Sir, to the State of Indiana I am in many respects particularly obliged. True, I have had invitations to visit many other States, but the invitation from the State of Indiana was first received. Please to accept my warmest thanks. I have seen in other States a harmony between the people and the government, but nowhere has the Governor of a State condescended to represent the people in a public welcome, nowhere stepped out as the orator of the people's sympathy and its sentiment. I most humbly thank you for this honour.
In Maryland, the Governor introduced me to the Legislature. In Pennsylvania the chief Magistrate was the organ of a common welcome of the Legislature and Citizens. In Massachusetts he took the lead as the people's elect in recommending my principles to the Legislature—and in Ohio the chief Magistrate, by accepting the Presidency of the Association of the friends of Hungary, became generally the executive of the people's practical sympathy, which so magnanimously responded to the many political manifestations of its Representatives in the Legislature.
Let me hope, sir, that as you have been generously pleased to be the interpreter of Indiana's welcome and sympathy, you will also not refuse to become the Chief Executive Magistrate to the practical development of the same.
I may cordially thank, in the name of my cause, the people of Indiana, its Governor, and Representatives, for the high honour of the Legislature's invitation, and of this public welcome.
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XXXIV.—IMPORTANCE OF FOREIGN POLICY, AND OF STRENGTHENING ENGLAND.
[Speech at Louisville, March 6th.]
At the Court House, Louisville, Kossuth was addressed by Bland Ballard,
Esq., and replied as follows:
Whatever be the immediate issue of that discussion about foreign policy, which now so eminently occupies public attention throughout the United States, from the Capitol and White-house at Washington down to the lonely farms of your remotest territories, one fact I have full reason to take for sure, and that is: That when the trumpet-sound of national resurrection is once borne over the waves of the Atlantic announcing to you that nations have risen to assert those rights to which they are called by nature and nature's God—when the roaring of the first cannon-shot announces that the combat is begun which has to decide which principle is to rule over the Christian world—absolutism or national sovereignty—there is no power on earth which could induce the people of the United States to remain inactive and indifferent spectators of that great struggle, in which the future of the Christian world—yes, the future of the United States themselves is to be decided. The people of the United States will not remain indifferent and inactive spectators and will not authorize, will not approve, any policy of indifference. You yourself have told me so, sir.
In the position of every considerable country there is a necessity of a certain course, to adopt which cannot be avoided, and may be almost called destiny. The duty as well as the wisdom of statesmen consists in the ability to steer, in time, the vessel into that course, which, if they neglect to do in time, the price will be higher and the profit less.