Sir, you say that Ohio can show no battle field connected with recollections of your own glorious revolution. Let me answer, that the whole West is a monument, and Cincinnati the fair cornice of it. If your eastern sister States have instructed the world how nations become independent and free, the West shows to the world what a nation once independent and really free can become.
Allow me to declare, that by standing before the world as such an instructive example, you exercise the most effective revolutionary propaganda; for if the mis-result of French revolutions discourage the nations from shaking off the 'oppressors' yoke, your victory,—and still more, your unparalleled prosperity,—has encouraged oppressed nations to dare what you dared.
Egotists and hypocrites may say that you are not responsible for it; you have bid nobody to follow you:—and it may be true that you are not responsible before a tribunal. Still, you are sufficiently free not to feel offended by a true word; therefore I say you are responsible before your own conscience, for, your example having started a new doctrine, the teacher of a new doctrine is morally bound not to forsake his doctrine when assailed in the person of his disciples.
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XXX.—WAR A PROVIDENTIAL NECESSITY AGAINST OPPRESSION.
[To the Clergy of Cincinnati.]
The clergy of Cincinnati addressed Kossuth by the mouth of the Rev. Mr.
Fisher. Among other topics, this gentleman said:—
We wish to you first, and through you, to the world, to express our respect for those heroic clergymen who dared to offer public prayers to Almighty God for the success of your arms. We have not forgotten the manner in which Austria attempted to dragoon their tongues into silence, and their souls into abject submission. Nor can we believe that a country with such pastors—that a country whose religious interests are confided to men ready to pray against the Despot, will be suffered by our heavenly Father to remain trodden down, and to have her name blotted out of the history of nations. If in the great battle of freedom, the heart of the minister of religion at the Altar, beats in sympathy with the heart of the minister at the Council Board, and the soldier in the battle-field, there is then a union of the moral, intellectual, and physical forces of a nation, which we have been taught to believe would generally and ultimately be victorious.
We frankly confess to you that our hope that Hungary is not to share the fate of unhappy Poland, is grounded first on the large element of a Protestant ministry she embraces, and secondly on the advance which the nations are making in a true understanding of the principles of republican freedom. We believe the cause of Hungary to be just. Against the usurpations of Kings and perjured Princes—against the interference of foreign powers to assist in treading on the sparks of liberty anywhere on the earth, and especially in such a land as yours, we claim the privilege at the fit time of entering our protest and expressing toward such acts our deepest abhorrence. And while we desire most earnestly the advent of universal peace, and rejoice that the power of moral principles is increasing in the world, and anticipate the day when the nations shall learn war no more, yet we are fully convinced, both from the Holy Scriptures and the history of the past, that under the overruling providence of God wars occasioned by the oppression, the ambition, and the covetousness of men, are often the means of breaking up the stagnant waters of superstition and irreligion, and securing to the truth a position from which it may most successfully send abroad its light, and mould the heart of a nation to religion and peace. Despotism is in our view a perpetual war of a few upon the many; and we must unlearn some of the earliest lessons that our mothers taught us and our fathers illustrated in their lives, before we can cease to sympathize with the assertors of their rights against the force or the fraud of their fellow-men. And since the sad issue of revolution after revolution in infidel France, there are not a few of us, who have indulged the hope (especially since your visit to our shores), that in central Europe, in your native land, among an undebauched and a Bible-reading people, a government might arise that would accord freedom of conscience to all, and shine as a light of virtuous republicanism upon the darkness around.
In meeting you thus we design no mere display, no ineffective parade of words. We wish to give whatever weight of influence we may bear in this community, to the cause of freedom in your native land, to assist in securing to you and your nation, such aid as a nation situated as we are can wisely give, so as best to subserve the interests of liberty and humanity in all the world. We regard the moral influence of this country as of the first importance; and the peaceful working of republican institutions as a daily protest against despotism. And for ourselves we pledge to you and your country, that we will, in public and private, bear your cause upon our hearts, and invoke in your behalf, the intervention of an arm that no earthly power can resist.