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And yet that is your position in the world now, and that position is the consequence of your adhering to your policy of indifference, at a time when you needed to act like a power on earth.

Remember the Sibylline books. The first three were burned when you silently let Russian interference be accomplished in Hungary, and did not give us your recognition when we had achieved and declared our independence.

Six books yet remain. The spirit of the age, the Sibylla of opportunity, holds a second three books over the fire. Do not allow her to burn them-else only the last three remain, and I fear you will have, without profit, more to pay for them than would have bought all the nine, and with them the glory and happiness of an eternal, mighty Republic!

Gentlemen, I humbly thank you for your kindness, and bid you an affectionate farewell.

XXXV.-CATHOLICISM VERSUS JESUITISM.
[At St. Louis, (Missouri.)]

MR. KASSON addressed Kossuth in an ample speech; in which he said:

Everywhere have the untrammeled masses of this people, as you passed, lifted up their hands and voices, and supplicated the Almighty to give to you blessing, and to your country redemption. Let this be some recompense for the privations you have encountered, while, like Æneas, you have been wandering an exile from your native, captured, prostrate Troy.

I should not do my whole duty without saying, in behalf of the thousands assembled here, that we have an unshaken confidence in Hungary's chosen leader. We are not so blind that we cannot observe how no envenomed shaft was fixed to

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the bow-string against him, in England and America, while he was yet a helpless and powerless refugee, within Turkish hospitality. But when the people were gathering around him in free countries, shoulder to shoulder-when even the hearts of statesmen began to open to him, and hope dawned in the Hungarian sky once more, then it was these arrows of detraction darkened the air, shot from the Court of the French Usurper, or from the pensioners of autocratic bounty. Your patient labours and forbearance in your country's cause, while thus assailed, have won for you, sir, our sincere respect, and another wreath at the hand of the Muse of History.

Kossuth replied:

Gentlemen,-During my brief sojourn in your hospitable city, I have heard so much local pettiness and so much hypocritical tactics of men imported from Austria to advocate the cause of Russo-Austrian despotism in Republican America, and chiefly in your city here, that indeed I began to long for the pure air where the merry sunshine, as well as the melancholy drop of rain, the roaring of the thunder storm, equally as the sigh of the breeze, tell to the oppressors and their tools, and not only to the oppressed, that there is a God in heaven who rules the universe by eternal laws; the Almighty Father of humanity, omnipotent in wisdom, bountiful in His omnipotence, just in His judgment, and eternal in His love; the Lord who gave strength to the boy David against Goliath, who often makes out of humble individuals efficient instruments to push forward the condition of mankind towards that destiny which His merciful will has assigned to it-His will, against which neither the proud ambition of despots, nor the skill of their obsequious tools can prevail-in Him I put my trust and go cheerfully on in my duties. I am in the right way to benefit the cause, noble and just and great, to which I devoted my life; for if there were no success in what I am engaged, the despots would neither fear, nor hate, nor persecute me.

Their persecution imparts more hope to my breast than all your kindness; and I give you my word that if I have the consciousness of having well merited in my past the hatred

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and the fear of tyrants and their instruments, so may God bless me as I will do all a mortal man can do to merit that hatred and that fear still more.

Why? Am I not standing on the banks of the Mississippi, cheered, welcomed, and supported, as warmly and as heartily as when I stepped first upon your glorious shores? Opposition, hostility, venomous calumny, have exhausted all means to check the sympathy of the people. And has that sympathy subsided? has it abated? is it checked? No, it rolls on swelling as I advance—here I have again an imposing evidence before my eyes, here in St. Louis, my namesake city, where so much, and that so perseveringly, was done to prevent this

evidence.

Yes, it rolls, and will roll on, swelling till it will finally submerge all endeavours to mislead the instincts of freemen, to fetter the energies of the nation, to stifle its spirit, and to check the growing aspirations of the people's upright heart.

When the struggle is about principles, indifference is suicide. Nay, indifference is impossible for indifference about the fate of that principle upon which your national existence and all your future rests-is passive submission to the opposite principle-it is almost equivalent to an alliance with the despots. He who is not for freedom is against freedom. There is no third choice.

The people's instinct feels the danger of losing an irreparable opportunity, and hence the fact, never yet met in history, that a homeless exile becomes an object of such sympathy, rolling on like a sea, in spite of all the passionate rage of my enemies, and all the Christian tolerance of the Reverend Father Jesuits, which they in such an evident manner show to me. It is time to advertise them by a few remarks that I am aware of their hostility, and ready to meet it openly. I make this advertisement by design here, because it is not my custom to attack from behind or in the dark. Mine is not the famous doctrine, that the end sanctifies the means. I like to meet the enemy face to face-a fair field and fair arms.

And in one thing more I will not imitate my reverend

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opponents. I will never indulge in any personalities, never act otherwise than becoming to a gentleman. If they choose to pursue a different course, let them do so, and let them earn the fruits of it.

My humble person I entirely submit to the good pleasure of their passion. If they tell you, gentlemen, that I am no great man, they speak the truth. Being on good terms with my conscience, I do not much care to be on bad terms with Czars and Emperors, their obedient servants, and the reverend father Jesuits. Nay, if I were on good terms with them, I scarcely could remain on good terms with my conscience. So much for myself-now a few words as to the question between us.

I am claiming moral and material aid against that Czar of Russia who is the most bloody persecutor of Roman Catholics. The present Pope himself, before the revolution, when he was yet more of a High Priest than of an Italian Despot, and cared more about spiritual than temporal business, openly and bitterly complained in the councils of the Cardinals against that bloody persecution which the Roman Catholics have suffered from the Czar of Russia. Now, considering that I plead for republican principles, to which the Reverend Father Jesuits should be here warmly attached, if they are willing to have the reputation of good citizens, and not to be traitors to your Republic, which affords to them not only the protection of its laws, but also the full enjoyment of all the privileges of your republican freedom ;—it is indeed a strange, striking fact, to see these reverend fathers here in a Republic so warmly advocating the cause of despotism, and so passionately persecuting the cause I humbly plead, which at the same time is the cause of political freedom and religious liberty for numerous millions of Roman Catholics throughout Europe.

As I am somewhat acquainted with the terrible history of that Order, I thought to find the explanation of this striking fact, in the historical ambition of that Order to rule the world -this, their everlasting standard idea, to which they in all times sacrificed everything, and misused even the holiest of

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all religion, as an instrument to that ambition. But here in St. Louis I got hold of a definite circumstance which makes the matter quite clear.

I hold in my hand the printed Catalogue of the Society of Jesuits in the province of Missouri, as they term your state. Herein I see that amongst the thirty-five members officiating in the college of the Father Jesuits, in St. Louis, there are not less than eight Reverend Father Jesuits imported from Austria. Now you see why I am so persecuted here. This plain fact tells the story of a big book.

But amongst all that the reverend gentlemen oppose to me there are only two considerations to which the honour of my cause and of my nation forces me to answer in a few remarks. They charge against me that my cause is hostile to the Roman Catholic religion, and to get the Irish citizens to side with them for the support of Russo-Austrian despotism they charge me that I am no friend of Ireland.

I. As to the Catholic religion-I indeed am a Protestant, not only by birth, but also by conviction; and warmly penetrated by this conviction, I would delight to see the same shared by the whole world. But before all, I am mortally opposed to intolerance and to sectarism. I consider religion to be a matter of conscience which every man has to arrange between God and himself. And therefore I respect the religious conviction of every man. I claim religious liberty for myself and my nation, and must of course respect in others. the right I claim for myself. There is nothing in the world capable to rouse a greater indignation in my breast than religious oppression. But particularly I respect the Catholic religion, as the religion of some seven millions of my countrymen, to whom I am bound in love, in friendship, in home recollections, in gratitude, and in brotherhood, with the most sacred ties. And I am proud to say, that as in general it is a pre-eminent glory of my country, to be attached to the principle of full religious liberty, without any restriction, for all to all, so it is the particular glory of my Roman Catholic countrymen not to be second to any in the world, on the one side in attachment to their own religion, and on the other side in toleration for other religions.