Select Speeches of Kossuth | Page 9

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 people for foreign purposes, postponing our commercial interests to the success of courtly cabals, injurious to the welfare of the people, so that we were excluded from all connection with the other countries of the world, and were degraded to the position of a colony. The mode of governing by a MINISTRY was intended to put a stop to these proceedings, which caused the rights of the country to moulder uselessly in its parchments; by the change,[*] these rights and the royal oath were both to become a reality. It was the apprehension of this, and especially the fear of losing its control over the money and blood of the country, which caused the house