Hungary has already pointed out the fund, out of which that indemnification can and will be paid, without any imposition upon the people, or any loss to the commonwealth. Hungary has large State lands, belonging to and administered by the commonwealth. I have mathematically proved that the landed property of the State, sold in small parcels to those who have yet no land, connected with a banking operation founded upon that property itself, to facilitate the payment of the price, is more than sufficient for that indemnification; besides, a small land tax (which the new owners of that immense property, divided into small farms, will have to pay, as other landed proprietors), will yield more revenue to the Commonwealth than all the proceeds of domestic administration.
This my proposition, having been submitted to the National Assembly, was accepted and approved, and has attached to the Revolution the numerous class of farm-labourers who have not yet their own farms, but who contemplated with the liveliest joy this benevolent provision, which Austria can never execute; since, financially ruined as she is, she cannot be contented either with the tax revenue or the banking arrangement, to defray the indemnification; she sells the stock whenever she can find a man to buy it.
But here is a remarkable fact, proving how little is the future of Austria contemplated as sure even by its votaries. When any one is willing to sell landed property in Hungary, foreign bankers, Austrian capitalists buy it readily at an enormous price, because they know that private transactions will be respected by our revolution; but from the Government, nobody buys a single acre of land, because every man knows that such a transaction must be considered void. Nay more, not even as a gift is an estate accepted by any one from the present government. Haynau himself was offered in reward a large landed property by the government; he did not accept it, but preferred a comparatively small sum of money, not amounting to one-tenth of the value of the offered land, and he bought from a private individual a landed property, for the money, because that, being a private transaction, is sure to stand: whereas in the future of the Austrian government in Hungary not even its Haynaus have confidence.
The manufacturing interests in Hungary anxiously wish, and must wish, a revolution, because manufacturing industry is entirely ruined now by Austria. All favour, encouragement, and aid, which the national government imparted to industry, is not only withdrawn, but replaced by the old system,—which is, neither to allow Hungary free trade, so as to buy manufactured articles where they can be had in the best quality or at the cheapest price, nor to permit manufacturing at home; but to preserve Hungary in the position of a colonial market—a condition always regarded as insupportable, and sufficient motive for a revolution, as you yourselves from your own history know.
The commercial interest anxiously desire a revolution, because there exists, in fact, no active commerce in Hungary, the Hungarian commerce being degraded into a mere broker-ship of Vienna.
All those who have yet in their hands the Hungarian bank notes issued by my government, must wish a revolution; because Austria, alike foolish as criminal, has declared them to be without value—thus they cannot be restored to value but by a revolution. The amount of those bank notes in the hands of the people is yet about twenty millions of dollars. No menaces, no cruelty can induce the people to give it up to the usurper; they put it into bottles and bury it in the earth. They say: it is good money when Kossuth comes home. But while no menaces of Austria can induce the people to give up this treasure of our impending revolution, a single line of mine, sent home, is obeyed, and the money is treasured up where I have designated.
Do you now understand, gentlemen, by what motive I say that once at home in command—if once our struggle is commenced, I do not want your material aid, and neither wish nor would accept all your millions—but that I want your material aid to get home, and to get home in such a way as will inspire confidence in my people, by seeing me bring home the only thing which it has not—ARMS!
But I am asked, where will I land? That, of course, I will not say—perhaps directly at Vienna, like a Montgolfier, in a balloon; but one thing I may say, because that is no secret:—remember that all Italy is a sea-coast, and that Italy has the same enemy as Hungary—that Italy is the left wing of that army of which Hungary is the right wing, and that in Italy 40,000 Hungarian soldiers exist, as also, in general, in the Austrian army 140,000 Hungarians. More I can, and will not say on the subject.
But I will say that all the amount of taxation the people of Hungary formerly had to pay was but four and a half million dollars, and now it has to pay sixty-five million dollars; that landowners offer their land to the government, to get rid of the land tax, which is larger than all the revenue; that we have raised 600,000 hundredweight of tobacco—now, the monopoly of tobacco being introduced, the people no longer smokes and has burnt its tobacco seed. We have raised 120 million gallons of wine. Gentlemen, I come not to interfere with the domestic concerns of America. I have no opinion about the Maine liquor-law. For myself I am very fond of water, but still may say it is my opinion, it will be many years before the Maine liquor-law will pass through all Europe. Well, gentlemen, I was about to say, one half of the vineyards are cut down;—hundreds of thousands live upon horticulture and fruit cultivation; yet the trees are cut down to escape the heavy taxation laid upon them. The stamp tax is introduced, the most insupportable to freemen—village is divided from village, town from town, city from city, by custom-lines—the poor peasant woman, bringing a dozen of eggs to the market, has to pay the consumption-tax, before she is permitted to enter; and when she brings medicine home for her sick child she has again to pay before permitted to enter her home.
And besides this material oppression, and the daily and nightly vexations connected with it,—the Protestants deprived of the self-government of their church and school, for which they have thrice taken up arms victoriously in three centuries,—the Roman Catholics deprived of the security of their church property,—the people of every race deprived of its nationality, because there exists no public life wherein to exert it, no national existence, no constitution, no municipalities, no native law, no native officials, no security of person and of property, but arbitrary power, martial law, and the hangman and the jail,—and on the other side Hungarian patriotism, Hungarian honour, Hungarian heroism, Hungarian vitality, stamped in the vicissitudes of one thousand years, and the consciousness that we have beaten Austria, when we had no army, no money, no friends, and the knowledge that now we have an army, and for home purposes have money in the safe-guarded bank notes, and have America for a friend; and in addition to all this, the confidence of my people in my exertions, and the knowledge of these exertions; of which my people is quite as well informed as yourselves, nay, more, because it sees and knows what I do at home, whereas you see only what I do here—well, if with all this you still doubt about the struggle in Europe being nigh, and still despair of its chance of success, then God be merciful to my poor brains, I know not what to think.