Select Speeches of Kossuth | Page 9

a thousand years with rare fidelity to their sovereigns,

and the house of Hapsburg might long have counted this nation among
the most faithful adherents of the throne.
This dynasty, however, which can at no epoch point to a ruler who
based his power on the freedom of the people, adopted a course
towards this nation, from father to son, which deserves the appellation
of perjury.
The house of Austria has publicly used every effort to deprive the
country of its legitimate Independence and Constitution, designing to
reduce it to a level with the other provinces long since deprived of all
freedom, and to unite all in a common sink of slavery. Foiled in this
effort by the untiring vigilance of the nation, it directed its endeavour to
lame the power, to check the progress of Hungary, causing it to
minister to the gain of the provinces of Austria, but only to the extent
which enabled those provinces to bear the load of taxation with which
the prodigality of the imperial house weighed them down; having first
deprived those provinces of all constitutional means of remonstrating
against a policy which was not based upon the welfare of the subject,
but solely tended to maintain despotism and crush liberty in every
country of Europe.
It has frequently happened that the Hungarian nation, in despite of this
systematized tyranny, has been obliged to take up arms in self-defence.
Although constantly victorious in these constitutional struggles, yet so
moderate has the nation ever been in its use of the victory, so strongly
has it confided in the king's plighted word, that it has ever laid down
arms as soon as the king, by new compacts and fresh oaths, has
guaranteed the duration of its rights and liberty. But every new compact
was as futile as those which preceded it; each oath which fell from the
royal lips was but a renewal of previous perjuries. The policy of the
house of Austria, which aimed at destroying the independence of
Hungary as a state, has been pursued unaltered for three hundred years.
It was in vain that the Hungarian nation shed its blood for the
deliverance of Austria whenever it was in danger; vain were all the
sacrifices which it made to serve the interests of the reigning house; in
vain did it, on the renewal of the royal promises, forget the wounds
which the past had inflicted; vain was the fidelity cherished by the
Hungarians for their king, and which, in moments of danger, assumed a
character of devotion; they were in vain, since the history of the

government of that dynasty in Hungary presents but an unbroken series
of perjured deeds from generation to generation.
In spite of such treatment, the Hungarian nation has all along respected
the tie by which it was united to this dynasty; and in now decreeing its
expulsion from the throne, it acts under the natural law of
self-preservation, being driven to pronounce this sentence by the full
conviction that the house of Lorraine-Hapsburg is compassing the
destruction of Hungary as an independent State: so that this dynasty has
been the first to tear the bands by which it was united to the Hungarian
nation, and to confess that it had torn them in the face of Europe. For
many causes a nation is justified, before God and man, in expelling a
reigning dynasty. Among such are the following:
1. When the dynasty forms alliances with the enemies of the country,
with robbers, or partizan chieftains to oppress the nation: 2. When it
attempts to annihilate the Independence of the country and its
Constitution, supported on oaths, by attacking with an armed force the
people who have committed no act of revolt: 3. When the integrity of a
country, which the sovereign has sworn to maintain, is violated, and its
resources cut away: 4. When foreign armies are employed to murder
the people, and to oppress their liberties.
Each of the grounds here enumerated would justify the exclusion of a
dynasty from the throne. But the House of Lorraine-Hapsburg is
unexampled in the compass of its perjuries, and has committed every
one of these crimes against the nation.***
In former times, a governing COUNCIL, under the name of the Royal
Hungarian Stadtholdership, the president of which was the Palatine,
held its seat at Buda, whose sacred duty it was to watch over the
integrity of the state, the inviolability of the Constitution, and the
sanctity of the laws; but this collegiate authority not presenting any
element of personal responsibility, the Vienna cabinet gradually
degraded this council to the position of an administrative organ of court
absolutism. In this manner, while Hungary had ostensibly an
independent government, the despotic Vienna cabinet disposed at will
of the money and blood of the