Chapter 34
Thus spoke the United States, at a time when they were not yet so powerful as they are now. And they thus spoke not for themselves only, but for all the nations on earth. And to what purpose did they speak these words so full of dignity and full of effect? For the maintenance of the laws of nations, or one part of them, the maritime code. Dauntless and full of resolution, _they_ alone vindicated natural rights for every nation on earth, while Europe sacrificed them. _They_ vindicated for every nation the proud motto they have emblazoned on their banner--"_Free Trade and Sailors' Rights_," and _free ships and free goods_:
Now who can any longer charge me that I advance a new policy, with that precedent before your eyes? Would you be willing to resign, now that you are powerful, in respect to other parts of the laws of nations, that which you have boldly taken in respect to one part of them, when you were yet comparatively weak? Or would you do less for the end than you have done for the means?
The maritime part of the international code is no end, but only a means to an end. No ship takes sail for the purpose merely of sailing on the ocean, but for the purpose of arriving somewhere. The ocean is but the highway, and not the intended terminus. Russian intervention in Hungary has blocked up your terminus: and the maritime code would be of no avail, if the other provisions of international law are to be still blotted out from the code of nations by Russian ambition. Let the slightest eruption of the political volcano in Europe take place, and you will see. You might have seen already during our past struggle, that your proud principle of "_free ships, free goods_" is a mere mockery unless the other parts of the laws of nations are also maintained.
That is what I claim from the young and dauntless nation of America. I claim that she shall not abandon that position in the proud days of her power, which she so boldly took in the days of her feebleness. Or are you already declining? Has your prodigious prosperity weakened instead of strengthening your nation's nerves? So young! and a Republic! and already declining! when its opposing principle, Russia, rises so boldly and so high! Oh, no! God forbid! That would be a sorrowful sight, fraught with the grief of centuries for all humanity!
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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.
Yet, without the conquest of Constantinople, Russia could never carry the idea of Pansclavism: for in European Turkey a vast stock of the Sclavonic race dwells, from Bulgaria over Servia and Bosnia down to Montenegro, and across through Rumelia. Moreover, the conquest of Constantinople is the hereditary leading idea of Russian policy. Peter, called the Great, the founder of the Russian Empire, in making it from a half-Asiatic a European State, bequeathed this policy as a sacred legacy to all his posterity, in his political testament, which is the Magna Charta of Russian power and despotism. All his successors have energetically followed that inherited direction. Alexander movingly avowed that Constantinople _is the key to his own house_, and his brother did and does more than all his predecessors to get that key.
When the Empress Catharine visited the recently conquered Krimea, Potemkin raised to her honour a triumphal arch, with the motto--"Hereby is the road to Constantinople." Czar Nicholas has since learned that it is by Vienna, rather. Russia therefore decided to get rid of this obstacle, and to convert it out of an obstacle into a TOOL. A direct conquest would have been dangerous, because it would have met the opposition of all Europe. Russia therefore tried it first by monetary influence, and had pretty well advanced in it. Metternich himself was a pensioner to Russia. But the watchful, independent spirit of constitutional Hungary still hindered the practical result of that bribery.
And, mark well, gentlemen, in consequence of the geographical situation of her dominions, and being also sovereigns of Hungary, it was chiefly the house of Austria which was considered to be and cherished as the great bulwark against Russia--charged especially with a jealous guardianship of Turkish rights. And indeed had the house of Austria comprehended the conditions of her existence, attached Hungary to herself by respecting her independence and her constitutional rights, and developed the power of her hereditary dominions, and placed herself upon a constitutional basis, she could have maintained her respectable position of guardianship for centuries. Russia was aware of that fact.
It is the intrigue of Russia, which by money and emissaries for years before infused the notion of Pansclavism among the Bohemians, Poles, Croats, Serbs, under the crown of Austria, equally as among the Sclave population of Turkey; which encouraged Austria to attack Hungary, by promising her aid in case of need. If Austria succeeded, the constitutional life of Hungary, in many ways so offensive to Russia, was overthrown: if Austria failed, she became a dependency of Russia. And by the unwarrantable carelessness of some powers, the complicity of others, the latter alternative is achieved. Austria, who was to have _balanced_ Russia, is thrown into her scale: instead of being a barrier, she is her vanguard, and her tool--her high road to Constantinople, her auxiliary army to flank it.
It would be not without interest to sketch the history of Russia step by step, advancing towards that aim by war and by emissaries, and by diplomatic corruption and corrupted diplomacy, from the time of Mahomet Baltadji, of cursed memory, through all subsequent wars--at the treaties of Kutsuk Kaynardje, Balta Liman, Jassy, Bucharest, Ackierman, Adrianople, Unkhiar Iskelessi, down to the treaty as to the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, and to the treaty of commerce which made two-thirds of Constantinople itself in their daily bread dependent upon Russian wheat, to the amount of thirty-five millions of piastres a year, while Turkish wheat was rotting in the stores of Asia Minor. By each of these treaties Russia advanced its frontiers, and pressed Constantinople more closely within its iron grasp; with such perseverant consistency pursuing her aim, that even in other political transactions, apparently unconnected with Turkey, it was constantly this which she kept in view.
As for instance, at the conference of Tilsit, when she surrendered continental Europe to the momentary domains of Napoleon, provided Turkey were consigned to her. And still she did not succeed--and still Stamboul stands a barrier to her dominion over the world. And why did she not succeed? Because the European powers, conscious of the fact that the conquest of Constantinople involves their own submission to Russia, have in the last instant always prevented it, by uniting to treat the Eastern question as one of life and death for their own independence.
The whole Anglo-Saxon race are bound by every consideration of policy to check the ambitious encroachments of Russia. It is not in Europe only, but in Asia, that you meet her. She knows that her dominion over the world must be short, while the Anglo-Saxon race bold a mighty empire in India. Moreover, you yourselves, by the extension of your territory to the Pacific Ocean, are drawn by a thousand natural ties of activity to Asia. Your expedition to Japan has a world of meaning in it. Great powers _must_ have broad views in their policy: you cannot contain your activity, nor therefore your policy, within a domestic circle of your own. You are for the world what Germany is for Europe. As without the freedom of Hungary, Europe cannot _become_ free, so without the freedom of Germany, Europe cannot _remain_ free; for Germany is the heart of Europe. You, by having extended your dominion to the Pacific, become the heart of the world. You are brought into the compass of Russian hatred and Russian ambition. Either you or Russia must fall.
The balance of power, and thereby the independence of the world, has been overthrown by the connivance of the great powers at the overthrow of Hungary; and it can only be restored by the restoration of Hungary. As for Austria, she never more can be restored--she is not only doomed, she is dead. No skill, no tending can revive her. Having previously broken every tie of affection and of allegiance, she cannot maintain even a vegetable life, but by Russian aid. Let the reliance upon that aid relax, and there is no power on earth which could prevent the nations who groan under her oppressive and degrading tyranny from shattering to pieces the rotten building of her criminal existence. And as to my nation, I declare solemnly, that should we be left forsaken and alone to fight once more the battle of deliverance for the world, and should we in consequence of it fail in that honourable strife, we will rather choose to be Russians than subject to the house of Austria--rather submit to open, manly force of the Czar, than to the heart-revolting perjury of the Hapsburg--rather be ruled directly by the master, than submit to the shame of being ruled by his underlings. The fetters of force may be broken once, but the affection of a morally offended people to a perjurious dynasty can never be restored. Russia we hate with inconceivable hatred, but the House of Hapsburg we hate and we despise.
I have been often asked, what may be, amidst the present conjunctures, an opportunity to renew our struggle for liberty? and I have answered that the very oppression of our country, the heroism of my people, our resolute will, and the intolerable condition of the European Continent, is an opportunity in itself; but if too cautious men, having too little faith in the destiny of mankind, desire yet another opportunity, there is the prospect of a war between Turkey and Russia. This is a fatality, pointed out by the situation of Russia, and by the pressing motives, heaped up since the time of Peter the Great: and Russia will hasten to try the decisive blow, since she knows that Turkey becomes more powerful every day. Now, gentlemen, that will be an imperious opportunity to raise once more the standard of freedom in Hungary; and, so may God bless us, we are prepared for it. We cannot allow that our natural ally, Turkey, be flanked from the frontiers of Hungary at the order of the Czar. Turkey, by curious change of circumstances, having become necessary to European freedom and civilization, will find the kindred race of the Magyars to aid her, and by aiding her, to save the world.
The only question is, will the United States remain indifferent at the overthrow of the balance of power on earth? No, they will not, they cannot remain indifferent. Their position on the coast of the Pacific answers "No." Their Republican principle answers "No." The voice of the people, clustering in thundering manifestations around my own humble self, answer "No." You yourself, Sir, in the name of the people of Syracuse, which is but one tone in the mighty harmony of all the people's voice, have told me "No."
Before these assurances, and upon the conditions of your destiny, I rely; and I venture humbly to advise you to strengthen your fleet in the Mediterranean. Sir, look for a port of your own, not depending upon the smiles of petty Italian despots, but one where the stripes and stars of America will be able to protect the principles of FREE SHIPS, FREE GOODS. Determine the character of your country's future administration from a broad American view, and not from any petty considerations of small party follies. With these humble suggestions I cordially thank you for your sympathy, and bid you an affectionate farewell!
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L.--RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT.
[_Utica._]
At Utica, in New York State, the elegant Saloon of the Museum was arranged for Kossuth's reception: and the Hon. W. Bacon made a powerful address to him. Kossuth in the course of his reply, said:--
Ladies and gentlemen,--The history and the institutions of the United States were not only the favourite study of my life, from my early youth, strengthening my conviction that with centralization and with parliamentary omnipotence, which absorb all independence of municipal life, there is no practical freedom possible:--but the history and institutions of the United States exerted also a real influence upon the resolution of my people to resist oppression, and not to shrink before the dangers and sacrifices of a terrible conflict.
Never yet was there a people against which all the arts of hell had been combined worse than against the people of Hungary in 1848. Neither dreaming to attack any, nor suspecting to be attacked, never yet was a people less prepared for a war of defence, or more surprised by the danger than my country was.
In those frightful days, when many of the stoutest hearts prepared mourningly to submit to the imperious necessity, I called Hungary to arms; and while on the one side I pronounced a curse against those who would forsake the fatherland, and were willing to bow cowardlike before a sacrilegious violence, and accept the degradation of servitude,--on the other side, in order to cheer up the manly resolution of my countrymen, I pointed to the heart-raising example of your history. And that history became the guiding star to us, from the lustre of which we have drawn self-reliance and resolution to bear up against all danger and all adversities.
But while we on our part readily yielded to the heart-ennobling influence of your history, we were disappointed in some expectations which we derived from it. We saw that you were not forsaken in the hour of need; yet your grievances were by far less heart-stirring than ours, and should _you_ have failed in the noble enterprize of independence, such a failure, at that time, would by no means have teemed with such immediate results of positive mischiefs to the world outside of you, as every considerate mind might have foreseen from _our_ fall.
I therefore confess that I trusted to that instruction also of your history, and hoped that should we prove worthy of the attention of the world, that attention would not be restricted to a mere looking at our contest with barren sympathies. But allow me to mention that it was not from America alone that I hoped our struggle would not be regarded with indifference: the example of former political transactions in Europe entitled me to just expectations from other quarters also in that respect.
When Greece heroically rose to assert its independence, Great Britain, France, and even Russia herself, interposed together to pacify the two contending parties, on the basis of the establishment of an independent Greece. And so very anxious were those great powers to stop the effusion of blood, that they solemnly declared they would insist upon the pacification, should even the conflicting parties decline to consent to the proposed arrangements. And thus Greece took its seat among the independent States, though that was possible only by reducing the territory of the Ottoman Empire, the integrity of which was considered essential to the equilibrium of political power on earth.
Besides, what were those powers which interposed their mediation in favour of bleeding Greece? It was Russia, despotical as she is: it was legitimist France, then scarcely to be called constitutional; for it was before the revolution of 1830: and it was the ministry of Great Britain, then, if I am not mistaken, a Tory one.
Now was I not entitled with this precedent before my eyes, to hope that the bloody struggle in Hungary would not be regarded with indifference? We had not risen from any reckless excitement to assert new rights, or to experiment on new theories; we should have been contented to keep what we lawfully possessed. It was not we who broke the peace; we were assailed with a perjury more sacrilegious than the world has ever seen:--we merely took up arms to defend ourselves against national extermination, against the nameless cruelties inflicted upon our people,--men, women, children,--by fire, murder, war, and royal perjury. And besides, when we took up arms in legitimate defence, it so happened that in France there was a republic established which proclaimed the principle of universal fraternity; and there was in England a ministry claiming to be liberal, which on a former occasion had solemnly vouched its word to the British parliament, that _constitutional independence of any country, great or small, would never be a matter of indifference to the English government;_ adding emphatically, that _whoever might be in office, conducting the affairs of Great Britain, he would not perform his duty if he were inattentive to the interests of such States._ Am I to blame for having thought that there is and should be morality in politics?
And besides, there was republican America, quite in another shape than she was twenty years before, at the time of the war of independence in Greece. Then she had not yet extended her sway to the Pacific, and was not yet exposed to be so much affected by the political issues of Europe and Asia as she now is: then she had not yet a population of more than twenty millions, who now are in the necessity to claim the position of a power on earth: then she was indeed a new world teeming with the mysteries of the future, but yet was far from being what she is to-day; nay, even the Erie Canal, the great artery which now acts as a miraculous link between Europe and the interior of your republic, was only about to be completed at the time. And still what mighty sympathy! a sympathy warm in expression, and not barren in facts, thrilled through all America, much like that which I now meet, and pervaded even your _national_ councils:--would I were entitled to say, much like as now! Although the question of Greece was of course worthy of all interest (as the cause of liberty always and everywhere is), yet it was only an isolated cause, and by no means of such surpassing influence upon the condition of the world as the cause of Hungary was, and is.