Magyar News, 2001. szeptember-2002. augusztus (12. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

2002-03-01 / 7. szám

small daily cares have often bent the char­acter of men, but great misfortune seldom. There is less danger in this than in great luck. And, as to ambition, I indeed never was able to understand how anybody can more love ambition than liberty. But I am glad to state a historical fact as a principal demonstration of that influence which institutions exercise upon the character of nations. We Hungarians are very fond of the principle of municipal self government, and we have a natural horror against the principle of centralization. That fond attachment to municipal self-government without which there is no provincial free­dom possible, is a fundamental feature of our national character. We brought it with us from far Asia a thousand years ago, and we conserved it throughout the vicissitudes of ten centuries. No nation has perhaps so much struggled and suffered from the civ­ilized Christian world as we. We do not complain of this lot. It may be heavy, but it is not inglorious. Where the cradle of our Saviour stood, and where his divine doc­trine was founded, there now another faith rules, and the whole of Europe's armed pil­grimage could not avert this fate from that sacred spot, nor stop the rushing waves of Islamism absorbing the Christian empire of Constantine. We stopped these rushing waves. The breast of my nation proved a breakwater to them. We guarded Christendom, that Luthers and Calvins might reform it. It was a dangerous time, and the dangers of the time often placed the confidence of all my nation into one man's hand, and that confidence gave power into his hands to become ambitious. But there was not a single instance in his­tory where a man honored by his people's confidence, had deceived his people by becoming ambitious. The man out of whom Russian diplomacy succeeded to make the murderer of his nation's confi­dence - he never had it, but was rather regarded always with distrust. But he gained some victories when victories were the moment's chief necessity. At the head of the army, circumstances placed him in the capacity to ruin his country. But he never had the people's confidence. So even he is no contradiction to the historical truth that no Hungarian whom his nation hon­ored with its confidence was ever seduced by ambition to become dangerous to his country's liberty. This is a remarkable fact, and yet it is not accidental; it is the logical consequence of the influence of institu­tions upon the national character. Our nation, through all its history, was educat­ed in the school of municipal self-govern­ment, and in such a country ambition hav­ing no field, has also no place in man's character. The truth of this doctrine becomes yet more illustrated by a quite contrary histor­ical fact in France. Whatever have been the changes of government in that great coun­try — and many they have been, to be sure — we have seen a Convention, a Directorate, Consuls, and one Consul, and an Emperor, and the Restoration, and the Citizen King, and the Republic; through all these different experiments centralization was the fundamental tone of the institu­tions of France — power always central­ized; omnipotence always vested some­where. And, remarkably indeed, France has never yet raised one single man to the seat of power who has not sacrificed his country's freedom to his personal ambi­tion! It is sorrowful, indeed, but it is natu­ral. It is in the garden of centralization where the venomous plant of ambition thrives. I dare confidently affirm, that in your great country there exists not a single man through whose brain has ever passed the thought that he would wish to raise the seat of his ambition upon the ruins of your country's liberty, if he could. Such a wish is impossible in the United States. Institutions react upon the character of nations. He who sows wind will reap storm. History is the revelation of Providence. The Almighty rules by eternal laws not only the material but the moral world; and every law is a principle, and every principle a law. Men as well as nations are endowed with free will to choose a principle, but that once chosen the consequences must be abided. With self-government is freedom, and with freedom is justice and patriotism. With centralization is ambition, and with ambition dwells despotism. Happy your great country, Sir, for being so warmly addicted to that great principle of self-gov­ernment. Upon this foundation your fathers raised a home to freedom more glo­rious than the world has ever seen. Upon this foundation you have developed it to a living wonder of the world. Happy your great country, Sir! that it was selected by the blessing of the Lord to prove the glori­ous practicability of a federative union of many sovereign States, all conserving their State rights and their self-government, and yet united in one — every star beaming with its own luster, but all together one constellation on mankind's canopy. Upon this foundation your free country has grown to a prodigious power in a surpris­ingly brief period, an attractive power in that your fundamental principle. You have conquered by it more in seventy-five years than Rome by arms in centuries. Your prin­ciples will conquer the world. By the glo­rious example of your freedom, welfare, and security, mankind is about to become conscious of its aim. The lesson you give to humanity will not be lost. The respect for State rights in the Federal Government of America, and in its several States, will become an instructive example for univer­sal toleration, forbearance, and justice to the future states and republics of Europe. Upon this basis will be got rid of the mys­terious question of language-nationalities, raised by cunning despotism in Europe to Statue by sculptor Zsigmond Kisfaludy Strobl murder liberty. Smaller States will find security in the principle of federative union, while they will conserve their national freedom by the principles of sov­ereign self-government; and while larger States, abdicating the principle of central­ization, will cease to be a bloody field to sanguinary usurpation and a tool to ambi­tion of wicked men, municipal institutions will insure the development of local partic­ular elements; freedom, formerly an abstract political theory, will become the household benefit to municipalities; and out of the welfare and contentment of all parts will flow happiness, peace and secu­rity for the whole. This is my confident hope. Then will at once subside the fluctuations of Germany's fate. It will become the heart of Europe; not by melting North Germany into a Southern frame, or the South into a Northern; not by absorbing historical pecu­liarities by centralized omnipotence; not by mixing in one State, but by federating several sovereign States into a Union like yours. Upon a similar basis will take place the national regeneration of the Slavonic States, and not upon the sacrilegious idea of Panslavism, equivalent to the omnipo­tence of the Czar. Upon a similar basis will we see fair Italy independent and free. Not unity, but union will and must become the watchword of national bodies, severed into desecrated limbs to provincial rivalries, out of which a flock of despots and com­mon servitude arose. To be sure, it will be a noble joy to this your great Republic, to feel that the moral influence of your glori­ous example has operated this happy development in mankind's destiny, and I have not the slightest doubt of the efficacy of your example's influence. But there is one thing indispensable to it, without which there is no hope for this happy issue. This indispensable thing is, Page 5

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