Select Speeches of Kossuth | Page 7

that as you
have anticipated my wishes by the expression of your generous
sentiments, so you will agree with me, that the spirit of liberty has to go
forth, not only spiritually, but materially, from your glorious country.
That spirit is a power for deeds, but is yet no deed in itself. Despotism
and oppression never yet were beaten except by heroic resistance. That
is a sad necessity,--but it is a necessity nevertheless. I have so learned it
out of the great book of history. I hope the people of the United States
will remember, that in the hour of their nation's struggle, it received
from Europe more than kind wishes. It received material aid from
others in times past, and it will, doubtless, now impart its mighty
agency to achieve the liberty of other lands.
Citizens, I thank you for having addressed me, not in the language of
party, but in the language of liberty, which is that of the United States. I
come hither, in the name of Hungary, to entreat, not from any party
among you, but from your whole nation, a generous protection for my
country. And for that very reason, neither will I intermeddle with any
of your party questions. In England I often avowed this principle;
inasmuch as the very mission on which I come, is to ask that the right
of every nation to arrange its domestic concerns may be respected.
Notwithstanding this, I am sorry to see, that, before my arrival, I have
been charged with intermeddling with your presidential election,
because in one of my addresses in England I mentioned the name of
your fellow-citizen, Mr. Walker, as one of the candidates for the
Presidency. I confess with warm gratitude, that Mr. Walker uttered
such sentiments in England, as, if happily they are also those of the
United States, will enable me to declare, that Hungary and Europe are
free. Therefore I feel deeply indebted to him. But in no respect did I
mix myself up with your elections. I consider no man honest who does
not observe towards other nations the principles which he desires to be
observed towards his own: and therefore I will not interfere in your
domestic questions.
Allow me, citizens, to advert to one expression of your kind address,

personal to myself. You named me "Kossuth, Governor of Hungary."
My nomination to be Governor was not to gratify ambition. Never,
perhaps, did I feel sadder, than at the moment when that title was
conferred upon me; for I compared my feeble faculties and its high
responsibilities. It is therefore not from ambition that I thank you for
the title, but because the title rests upon our Declaration of
Independence; and by acknowledging it as mine, you recognize the
rightfulness and validity of that Declaration. And, gentlemen I frankly
declare that your whole people are bound in honour and duty to
recognize it. At this moment there is no other legitimate existing law in
Hungary. It was not the proclamation of a man or of a party. It was the
solemn declaration of the whole nation in Congress assembled. It was
sanctioned by every village, and by every municipality. No
counter-proclamation has gone forth from Hungary. It has been
overturned solely by the invasion of an ambitious foreign power, the
Czar of Russia; who can no more legitimately make or unmake a
governor of Hungary, than General Santa Anna, if in your late war he
had forced his way to Washington, could have unmade President
Taylor. None of you will admit that violence can destroy righteousness:
it can but establish unlawful, unrightful fact. If so,--if your own people,
and not foreign invaders, are the source of rightful law to you,--you
must in consistency recognize our Independence as legitimate, and its
declaration as our still rightful law.
As to the praises which you were so kind as to bestow upon me, it is no
affectation in me when I declare that I am not conscious of having any
other merit than that of being a plain, straightforward man, a faithful
friend of freedom, a good patriot. And these qualities, gentlemen, are so
natural to every honest man, that it is scarcely worth while to speak of
them; for I cannot conceive how a man with understanding and with a
sound heart, can be anything else than a good patriot and a lover of
freedom.
Yet my humble capacity has not preserved me from calumnies.
Scarcely had I arrived here, when I learned that I had been charged in
the United States with being an irreligious man. So long as despots
exist, and have the means to pay, they will find men to calumniate
those who are opposed to tyranny. But, suppose I were the most
dishonest creature in the