The American Union Speaker

by John D. Philbrick

Sir, in no instance has the great Asiatic trade failed to carry the nation or the people which possessed it to the highest pinnacle of wealth and power, and with it, to the highest attainments of letters, art, and science. And so will it continue to be. An American road to India, through the heart of our country will revive upon its line all the wonders of which we have read, and eclipse them. The western wilderness, from the Pacific to the Mississippi, will spring into life under its touch. A long line of cities will grow up. Existing cities will take a new start. The state of the world calls for a new road to India, and it is our destiny to give it—the last and greatest. Let us act up to the greatness of the occasion, and show ourselves worthy of the extraordinary circumstances in which we are placed, by securing, while we can, an American road to India, central and national, for ourselves and our posterity, now and hereafter, for thousands of years to come. T. H. Benton.

LXXVII.

ADDRESS TO POLISH EXILES AT LONDON.

It is eighty-one years since Poland first was quartered by a nefarious act of combined royalty, which the Swiss Tacitus, John Müller, well characterized by saying that "God permitted the act, to show the morality of kings;" and it is twenty-four years since down-trodden Poland made the greatest—not the last—manifestation of her imperishable vitality, which the cabinets of Europe were either too narrow-minded to understand, or too corrupt to appreciate. Eighty-one years of still unretributed crime, and twenty-four years of misery and exile! It is a long time to suffer, and not to despair.

And all along this time, you, proscribed patriots of Poland, were suffering, and did not despair. You stood up before the world, a living statue, with unquenchable life-flame of patriotism streaming through its petrified limbs; you stood up a protest of eternal right against the sway of imperious might; a "Mene Tekel Upharsin," written in letters of burning blood on the walls of overweening despotism. Time, misery, and sorrow have thinned the ranks of your scattered Israel; you have carried your dead to the grave, and those who survive went on to suffer and to hope. Wherever oppressed Freedom reared a banner, you rallied around;—the living statue changed to a fighting hero. Many of yours fell; and, when crime triumphed once more over virtue and right, you resumed the wandering exile's staff and did not despair. Many among you, who were young when they last saw the sun rise over Poland's mountains and plains, have your hair whitened and your strength broken with age, anguish, and misery; but the patriotic heart kept the freshness of its youth; it is young in love for Poland, young in aspirations for freedom, young in hope, and youthfully fresh in determination to break Poland's chains.

What a rich source of noble deeds patriotism must be, that has given you strength to suffer so much and never to despair! You have given a noble example to all of us,—your younger brother in the family of exiles. When the battle of Cannæ was lost, and Hannibal was measuring by bushels the rings of the fallen Roman knights, the Senate of Rome voted thanks to Consul Terentius Varro for "not having despaired of the Commonwealth." Proscribed patriots of Poland! I thank you that you have not despaired of resurrection and of liberty. The time draws nigh when the oppressed nations will call their aggressors to a last account; and the millions of freemen, in the fulness of their right, and their self-conscious strength, will class judgment on arrogant conquerors, privileged murderers, and perjured kings. In that supreme trial, the oppressed nations will stand one for all, and all for one. L. Kossuth.

LXXVIII.

KOSSUTH ON HIS CREDENTIALS.

Let ambitious fools,—let the pigmies who live on the scanty food of personal envy, when the very earth quakes beneath their feet; let even the honest prudence of ordinary household times, measuring eternity with that thimble with which they are wont to measure the bubbles of small party interest, and, taking the dreadful roaring of the ocean for a storm in a water-glass;—let those who believe the weather to be calm, because they have drawn a nightcap over their ears, and, burying their heads in pillows of domestic comfort, do not hear Satan sweeping in a hurricane over the earth; let envy, ambition, blindness, and the pettifogging wisdom of small times,—let all these artistically investigate the question of my official capacity, or the nature of my public authority; let them scrupulously discuss the immense problem whether I still possess, or possess no longer, the title of my once-Governorship; let them ask for credentials, discuss the limits of my commission, as representative of Hungary. I pity all such frog and mouse fighting.

I claim no official capacity,—no public authority, no representation;—boast of no commission, of no written and sealed credentials. I am nothing but what my generous friend, the senator from Michigan, has justly styled me, "a private and banished man." But, in that capacity I have a nobler credential for my mission than all the clerks of the world can write,—the credential that I am a "man;" the credential that I am a "patriot;" the credential that I love with all sacrificing devotion my oppressed fatherland and liberty; the credential that I hate tyrants, and have sworn everlasting hostility to them; the credential that I feel the strength to do good service to the cause of freedom; good service, as perhaps few men can do, because I have the iron will, in this my breast, to serve faithfully devotedly, indefatigably, that noble cause.