Századok – 1979
Közlemények - Kabdebó Tamás: Kossuth és Magyarország. Chartista értékelés a magyar szabadságharcról 659/IV
680 KABDEBÓ TAMÁS These parties are admirably gifted to bring prominently before the public the evils inflicted upon the human race by despotism, aristocracy, and superstition, and also, how utterly incompetent democracy or republicanism arc to remedy these evils without inflicting others equally opposed to human nature and to common sense. Granted to you and Mazzini to their fullextent, the erroneous and heart-rending afflictions produced by the governments of St. Petersburgh, Vienna, Berlin, Rome, and Naples, and by smaller despotic powers. To produce this extent of misery these governments have been stimulated by being ignorantly opposed by a crude growing knowledge of an ill-informed population, which has felt the evils and perceived the errors of despotism and aristocracy; but a population which has not advanced so far as to become conscious of the errors and evils of democracy and republicanism, or to discover the permanent remedy. The aristocratic power, unconscious of the extent of its own despotic errors and evils, sees forcibly the errors and evils of democracy and of republican governments. Aristocracy and democracy are therefore natural antagonists — each opposes the errors of the other without being over ready to discover its own. Both parties having had their characters formed for them on the same erroneous fundamental principle, and both being in consequence sadly misinformed, they know of no other principle or practice by which mankind can be governed than by the despotism of aristocracy or by democracy. The aristocracy, therefore, for aid against the numbers that otherwise would be always opposed to it, calls to its support superstition, in the form of state religious, to enable it, by force and fraud, to keep the masses in ignorant subjection to its laws and rule. Democracy and republicanism must be supported by numbers, and they are governed, for the objects of the governors, through laws and institutions calculated to give wealth and power to the mentally strong and to deprive the weak of their just rights; and by this error, under continual irritation, by endless unjust and antagonistic proceedings, they prevent all obtaining the far greater advantages which, without contest, might be secured in peace and most beneficially for all through every succeeding generation. Despotism, Aristocracy, and Democracy, are therefore maintained by force, fear, falsehood, and fraud — are based on principles of repulsion and individual contending interests. They are obliged, on account of their fundamental errors, to be supported by human-made laws and institutions, directly opposed to the laws of humanity and of nature generally. These laws and institutions, owing to the ignorance of despotism, aristocracy, and democracy, respecting the laws of nature, which never change, are always changing, because, as soon as they have been made and as their effects have been experienced, they are always found to produce vice, crime and misery; to favour the rich and oppress the poor; to enormously increase the expenditure of society, not only uselessly, but most mischievously; and to perpetuate a system of falsehood and deception through all the grades which this irrational system creates. You and Mazzini and your compeers are now endeavouring to move heaven and earth to assist you in destroying, root and branch, despotism and aristocracy, on account of their now glaring defects and absurdities; that you may establish democracy, equally erroneous in principle and practice; for, compared to the government of a well-intentioned despot with ability, democracy is an inferior mode of governing. But both are now acertained to be insane systems for the government of mankind. The advancing development of the human faculties — the progress of science in chemistry, mechanism, and the arts of life generally, have numbered the days of both. Physical force must now give place to mental energy; the weapons of war and fraud, or force and superstition, by which alone aristocracy and democracy know how to govern - no, not to govern, but to coerce mankind - are becoming powerless. Public opinion, based on unchanging truths, and formed to be consistent throughout its entire combinations, will soon baffle the old powers of force and fraud, of fear and falsehood. A knowledge of such truth as will eternally benefit mankind is rapidly becoming public opinion, and henceforth, by the aid of the free press, of steam, and of electricity, public opinion will govern the world.
