Chapter 2
I can state it, as known to me, with the certainty of matter of fact, that Hungary will never accept the Hapsburgs as legitimate sovereigns in the future, nor ever enter into any new moral relations with that perjurious family. Nor only so; but their perjury has so entirely plucked out of my nation's heart all faith in monarchy and all attachment to it, that there is no power on earth to knit the broken tie again: and therefore Hungary wishes and wills to be a free and independent republic,--a republic founded on the rule of law, securing social order, guaranteeing person, property, the moral development as well as material welfare of the people,--in a word, a republic like that of the United States, founded on institutions inherited from England itself. This is the conviction of my people, which I share in the very heart of my heart.
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III.--COMMUNISM AND THE SIBYLLINE BOOKS.
[_From Kossuth's Second Speech at Manchester, Nov. 12th_, 1851.]
I can understand Communism, but not Socialism. I have read many books on the subject, I have consulted many doctors; but they differ so much that I never could understand what they really mean. However, the only sense which I can see in socialism, is inconsistent with social order and the security of property.
Now since France has three times in sixty years failed to obtain practical results from Political revolutions, all Europe is apt to press forward into new Social doctrine to regulate the future. Believing then, that,--not from my merit, but from the state of my country,--I may be able somewhat to influence the course of the next European revolution, I think it right plainly to declare beforehand my allegiance to the great principle of security for personal property. Nevertheless, to give success to my endeavours in this direction, the rational expectations of the nations of Europe must speedily be fulfilled; else neither I, nor more important men, can avail to stay revolutionary movement. The danger of the case may be illustrated by the ancient story of the Sibylline books.
Take Hungary as an instance. Three years ago we should have been extremely well contented with the laws as made by our parliament in 1848, _which laws did not break the tie between us and the house of Hapsburg_. But then Austria assailed us with arms, and it became impossible for us to go on with that constitution; indeed she herself proclaimed it to be dissolved. We defeated her, and next she called in the Russian armies. Hungary was then under the necessity of _casting off the Hapsburg monarchy_; and only the third Sibylline book remained. Yet Hungary did not even then renounce monarchy, but gave instructions to her representative in England to say to the Government of this country, that _if they wished to see monarchy established in Hungary, we would accept any dynasty they proposed_: but it was not-listened to. Then came the horrors of Arad,[*] and destroyed all our faith in monarchy. So the last of the three books was burned.
[Footnote *: In Arad the Hungarian Generals, who surrendered by Görgy's persuasion, were hanged or shot; and simultaneously Bathyanyi, who had been arrested when he came as an ambassador of peace, was judged anew and murdered by a second court-martial.]
And so, wherever men's reasonable expectations are not fulfilled, it cannot be known where their fluctuations will end. Every man who is anxious for the preservation of person and property should help the world in obtaining rational freedom: if it be not obtained, mankind will search after other forms of action, totally subversive of all existing social order; and where the excitement will subside, I do not know. Men like me, who merely wish to establish political freedom, will in such circumstances lose all their influence, and others will get influence who may become dangerous to all established interests whatsoever.
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IV.--LEGITIMACY OF HUNGARIAN INDEPENDENCE.
[When Kossuth had landed at Staten Island, thus for the first time setting his foot on American soil, he was met by a deputation, which made an address to him. He replied as follows (Dec. 5th, 1851)]:--
Ladies and gentlemen: The twelve hours that I have had the happiness to stand on your shores, give me augury that, during my stay in the United States, I shall have a pleasant duty to perform, in answering the generous spirit of your people. I hope, however, that you will consider that I am in the first moments of a hard task,--to address your intelligent people in a tongue foreign to me. You will not expect from me an elaborate speech, but will be contented with a few warmly-felt words. Citizens, accept my fervent thanks for your generous welcome, and my blessing upon your sanction of my hopes. You have most truly stated what they are, when you announce the destiny of your glorious country, and tell me that from it the spirit of liberty will go forth and achieve the freedom of the world.
Yes, citizens, these are the hopes which have induced me, in a most eventful period, to cross the Atlantic. I confidently hope, that as you have anticipated my wishes by the expression of your generous sentiments, so you will agree with me, that the spirit of liberty has to go forth, not only spiritually, but materially, from your glorious country. That spirit is a power for deeds, but is yet no _deed_ in itself. Despotism and oppression never yet were beaten except by heroic resistance. That is a sad necessity,--but it is a necessity nevertheless. I have so learned it out of the great book of history. I hope the people of the United States will remember, that in the hour of _their_ nation's struggle, it received from Europe _more_ than kind wishes. It received material aid from others in times past, and it will, doubtless, now impart its mighty agency to achieve the liberty of other lands.
Citizens, I thank you for having addressed me, not in the language of party, but in the language of liberty, which is that of the United States. I come hither, in the name of Hungary, to entreat, not from any _party_ among you, but from your _whole nation_, a generous protection for my country. And for that very reason, neither will I intermeddle with any of your party questions. In England I often avowed this principle; inasmuch as the very mission on which I come, is to ask that the right of every nation to arrange its domestic concerns may be respected. Notwithstanding this, I am sorry to see, that, before my arrival, I have been charged with intermeddling with your presidential election, because in one of my addresses in England I mentioned the name of your fellow-citizen, Mr. Walker, as one of the candidates for the Presidency. I confess with warm gratitude, that Mr. Walker uttered such sentiments in England, as, if happily they are also those of the United States, will enable me to declare, that Hungary and Europe are free. Therefore I feel deeply indebted to him. But in no respect did I mix myself up with your elections. I consider no man honest who does not observe towards other nations the principles which he desires to be observed towards his own: and therefore I will not interfere in your domestic questions.
Allow me, citizens, to advert to one expression of your kind address, personal to myself. You named me "Kossuth, Governor of Hungary."
My nomination to be Governor was not to gratify ambition. Never, perhaps, did I feel sadder, than at the moment when that title was conferred upon me; for I compared my feeble faculties and its high responsibilities. It is therefore not from ambition that I thank you for the title, but because the title rests upon our Declaration of Independence; and by acknowledging it as mine, you recognize the rightfulness and validity of that Declaration. And, gentlemen I frankly declare that your whole people are bound in honour and duty to recognize it. At this moment there is no other legitimate existing law in Hungary. It was not the proclamation of a man or of a party. It was the solemn declaration of the whole nation in _Congress_ assembled. It was sanctioned by _every village_, and by _every municipality_. No counter-proclamation has gone forth from Hungary. It has been overturned solely by the invasion of an ambitious _foreign_ power, the Czar of Russia; who can no more legitimately make or unmake a governor of Hungary, than General Santa Anna, if in your late war he had forced his way to Washington, could have unmade President Taylor. None of you will admit that violence can destroy righteousness: it can but establish unlawful, unrightful _fact_. If so,--if your own people, and not foreign invaders, are the source of rightful law to _you_,--you must in consistency recognize _our_ Independence as legitimate, and its declaration as our still rightful law.
As to the praises which you were so kind as to bestow upon me, it is no affectation in me when I declare that I am not conscious of having any other merit than that of being a plain, straightforward man, a faithful friend of freedom, a good patriot. And these qualities, gentlemen, are so natural to _every_ honest man, that it is scarcely worth while to speak of them; for I cannot conceive how a man with understanding and with a sound heart, can be anything else than a good patriot and a lover of freedom.
Yet my humble capacity has not preserved me from calumnies. Scarcely had I arrived here, when I learned that I had been charged in the United States with being an _irreligious man_. So long as despots exist, and have the means to pay, they will find men to calumniate those who are opposed to tyranny. But, suppose I were the most dishonest creature in the world; in the name of all that is sacred, _what would that matter in respect to the cause of Hungary?_ Would that cause become less just, less righteous, less worthy of your sympathy, because I, for instance, am a bad man? No! I believe you. It is not a question in regard to any individual here. It is a question with regard to a just cause, the cause of a country worthy to take its place in the great family of the free nations of the world. Until I learn that you refuse to recognize nations, whenever their governors fall short of religious perfection, I need not care much about attacks on my mere personality. But one thing I can scarcely comprehend,--that the PRESS--that mighty vehicle of justice and champion of human rights--could have found an organ, and that, in the United States, which (to say nothing of personal calumnies) should degrade itself to assert that it was not the people of Hungary, it was not myself and my coadjutors, that contended for liberty; but it was the Emperor of Austria who was the champion of liberty. Do not give it groans, gentlemen, but rather thank it; for there can be no better service to any cause, than for its opponents to manifest that they have nothing to say but what is ridiculous. That _must_ have been a sacred and just cause, whose detractors need to assert that the Emperor of Austria is the champion of freedom throughout his own dominions and throughout the European continent.
I thank you that you have given me full proof that all these calumnies have affected neither your judgment nor your heart. As this will be the place whence I shall start back for Europe, I shall once more have the happiness of addressing you publicly and bidding you an affectionate adieu:--hoping then to be able to thank you for _acts_, as I now thank you for _sentiments_.
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DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE BY THE HUNGARIAN NATION.
[The reader may be glad to possess the most important portions of this celebrated document. The opponents of Kossuth have of late pretended, that the deposition of the Hapsburgs _caused_ the overthrow of Hungary. But the deposition was not carried until Austria was thoroughly beaten, and Russia _had engaged_ to give her utmost aid. This finally united all Hungary. At no earlier period would Hungary have acted with full unanimity in so decisive a step. To have delayed it longer would not have averted Russian invasion, and would have caused deep discontent in Hungary. Nothing but the wilful disobedience of Görgey, who wasted a month at Buda at this very crisis, saved the Hapsburgs from being conquered in Vienna, before the Russian armies could possibly come up.]
We, the legally-constituted representatives of the Hungarian nation assembled in Diet, do by these presents solemnly proclaim, in maintenance of the inalienable natural rights of Hungary, with all its appurtenances and dependencies, to occupy the position of an Independent European state; that the house of Lorraine-Hapsburg, as perjured in the sight of God and man, has forfeited its right to the Hungarian throne. At the same time, we feel ourselves bound in duty to make known the motives and reasons which have impelled us to this decision, that the civilized world may learn we have not taken this step out of overweening confidence in our own wisdom, or out of revolutionary excitement, but that it is an act of the last necessity, adopted to preserve from utter destruction a nation persecuted to the limit of the most enduring patience.
Three hundred years have passed since the Hungarian nation, by free election, placed the house of Austria upon its throne, in accordance with stipulations made on both sides, and ratified by treaty. These three hundred years have been, for the country, a period of uninterrupted suffering.
The Creator has blessed this country with all the elements of wealth and happiness. Its area of one hundred and ten thousand square miles presents, in varied profusion, innumerable sources of prosperity. Its population, numbering nearly fifteen millions, feels the glow of youthful strength within its veins, and has shown temper and docility which warrant its proving at once the main organ of civilization in Eastern Europe, and the guardian of that civilization when attacked. Never was a more grateful task appointed to a reigning dynasty by the dispensation of Providence than that which devolved upon the house of Lorraine-Hapsburg. It would have sufficed, to do nothing to impede the development of the country. Had this been the rule observed, Hungary would now rank among the most prosperous nations. It was only necessary that it should not envy the Hungarians the moderate share of constitutional liberty which they timidly maintained during the difficulties of a thousand years with rare fidelity to their sovereigns, and the house of Hapsburg might long have counted this nation among the most faithful adherents of the throne.
This dynasty, however, which can at no epoch point to a ruler who based his power on the freedom of the people, adopted a course towards this nation, from father to son, which deserves the appellation of perjury.
The house of Austria has publicly used every effort to deprive the country of its legitimate Independence and Constitution, designing to reduce it to a level with the other provinces long since deprived of all freedom, and to unite all in a common sink of slavery. Foiled in this effort by the untiring vigilance of the nation, it directed its endeavour to lame the power, to check the progress of Hungary, causing it to minister to the gain of the provinces of Austria, but only to the extent which enabled those provinces to bear the load of taxation with which the prodigality of the imperial house weighed them down; having first deprived those provinces of all constitutional means of remonstrating against a policy which was not based upon the welfare of the subject, but solely tended to maintain despotism and crush liberty in every country of Europe.
It has frequently happened that the Hungarian nation, in despite of this systematized tyranny, has been obliged to take up arms in self-defence. Although constantly victorious in these constitutional struggles, yet so moderate has the nation ever been in its use of the victory, so strongly has it confided in the king's plighted word, that it has ever laid down arms as soon as the king, by new compacts and fresh oaths, has guaranteed the duration of its rights and liberty. But every new compact was as futile as those which preceded it; each oath which fell from the royal lips was but a renewal of previous perjuries. The policy of the house of Austria, which aimed at destroying the independence of Hungary as a state, has been pursued unaltered for three hundred years.
It was in vain that the Hungarian nation shed its blood for the deliverance of Austria whenever it was in danger; vain were all the sacrifices which it made to serve the interests of the reigning house; in vain did it, on the renewal of the royal promises, forget the wounds which the past had inflicted; vain was the fidelity cherished by the Hungarians for their king, and which, in moments of danger, assumed a character of devotion; they were in vain, since the history of the government of that dynasty in Hungary presents but an unbroken series of perjured deeds from generation to generation.
In spite of such treatment, the Hungarian nation has all along respected the tie by which it was united to this dynasty; and in now decreeing its expulsion from the throne, it acts under the natural law of self-preservation, being driven to pronounce this sentence by the full conviction that the house of Lorraine-Hapsburg is compassing the destruction of Hungary as an independent State: so that this dynasty has been the first to tear the bands by which it was united to the Hungarian nation, and to confess that it had torn them in the face of Europe. For many causes a nation is justified, before God and man, in expelling a reigning dynasty. Among such are the following:
1. When the dynasty forms alliances with the enemies of the country, with robbers, or partizan chieftains to oppress the nation: 2. When it attempts to annihilate the Independence of the country and its Constitution, supported on oaths, by attacking with an armed force the people who have committed no act of revolt: 3. When the integrity of a country, which the sovereign has sworn to maintain, is violated, and its resources cut away: 4. When foreign armies are employed to murder the people, and to oppress their liberties.
Each of the grounds here enumerated would justify the exclusion of a dynasty from the throne. But the House of Lorraine-Hapsburg is unexampled in the compass of its perjuries, and has committed every one of these crimes against the nation.***
In former times, a governing COUNCIL, under the name of the Royal Hungarian Stadtholdership, the president of which was the Palatine, held its seat at Buda, whose sacred duty it was to watch over the integrity of the state, the inviolability of the Constitution, and the sanctity of the laws; but this _collegiate_ authority not presenting any element of _personal_ responsibility, the Vienna cabinet gradually degraded this council to the position of an administrative organ of court absolutism. In this manner, while Hungary had ostensibly an independent government, the despotic Vienna cabinet disposed at will of the money and blood of the people for foreign purposes, postponing our commercial interests to the success of courtly cabals, injurious to the welfare of the people, so that we were excluded from all connection with the other countries of the world, and were degraded to the position of a colony. The mode of governing by a MINISTRY was intended to put a stop to these proceedings, which caused the rights of the country to moulder uselessly in its parchments; by the change,[*] these rights and the royal oath were both to become a reality. It was the apprehension of this, and especially the fear of losing its control over the money and blood of the country, which caused the house of Austria to resolve on involving Hungary, by the foulest intrigues, in the horrors of fire and slaughter, that, having plunged the country in a civil war, it might seize the opportunity to dismember the kingdom, and to blot out the name of Hungary from the list of independent nations, and unite its plundered and bleeding limbs with the Austrian monarchy.
[Footnote *: The change was solemnly enacted in the Parliamentary Laws of March, 1848, which King Ferdinand V. sanctioned by his public oath in April, 1848.]
The beginning of this course was, (after a Ministry had been called into existence), by ordering an Austrian general [Jellachich] to rise in rebellion against the laws of the country and nominating him Ban of Croatia, a kingdom belonging to the kingdom of Hungary.***
The Ban revolted therefore in the name of the emperor, and rebelled openly against the king of Hungary, who is however one and the same person; and he went so far as to decree the separation of Croatia and Slavonia from _Hungary_, with which they had been united for eight hundred years, as well as to incorporate them with the _Austrian_ empire. Public opinion and undoubted facts threw the blame of these proceedings on the Archduke Louis, uncle to the emperor, on his brother, the Archduke Francis Charles, and especially on the consort of the last-named prince, the Archduchess Sophia; and since the Ban, in this act of rebellion, openly alleged that he acted as a faithful subject of the emperor, the ministry of Hungary requested their sovereign, by a public declaration, to wipe off the stigma which these proceedings threw upon the family. At that moment affairs were not prosperous for Austria in Italy; the emperor therefore did proclaim that the Ban and his associates were guilty of high treason, and of exciting to rebellion. But while publishing this edict, the Ban and his accomplices were covered with favours at court, and supplied for their enterprise with money, arms, and ammunition. The Hungarians, confiding in the royal proclamation, and not wishing to provoke a civil conflict, did not hunt out those proscribed traitors in their lair, and only adopted measures for checking any extension of the rebellion. But soon afterward the inhabitants of South Hungary, of Servian race, were excited to rebellion by precisely the same means.
These were also declared by the king to be rebels, but were nevertheless, like the others, supplied with money, arms, and ammunition. The king's commissioned officers and civil servants enlisted bands of robbers in the principality of Servia to strengthen the rebels, and aid them in massacring the peaceable Hungarian and German inhabitants of the Banat. The command of these rebellious bodies was further entrusted to the rebel leaders of the Croatians.
During this rebellion of the Hungarian Servians, scenes of cruelty were witnessed at which the heart shudders; the peaceable inhabitants were tortured with a cruelty which makes the hair stand on end. Whole towns and villages, once flourishing, were laid waste. Hungarians fleeing before these murderers were reduced to the condition of vagrants and beggars in their own country; the most lovely districts were converted into a wilderness.***
The greater part of the Hungarian regiments were, according to the old system of government, scattered through the other provinces of the empire. In Hungary itself, the troops quartered were mostly Austrian; and they afforded more protection to the rebels than to the laws, or to the internal peace of the country. The withdrawal of these troops, and the return of the national militia, was demanded of the government, but was either refused, or its fulfilment delayed; and when our brave comrades, on hearing the distress of the country, returned in masses, they were persecuted, and such as were obliged to yield to superior force were disarmed, and sentenced to death for having defended their country against rebels.