XLIX.—RUSSIA AND THE BALANCE OF POWER.
[Syracuse.]
At Syracuse, in New York State, Kossuth was received with an address of the usual cordiality by the ex-Mayor, Harvey Baldwin. Of his ample reply a portion may here be presented to the reader. After alluding to Dionysius and Timoleon, he came back to the subject of Russian interference in Hungary, and declared that he would not appeal to their passions, but to their calm reason, although he approved of excitement in a good cause, and at any rate trusted that Truth and Hope would never be out of fashion at Syracuse. He continued:—
Gentlemen, as the destination of laws in a well-regulated community is to uphold right, justice, and security of every individual, rich or poor, powerful or weak, and to protect his life against violence and his property against the encroachments of fraud and crime—so the destination of the laws of nations is to secure the independence even of the smallest States, from the encroachments of the most powerful ones. Force will prevail instead of right, so long as all independent nations do not unite for the maintenance of those laws upon which the security of all nations rests.
I say all nations, because weakness is always comparative, not absolute. A combination of several leagued powers can reduce to the condition of comparative weakness even the strongest power on earth. Without the law of nations there is therefore no security for nations. But the European powers have long ago substituted for the rule of justice the so-called balancing system—that is to say, the political balance of power among nations. That system is iniquitous, for it is founded, not upon the national right even of the smallest nation to be maintained in its independence, but upon the natural jealousy of the great powers. With this system the independence of the smallest States is not sure by right and by law, but only depends on the consideration that the absorption of such smaller States might aggrandize one of the great powers too much. In this system humanity is taken for nothing—the mutual jealousy of the powerful is all, and the implicit guarantee for the security of the weaker ceases, wherever the powerful can devise a plan of spoliation which leaves the relative forces of the spoliators the same as before. It is thus the world has seen the partition of Poland—that most iniquitous—most guilty spoliation ever witnessed.
The balancing system would have protected Poland from absorption by one power, but it has not protected it from partition between these rival powers. Formerly, separate leagues between several States have been as a protecting barrier against the ambition of a single powerful oppressor. In the case of Poland, the world saw with consternation a confederacy of great powers formed to perpetrate those very acts of spoliation which hitherto had been prevented by similar means. I therefore am certainly no advocate of this false system of political balance of power, and I believe the time will come when that idol will be thrown down from the place which it usurps, and law and right will be restored to their sovereign sway. But still I may say, it is an imperious necessity for all the world in general, as also for the United States, that something should be done to prevent the measureless territorial aggrandizement of one single power, chiefly when that power is the mighty antagonist of your own Republic, as indeed Russia is.
I have on many occasions spoken of the necessary antagonism between despotic Russia and republican America. Allow me here to recapitulate some facts concerning Russia.
No man familiar with the history of the last hundred years is ignorant that the Czars of Russia take it for their destiny to rule the world. It is their hereditary policy, in which they are brought up from generation to generation, till that infatuation becomes a point of their character. To come to that aim—Russian preponderance steps forth alike with protocols, with emissaries, and with war—in two directions westward and eastward, against Europe and against Asia.
As to Europe, after having completed her arrondisement on the Baltic—her earnest aim is partly direct conquest, and partly sovereign preponderance. Direct conquest, so far as the Sclave race is spread; which the Czars desire to unite under their despotic sceptre. To attain that end, the house of Romanoff has started the idea of Pansclavism, the idea of union of the Sclavish nationality under Russian protectorate.—Protectorate is always the first step which Russia takes when desiring to conquer.
She has styled that ambitious design the regeneration of the Sclave nationality; and to blindfold those deluded nations that they may not see that without independence and freedom no nationality exists, she has flattered their ambition with the prospect of dominion over the world. The Latin race had its turn, and the German race had, and now it is the Sclave race which is called to rule and master the world. Such was the Satanic temptation of pride, by which Russia advanced in that ambitious scheme. I will not now speak of the mischief she has succeeded to do in that respect: I will only mark the fact that the ambition of Russia aims at the direct dominion of Europe, so far as it is inhabited by the Sclave race. The slightest knowledge of geography is sufficient to make it understood that this would be such an accession to the power of Russia, that, were they united under one man's despotic will, the independence of the rest of Europe, should even Russia prudently decline a direct conquest of it, would be but a mockery. The Czar would be omnipotent over it, as indeed he is near to be already, at least on the Continent.