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

2002-03-01 / 7. szám

Wm. R. King, President of the Senate, served as President of the event; Daniel Webster, Secretary of State, and Linn Boyd, Speaker of the House, sat with Kossuth at the dinner at the National Hotel, Washington, D. C.

The Hon. Chairman, announcing the next toast, said, “it was one to which every generous American would cordially respond:HUNGARY REPRESENTED IN THE PERSON OF OUR HONORED GUEST. Having proved herself worthy to be free by the virtue and valor of her sons, the law of nations and the dictates of justice alike demand that she shall have fair play in her struggle for independence. ”

To this toast, Kossuth responded as follows:

SIR: As once Cineas the Epirote stood among the senators of Rome, who, with an earnest word of self conscious majesty, controlled the condition of the world, and arrested mighty kings in their ambitious march - thus, full of admiration and of reverence I stand amongst you, legislators of the new capitol, that glorious hall of your people's majesty. The capitol of old yet stands, but the spirit has departed from it and come over to yours, purified by the air of liberty. The old stands a mournful monument of the fragility of human things: yours, as a sanctuary of eternal right. The old beamed with the red lustre of conquest, now darkened by oppression's gloomy night; yours beams freedom's bright ray. The old absorbed the world by its own centralized glory; yours protects your own nation against absorption, even by itself. The old was awful with irrestricted [sic] power; yours is glorious with having restricted it. At the view of the old, nations trembled; at the view of yours, humanity hopes. To the old, misfortune was only introduced with fettered bands, to kneel at the triumphant conquerors' heels. To yours, the triumph of introduction is granted to unfortunate Page 4

exiles invited to the honor of a seat. And where Kings and Caesars never will be hailed for their powers, might, and wealth, there the persecuted chief of a downtrodden nation is welcomed as your great Republic's guest, precisely because he is persecuted, helpless and poor. In the old, the terrible vae victis! was the rule. In yours, protection to the oppressed, malediction to ambitious oppressors, and consolation to a vanquished just cause. And, while out of the old a conquered world was ruled, you in yours provide for the common federative interests of a territory larger than the conquered world of the old. There sat men boasting their will to be the sovereign of the world; here sit men whose glory is to acknowledge the laws of nature and of nature's God, and to do what their sovereign, the people, wills.

Sir, there is history in these parallels. History of past ages and history of future centuries may be often recorded in few words. The small particulars to which the passion of living men clings with fervent zeal, as if the fragile fingers of men could arrest the rotation of destiny's wheel, these particulars die away; it is the issue which makes history, and that issue is always logical. There is a necessity of consequences wherever the necessity of position exists. Principles are the alpha; they must finish with omega, and they will. Thus history may be told often in few words.

Before yet the heroic struggle of Greece first engaged your country's sympathy for the fate of freedom in Europe, then so far distant, and now so near, Chateaubriand happened to be in Athens, and he heard from a minaret raised upon the Propyleum's ruins a Turkish priest in Arabic language announcing the lapse of hours to the Christians of Minerva’s town. What immense history in the small fact of a Turkish Imaun [sic] crying out "Pray, pray; the hour is running fast, and the judgment draws near."

Sir, there is equally a history of future ages written in the honor bestowed by you to my humble self. The first Governor of independent Hungary, driven from his native land by Russian violence; an exile on Turkish soil, protected by a Mohamedán Sultan against the blood-thirst of Christian tyrants; cast back a prisoner to far Asia by diplomacy; and rescued from his Asiatic prison by America crossing the Atlantic, charged with the hopes of Europe's oppressed nations; pleading, a poor exile before the people of this great Republic, his downtrodden country's wrongs and its intimate connection with the fate of the European continent, and, with the boldness of a just cause, claiming the principles of the Christian religion to be raised to a law of nations, and to see not only the boldness of the poor exile forgiven, but to see him consoled by the sympathy of millions, encouraged by individuals, associations, meetings, cities, and States, supported by operative aid and greeted by Congress and by Government as the nation's guest; honored, out of generosity, with that honor which only one man before him received, and that man received them out of gratitude; with honors such as no potentate ever can receive; and this banquet here, and the toast which I have to thank you for; Oh!, indeed, Sir, there is a history of future ages in all these facts! They will go down to posterity in the logical consequences of principles which are the foundation of these facts.

Sir, though I have the noble pride of my principles, and though I have the inspiration of a just cause, still I have also the consciousness of my personal humility. Never will I forget what is due from me to the sovereign source of my public capacity. This I owe to my nation's dignity; and therefore, respectfully thanking this highly distinguished assembly in my country's name, I have the boldness to say that Hungary well deserves your sympathy; that Hungary has a claim to protection because it has a claim to justice. But, as to my own humble self, permit me humbly to express that I am well aware not to have in all these honors any personal share. Nay, I know that even that which might seem to be personal in your toast, is only an acknowledgment of a historical fact, very instructively connected with a principle valuable and dear to every republican heart in the United States of America.

Sir, you were pleased to mention in your toast that I am unconquered by misfortune, and unseduced by ambition. Now, it is a providential fact that misfortune has the privilege to ennoble man's mind and to strengthen man's character. There is a sort of natural instinct of human dignity in the heart of man, which steels his very nerves not to bend beneath the heavy blows of a great adversities. The palm-tree grows best beneath a ponderous weight. Even so the character of man. There is no merit in it. It is a law of psychology. The petty pangs of

Kossuth Lajos’

speech in the Capitol on 1/7/Í852