XXVIII.—THE MISERIES AND THE STRENGTH OF HUNGARY.
[Columbus, Feb. 7th, to the Association of Friends of Hungary.]
On Feb. 7th was held the first regular meeting of the Ohio Association of the Friends of Hungary, in the City Hall of Columbus. Governor Wood addressed the Association, as its President; and in the course of his speech said:—
This is a cause in which the people of the United States feel much interest. Much has been said on the doctrine of intervention and non-intervention. There was a time when if I ventured to speak a word on any question in this State it was received with authority. The opinions I now express have been formed with the same deliberation as those I expressed with authority in another capacity. There has seemed to be a combined effort on the part of despots in Europe to put down free institutions. It is the duty of freemen to oppose this effort—to resist the principle that every civic community has not a right to regulate its own affairs. Whenever one nation interferes with the internal concerns of another, it is a direct insult to all other nations.
There is a combined effort in Continental Europe to overthrow all free and liberal institutions. This accomplished, what next?—The efforts of tyrants will be directed to our institutions. It will be their aim to break us down. Must not we prevent this event—peaceably if we can—forcibly if we must? No power will prevail with tyrants and usurpers but the power of gunpowder or steel.
Kossuth in reply, turning to Governor Wood, said: Before addressing the assembly, I humbly entreat your excellency to permit me to express, out of the very heart of my heart, my gratitude and fervent thanks for those lofty, generous principles which you have been pleased now to pronounce. I know those principles would have immense value even if they were only an individual opinion; but when they are expressed by him who is the elect of the people of Ohio, they doubly, manifoldly increase in weight.
The restoration of Hungary to its national independence is my aim, to which I the more cheerfully devote my life, because I know that my nation, once master of its own destiny, can make no other choice, in the regulation of its institutions and of its government, than that of a Republic founded upon democracy and the great principle of municipal self-government, without which, as opposed to centralization, there is no practical freedom possible.
Other nations enjoying a comparatively tolerable condition under their existing governments—though aware of their imperfections, may shrink from a revolution of which they cannot anticipate the issue, while they know that in every case it is attended with great sacrifices and great sufferings for the generation which undertakes the hazard of the change. But that is not the condition of Hungary. My poor native land is in such a condition that all the horrors of a revolution, when without the hopes of happiness to be gained by it, are preferable to what it lives to endure now. The very life on a bloody battle-field, where every whistling musket-ball may bring death—affords more security, more ease, and is less alarming than that life which the people of Hungary has to suffer now. We have seen many a sorrowful day in our past, We have been by our geographical position, destined as the breakwater against every great misfortune, which in former centuries rushed over Europe from the East. It is not only the Turks, when they were yet a dangerous, conquering race, which my nation had to stay, by wading to the very lips in its own heroic blood. No. The still more terrible invasion of Batu Khan's (the Mongol) raging millions, poured down over Europe from the Steppes of Tartary,—who came not to conquer but to destroy, and therefore spared not nature, not men, not the child in its mother's womb. It was Hungary which had to stay its flood from devouring the rest of Europe. Nevertheless, all which Hungary has ever suffered is far less than it has to suffer now from the tyrant of Austria, himself in his turn nothing but the slave of ambitious Russia.
Oh! it is a fair, beautiful land, my beloved country, rich in nature's blessings as perhaps no land is rich on earth. When the spring has strewn its blossoms over it, it looks as the garden of Eden may have looked, and when the summer ripens nature's ocean of crops over its hills and plains, it looks like a table dressed for mankind by the Lord himself; and still it was here in Columbus that I read the news that a terrible dearth, that famine is spreading over the rich and fertile land. How should it not? Where life-draining oppression weighs so heavily, that the landowner offers the use of all his lands to the government, merely to get free from the taxation—where the vintager cuts down his vineyards and the gardener his orchard, and the farmer burns his tobacco seed to be rid of the duties, and their vexations—there of course must dearth prevail, and famine raise its hideous head. Yet the tyrant adds calumny to oppression, by attributing the dearth to a want of industry, after having created it by oppression. There exists no personal security of property. Nor is the verdict "not guilty," when pronounced by an Austrian court, sufficient to ensure security against prison, nay, against death by the executioner—through a new trial ordered to find a man guilty at any price. Poor Louis Bathyanyi was thus treated. Even now persecution is going on—hundreds are arrested secretly and sent to prison and their property confiscated, though they were already acquitted by the very Haynaus. Even to whisper that a man or woman was arrested in the night is considered a crime, and punished by prison, or if the whisperer be a young man, by sending him to the army, there to taste, when he dares to frown, the corporal's stick. No man knows what is forbidden, what not, because there exists no law but the arbitrary will of martial courts—no protecting institution—no public life—free speech forbidden—the press fettered—complaint a crime,—When we consider all this, indeed it is not possible not to arrive at the conviction, that, come what may, a new war of revolution in Hungary is not a matter of choice, but a matter of unavoidable necessity, because all that may come is not by far so terrible as that which is!
But I am often asked,—"What hope has Hungary should she rise again?" Pardon me, gentlemen, for saying, that I cannot forbear to be surprized as often as I hear this question. Why! The Emperor of Austria, fresh with his bloody victories over Italy, Vienna, Lemberg, Prague, attacked us in the fulness of his power, when we had no expectation, and were least in the world prepared to meet it. We were assaulted on several sides; our fortresses were in the hands of traitors, we had as yet no army at all. We were secluded from all the world—forsaken by all the world—without money—without arms—without ammunition—without friends—having nothing for us but the justice of our cause and the people burning with patriotism—men who went to the battlefield almost without knowing how to cock their guns; but still, within less than six months, we beat all the force of Austria,—we crushed it to the dust, and in despair, the proud tyrant fled to the feet of the Czar, begging his assistance for his sacrilegious purpose, and paying him by the sacrifice of honour, independence, and all his future!