then necessary to recall the constituting essential principles to the memory of nations. And who is charged by Providence with this task? Misfortune! It was the battles of Cannaê and of Thrasymene which recalled the Romans to the love of their fatherland; nations had till now, about such things, no other teacher than misfortune. They should choose to have a less afflicting one. They can have it. To point this out will be the final object of my remarks, but so much is certain, that prosperity alone is yet no security for the future, even of the happiest commonwealth. Those ancient nations have been also prosperous. They were industrious, as your nation is; their land has been covered with cities and villages, well-cultivated fields, blessed with the richest crops, and crowded with countless herds spread over immense territories, furrowed with artificial roads; their flourishing cities swarmed with artists, and merchants, and workmen, and pilots, and sailors, like as New York does. Their busy labourers built gigantic water-works, digged endless canals, and carried distant waters through the sands of the desert; their mighty, energetic spirit built large and secure harbours, dried the marshy lakes, covered the sea with vessels, the land with living beings, and spread a creation of life and movement along the earth. Their commerce was broad as the known world. Tyre exchanged its purple for the silk of Serica; Cashmere's soft shawls, to-day yet a luxury of the wealthiest, the diamonds of Golconda, the gorgeous carpets of Lydia, the gold of Ophir and Saba, the aromatic spices and jewels of Ceylon, and the pearls and perfumes of Arabia, the myrrh, silver, gold dust, and ivory of Africa, as well as the amber of the Baltic and the tin of Thulé, appeared alike in their commerce, raising them in turn to the dominion of the world, and undoing them by too careless prosperity. The manner and the shape of one or the other art, of one or other industry, has changed; the steam-engine has replaced the rowing-bench, and cannon replaced the catapult; but, as a whole, even your country, which you are proud to hear styled "the living wonder of the world"—yes, even your country in the New World, and England in the Old—England, that gigantic workshop of industry, surrounded with a beautiful evergreen garden; yes, all the dominions of the Anglo-Saxon race, can claim no higher praise of its prosperity, than when we say, that you have reproduced the grandeur of those ancient nations, and nearly equal their prosperity. And what has become of them? A sad skeleton. What remains of their riches, of their splendour, and of their vast dominions? An obscure recollection; a vain memory. Thus fall empires; thus vanish nations, which have no better guardians than their prosperity. But "we have," will you say, "we have a better guardian—our freedom, our republican institutions; our confederation uniting so many glorious stars into one mighty galaxy—these are the ramparts of our present, these our future security."

Well, it would ill become me to investigate if there be nothing "rotten in the state of Denmark," and certainly I am not the man who could feel inclined to undervalue the divine power of liberty; to underrate the value of your democratic institutions, and the vitality of your glorious Union. It is to them I look in the solitary hours of meditation, and when, overwhelmed with the cares of the patriot, my soul is groaning under nameless woes, it is your freedom's sunny light which dispels the gloomy darkness of despondency; here is the source whence the inspiration of hope is flowing to the mourning world, that down-trodden millions at the bottom of their desolation still retain a melancholy smile upon their lips, and still retain a voice in their bleeding chest, to thank the Almighty God that the golden thread of freedom is not yet lost on earth. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, all this I feel, and all this I know, reflecting upon your freedom, your institutions, and your Union; but casting back my look into the mirror of the past, there I see upon mouldering ground, written with warning letters, the dreadful truth, that all this has nothing new; all this has been; and all this has never yet been proved sufficient security. Freedom is the fairest gift of Heaven; but it is not the security of itself. Democracy is the embodiment of freedom, which in itself is but a principle. But what is the security of democracy? And if you answer, "The Union is;" then I ask, "And where is the security of the Union?" Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Freedom is no new word. It is as old as the world. Despotism is new, but Freedom not. And yet it has never yet proved a charter to the security of nations. Republic is no new word. It is as old as the word "Society." Before Rome itself, republics absorbed the world. There were in all Europe, Africa and Asia Minor, but republics to be found, and many among them democratic. Men had to wander to far Persia if they would have desired to know what sort of thing a monarch is. And all they have perished; the small ones by foreign power, the large ones by domestic vice. And union, and confederacy, the association of societies—a confederate republic of republics, is also no new invention. Greece has known it and flourished by it, for a while. Rome has known it; by such associations she attacked the world. The world has known them; with them it defended itself against Rome. The so-called Barbarians of Europe, beyond the Danube and the Rhine, have known it; it was by a confederacy of union that they resisted the ambitious mistress of the world. Your own country, America, has known it; the traditionary history of the Romans of the West, of those six Indian Nations, bears the records of it, out of an older time than your ancestors settled in this land; the wise man of the Onondaga Nation has exercised it long before your country's legislators built upon that basis your independent home. And still it proved in itself alone no security to all those nations who have known it before you. Your own fathers have seen the last of the Mohawks burying his bloody tomahawk in the namesake flood, and have listened to the majestic words of Logan, spoken with the dignity of an Aemilius, that there exists no living being on earth in the veins of whom one drop of the blood of his race did flow. Well, had history nothing else to teach us, than that all what the wisdom of man did conceive, and all that his energy has executed through the innumerable days of the past, and all that we take to be glorious in nations and happy to men, cannot so much do as to ensure a future even to such a flourishing commonwealth as yours; then weaker hearts may well ask, What good is it to warn us of a fatality which we cannot escape; what good is it to hold up the mournful monuments of a national mortality to sadden our heart, if all that is human must share that common doom? Let us do as we can, and so far as we can, and let the future bring what it may. But that would be the speech of one having no faith in the all-watching Eye, and regarding the eternal laws of the universe not as an emanation of a bountiful Providence, but of a blind fatality, which plays at hazard with the destinies of men. I never will share such blasphemy. Misfortune came over me, and came over my house, and came over my guiltless nation; still I never have lost my trust in the Father of all. I have lived the days when the people of my oppressed country went along weeping over the immense misfortune that they cannot pray, seeing the downfall of the most just cause and the outrageous triumph of the most criminal of all crimes on earth; and they went along not able to pray, and weeping that they are not able to pray. I shuddered at the terrible tidings in the desolation of my exile; but I could pray, and sent the consolation home, that I do not despair; that I believe in God, and trust to His bountiful providence, and ask them who of them dares despair when I do not? I was in exile, as I am now, but arrogant despots were debating about my blood, my infant children in prison, my wife, the faithful companion of my sorrows and my cares, hunted like a noble deer, and my sisters in the tyrant's fangs, red with the blood of my nation, and the heart of my aged mother breaking, about the shattered fortunes of her house, and all of them at last homeless wanderers, cast to the winds, like the yellow leaves of a fallen tree; and my fatherland, my dear, beloved fatherland, half murdered, half in chains, and humanity nearly all oppressed, and those who are not yet oppressed looking with compassion at our sad fate, but taking it for wise policy not to help, and the sky of freedom dark on our horizon, and darkening fast over all, and nowhere a ray of hope; a lustre of consolation nowhere; and still I did not despair; and my faith to God, my trust to Providence has spread over my down-trodden land.

I therefore, who do not despair of my own country's future, though it be overwhelmed with misfortunes, I certainly have an unwavering faith in the destinies of Humanity; and though the mournful example of so many fallen nations instructs us, that neither the diffusion of knowledge, nor the progress of industry, neither prosperity, nor power, nay, not even freedom itself, can secure a future to nations, still I say there is one thing which can secure it; there is one law, the obedience to which would prove a rock upon which the freedom and happiness of nations may rest sure to the end of their days. And that law, ladies and gentlemen, is the law proclaimed by our Saviour; that rock is the unperverted religion of Christ. But while the consolation of this sublime truth falls meekly upon my soul like as the moonlight falls upon the smooth sea, I humbly claim your forbearance, ladies and gentlemen; I claim it in the name of the Almighty Lord, to hear from my lips a mournful truth. It may displease you; it may offend; but still truth is truth. Offended vanity may blame me; power may frown at me, and pride may call my boldness arrogant, but still truth is truth, and I, bold in my unpretending humility, will proclaim that truth; I will proclaim it from land to land and from sea to sea; I will proclaim it with the faith of the martyrs of old, till the seed of my word falls upon the consciences of men. Let come what come may, I say with Luther: God help me, I cannot otherwise. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the law of our Saviour, the religion of Christ, can secure a happy future to nations. But, alas! there is yet no Christian people on earth—not a single one among all. I have spoken the word. It is harsh, but true. Nearly two thousand years have passed since Christ has proclaimed the eternal decree of God, to which the happiness of mankind is bound, and has sanctified it with His own blood, and still there is not one single nation on earth which would have enacted into its law-book that eternal decree. Men believe in the mysteries of religion, according to the creed of their church; they go to church, and they pray and give alms to the poor, and drop the balm of consolation into the wounds of the afflicted, and believe they do all that the Lord commanded to do, and believe they are Christians. No! Some few may be, but their nation is not—their country is not; the era of Christianity has yet to come, and when it comes, then, only then, will be the future of nations sure. Far be it from me to misapprehend the immense benefit which Christian religion, such as it already is, has operated in mankind's history. It has influenced the private character of men, and the social condition of millions; it was the nurse of a new civilization, and softening the manners and morals of men, its influence has been felt even in the worst quarter of history—in war. The continual massacres of the Greek and Roman kings and chiefs, and the extermination of nations by them—the all-devastating warfare of the Timurs and Gengis Khans—are in general not more to be met with; only my own dear fatherland was doomed to experience once more the cruelties of the Timurs and Gengis Khans out of the sacrilegious hands of the dynasty of Austria, which calumniates Christianity by calling itself Christian. But though that beneficial influence of Christianity we have cheerfully to acknowledge, yet it is still not to be disputed that the law of Christ does yet nowhere rule the Christian world.

Montesquieu himself, whom nobody could charge to be partial for republics, avows that despotism is incompatible with the Christian religion, because the Christian religion commands meekness, and despotism claims arbitrary power to the whims and passions of a frail mortal; and still it is more than 1,500 years since the Christian religion became dominant, and through that long period despotism has been pre-eminently dominant; you can scarcely show one single truly democratic republic of any power which had subsisted but for a hundred years, exercising any influence upon the condition of the world. Constantine, raising the Christian religion to Rome's imperial throne, did not restore the Romans to their primitive virtues. Constantinople became the sewer of vice; Christian worship did not change the despotic habits of Kings. The Tituses, the Trajans, the Antonines, appeared seldom on Christian thrones; on the contrary, mankind has seen, in the name of religion, lighted the piles of persecution, and the blazing torches of intolerance; the earth overspread with corpses of the million victims of fanaticism; the fields watered with blood; the cities wrapped in flames, and empires ravaged with unrelenting rage. Why? Is it Christian religion which caused these deplorable facts, branding the brow of partly degraded, partly outraged Humanity? No. It was precisely the contrary; the fact that the religion of Christ never yet was practically taken for an all-overruling law, the obedience to which, outweighing every other consideration, would have directed the policy of nations—that fact is the source of evil, whence the oppression of millions has overflowed the earth, and which makes the future of the proudest, of the freest nation, to be like a house built upon sand.

Every religion has two parts. One is the dogmatical, the part of worship; the other is the moral part.

The first, the dogmatic part, belonging to those mysterious regions which the arm of human understanding cannot reach, because they belong to the dominion of belief, and that begins where the dominion of knowledge ends—that part of religion, therefore, the dogmatic one, should be left to every man to settle between God and his own conscience. It is a sacred field, whereon worldly power never should dare to trespass, because there it has no power to enforce its will. Force can murder; it can make liars and hypocrites, but no violence on earth can force a man to believe what he does not believe. Yet the other part of religion, the moral part, is quite different. That teaches duties toward ourselves and toward our fellow-men. It can be, therefore, not indifferent to the human family: it can be not indifferent to whatever community, if those duties be fulfilled or not, and no nation can, with full right, claim the title of a Christian nation, no government the title of a Christian government, which is not founded upon the basis of Christian morality, and which takes it not for an all-overruling law to fulfil the moral duties ordered by the religion of Christ toward men and nations, who are but the community of men, and toward mankind, which is the community of nations. Now, look to those dread pages of history, stained with the blood of millions, spilt under the blasphemous pretext of religion; was it the intent to vindicate the rights, and enforce the duties of Christian morality, which raised the hand of nation against nation, of government against government? No: it was the fanaticism of creed, and the fury of dogmatism. Nations and governments rose to propagate their manner to worship God, and their own mode to believe the inscrutable mysteries of eternity; but nobody has yet raised a finger to punish the sacrilegious violation of the moral laws of Christ, nobody ever stirred to claim the fulfilment of the duties of Christian morality toward nations. There is much speaking about the separation of Church and State, and yet, on close examination, we shall see that there was, and there is, scarcely one single government entirely free from the direct or indirect influence of one or other religious denominations; scarcely one which would not at least bear a predilection, if not countenance with favour, one or another creed—but creed, and always creed. The mysteries of dogmatism, and the manner of worship, enter into these considerations; they enter even into the politics, and turn the scales of hatred and affection; but certainly there is not one single nation, not one single government, the policy of which would ever have been regulated by that law of morality which our Saviour has promulgated as the eternal law of God, which shall be obeyed in all the relations of men to men. But you say, of the direct or indirect amalgamation of Church and State, proved to be dangerous to nations in Christian and for Christian times, because it affected the individual rights of men, and among them, the dearest of all, the liberty of conscience and the freedom of thought. Well, of this danger, at least, the future of your country is free; because here, at least, in this, your happy land, religious liberty exists. Your institutions left no power to your government to interfere with the religion of your citizens. Here every man is free to worship God as he chooses to do.

And that is true, and it is a great glory of your country that it is true. It is a fact which entitles to the hope that your nation will revive the law of Christ, even on earth. However, the guarantee which your Constitution affords to religious liberty is but a negative part of a Christian government. There are, besides that, positive duties to be fulfilled. He who does no violence to the conscience of man, has but the negative merit of a man doing no wrong; but as he who does not murder, does not steal, and does not covet what his neighbour's is, but by not stealing, not murdering, not coveting what our neighbour's is, we did yet no positive good; a man who does not murder has not yet occasion to the title of virtuous man. And here is precisely the infinite merit of the Christian religion. While Moses, in the name of the Almighty God, ordered but negative degrees toward fellow-men, the Christian religion commands positive virtue. Its divine injunctions are not performed by not doing wrong; it desires us to do good. The doctrine of Jesus Christ is sublime in its majestic simplicity. "Thou shalt love God above all, and love thy neighbour as thou lovest thyself."

This sublime doctrine is the religion of love. It is the religion of charity. "Though I speak with the tongues of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. Though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." Thus speaks the Lord, and thus speaking He gives the law, "Do unto others as thou desirest others to do unto thee." Now, in the name of Him who gave this law to humanity, to build up the eternal bliss and temporal happiness of mankind, in the name of that Eternal Legislator, I ask, is in that charity, in that fundamental law of Christianity, any limit of distinction drawn in man in his personal, and man in his national capacity? Is it but a law for a man where he is alone, and can do but little good? Is it no law more where two are together, and can do more good? No law more when millions are together? Am I in my personal adversities; is my aged mother in her helpless desolation; are my homeless sisters whom you feed to-day, that they may work to-morrow; are we your neighbours, unto whom you do as you would others in a similar position do unto yourself? And is every one of my down-trodden people a neighbour to every one of you? but all my people collectively, is it not a neighbour to you? And is my nation not a neighbour to your nation? Is my down-trodden land not a neighbour to your down-trodden land? Oh! my God, men speak of the Christian religion and style themselves Christians, and yet make a distinction between virtue in private life and virtue in public life; as if the divine law of Charity would have been given only for certain small relations, and not for all the relations between men and men.

"There he is again, with his eternal complaints about his country's wrongs;" may perhaps somebody remark: "This is an assembly of charity, assembled to ease his private woes of family; and there he is again speaking of his country's wrongs, and alluding to our foreign policy, about which he knows our views to be divided." Thus I may be charged.

My "private family woes!" But all my woes and all the woes of my family, are concentrated in the unwarrantable oppression of my fatherland. You are an assembly of charity, it is true, and the Almighty may requite you for it; but being a charitable assembly, can you blame me that the filial and fraternal devotion of my heart, in taking with gratitude the balm of consolation which your charity pours into the bleeding wounds of my family, looks around to heal those wounds, the torturing pains of which you ease, but which cannot be cured but by justice and charity done to my fatherland. Shall this sad heart of mine be contented by leaving to my homeless mother and sisters the means to have their bread by honest labour, their daily bread salted with the bitter tears of exile; and shall I not care to leave them the hope that their misfortune will have an end; that they will see again their beloved home; that they will see it independent and free, and live where their fathers lived, and sleep the tranquil sleep of death in that soil with which the ashes of their fathers mingle? Shall I not care to give the consolation to my aged mother, that when her soon departing soul, crowned with the garland of martyrdom, looks down from the home of the blessed, the united joy of the heavens will thrill through her immortal spirit, seeing her dear, dear Hungary free? Your views are divided on the subject, it may be; but can your views be divided upon the subject that it is the command of God to love your neighbours as you love yourselves? That it is the duty of Christians, that it is the fundamental principle of the Christian religion, to do unto others as you desire others to do unto you? And if there is, if there can be no difference of opinion in regard to the principle; if no one in this vast assembly—whatever be the platform of his party—ever would disclaim this principle, will any one blame me that in the name of Christ I am bold to claim the application of that principle? I should not speak of politics! Well, I have spoken of Christianity. Your politics either agree with the Law of Christ, or they do not agree with it. If they don't agree, then your politics are not Christian; and if they agree, then I cause no division among you.

And I shall not speak of my people's wrongs! Oh! my people—thou heart of my heart, thou life of my life—to thee are bent the thoughts of my mind, and they will remain bent to thee, though all the world may frown. To thee are pledged all the affections of my heart, and they will be pledged to thee as long as one drop of blood throbs within this heart. Thine are the cares of my waking hours; thine are the dreams of my restless sleep. Shall I forget thee, but for a moment! Never! Never! Cursed be the moment, and cursed be I in that moment, in which thou wouldst be forgotten by me!

Thou art oppressed, O my fatherland! because the principles of Christianity have not been executed in practice; because the duties of Christianity have not been fulfilled; because the precepts of Christianity have not been obeyed; because the law of Christianity did not control the policy of nations; because there are many impious governments to offend the law of Christ, but there was none to do the duties commanded by Christ.

Thou art fallen, O my country, because Christianity has yet to come; but it is not yet come—nowhere! Nowhere on earth! And with the sharp eye of misfortune piercing the dark veil of the future, and with the tongue of Cassandria relating what I see, I cry it out to high Heaven, and shout it out to the Earth—"Nations, proud of your momentary power; proud of your freedom; proud of your prosperity—your power is vain, your freedom is vain, your industry, your wealth, your prosperity are vain; all these will not save you from sharing the mournful fate of those old nations, not less powerful than you, not less free, not less prosperous than you—and still fallen, as you yourself will fall—all vanished as you will vanish, like a bubble thrown up from the deep! There is only the law of Christ, there are only the duties of Christianity, which can secure your future, by securing at the same time humanity."

Duties must be fulfilled, else they are an idle word. And who would dispute that there is a positive duty in that law, "Love thy neighbour as thou lovest thyself. Do unto others as thou wouldst that others do unto thee." Now, if there are duties in that law comprised, who shall execute them, if free and powerful nations do not execute them? No government can meddle with the private relations of its millions of citizens so much as to enforce the positive virtue of Christian charity, in the thousand-fold complications of private life. That will be impossible; and our Saviour did not teach impossibilities. By commanding charity toward fellow-men in human relations, He commanded it also to governments. It is in their laws toward their own citizens; it is in their policy toward other nations, that governments and nations can fulfil those duties of Christianity; and what they can, that they should. How could governments hope to see their own citizens and other nations observing toward them the positive duties of Christian morality, when they themselves do not observe them against others; when oppressed nations, the victims, not of their own faults, but of the grossest violation of the law of Christ, look in vain around to find out a nation among Christian nations, and a government among Christian governments, doing unto them, in the hour of their supreme need, as the Saviour said that it is duty to do unto others in every case?

Yes, gentlemen, as long as the principles of Christian morality are not carried up into the international relations—as long as the fragile wisdom of political exigencies overrules the doctrines of Christ, there is no freedom on earth firm, and the future of no nation sure. But let a powerful nation like yours raise Christian morality into its public conduct, that nation will have a future against which the very gates of hell itself will never prevail. The morality of its policy will react upon the morality of its individuals, and preserve it from domestic vice, which, without that prop, ever yet has attended too much prosperity, and ever yet was followed by a dreadful fall. The morality of its policy will support justice and freedom on earth, and thus augmenting the number of free nations, all acting upon the same principle, its very future will be placed under the guarantee of them all, and preserve it from foreign danger—which is better to prevent than to repel. And its future will be placed under the guarantee of the Almighty himself, who, true to His eternal decrees, proved through the downfall of so many mighty nations, that He always punished the fathers in the coming generations; but alike bountiful as just, will not and cannot forsake those to whom He gave power to carry out His laws on earth, and who willingly answered His divine call. Power in itself never yet was sure. It is right which makes power firm; and it is community which makes right secure. The task of PETER'S apostolate is accomplished—the Churches are founded in the Christian world. The task of PAUL'S apostolate is accomplished—the abuses of fanaticism and intolerance are redressed. But the task of him whom the Saviour most loved, is not yet accomplished. The gospel of charity rules not yet the Christian world; and without charity, Christianity, you know, is "but sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal."