Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

BY RUSSIA TO GROW STRONGER.

307

become so mighty, as to be not only dangerous by your example, but by your power a certain ruin to despotism? They will, they must, do everything to check your glorious progress, Be sure, as soon as they have crushed the spirit of freedom in Europe, as soon as they command all the forces of the Continent, they will marshal them against you. Of course they will not lead their fleets and armies at once across the Ocean. They will first damage your prosperity by crippling your commerce. They will exclude America from the markets of Europe, not only because they fear the republican propagandism of your commerce, but also because Russia requires those markets for her own products.

[He proceeded to argue, that Russian policy, like that of the Magyars in their time of barbarism, is essentially encroaching and warlike; that to be feared, is often more important to Russia than to enjoy a particular market; that the Russian system of commerce is, and must be, prohibitory to republican traffic; that England alone in Europe has large commerce with America, and that the despots, if victorious on the continent, would make it their great object to damage, cripple, and ruin both these kindred constitutional nations. He continued:]

The despots are scheming to muzzle the English lion. You see already how they are preparing for this blow-that Russia may become mistress of Constantinople, by Constantinople mistress of the Mediterranean, and by the Mediterranean of three-quarters of the globe. Egypt, Macedonia, Asia-Minor, the country and early home of the cotton plant, are then the immediate provinces of Russia, a realm with twenty million serfs, subject to its policy and depending on its arbitrary will.

Here is a circumstance highly interesting to the United States. Constantinople is the key to Russia. To be preponderant, she knows it is necessary for her to be a maritime power. The Black Sea is only a lake, like Lake Leman; the Baltic is frozen five months in a year. These are all the seas she possesses. Constantinople is the key to the palace of the Czars. Russia is already omnipotent on the Continent: once master of the Mediterranean, it is not difficult to see that the

308

FORM OF RUSSIAN ASSAULTS.

power which already controls three-quarters of the world, will soon have the fourth quarter.

Whilst the victory of the nations of Europe would open to you the markets, till now closed to your products, the consolidation of despotism destroys your commerce unavoidably. If your wheat, your tobacco, your cotton, were excluded from Europe but for one year, there is no farm, no plantation, no banking-house, which would not feel the terrible shock of such a convulsion.

And hand-in-hand with the commercial restrictions you will then see an establishment of monarchies from Cape Horn to the Rio Grande del Norte. Cuba becomes a battery against the mouth of the Mississippi; the Sandwich Islands a barrier to your commerce on the Pacific; Russian diplomacy will foster your domestic dissensions and rouse the South against the North and the North against the South, the sea-coast against the inland States and the inland States against the sea-coast, the Pacific interests against the Atlantic interests; and when discord paralyzes your forces, then comes at last the foreign interference, preceded by the declaration, that the European powers having, with your silent consent, inscribed into the code of international law, the principle that every foreign power has the right to interfere in the domestic affairs of any nation when these become a dangerous example, and your example and your republican principles being dangerous to the absolutist powers, and your domestic dissensions dangerous to the order and tranquillity of Europe, and therefore they consider it their "duty to interfere in America." And Europe being oppressed, you will have, single-handed, to encounter the combined forces of the world! I say no more about this subject. America will remember then the poor exile, if it does not in time enter upon that course of policy, which the intelligence of Massachusetts, together with the young instinct of Ohio, are the foremost to understand and to advance.

A man of your own State, a President of the United States, John Quincy Adams, with enlarged sagacity, accepted the Panama Mission, to consider the action of the Holy Alliance upon the interests of the Sonth American Republics.

SHALL HUNGARY JOIN THE UNION?

309

Now, I beg you to reflect, gentlemen, how South America is different from Europe, as respects your own country. Look at the thousand ties that bind you to Europe. In Washington, a Senator from California, a generous friend of mine, told me he was thirty days by steamer from the Seat of Government. Well, you speak of distance—just give me a good steamer and good sailors, and you will in twenty days see the flag of freedom raised in Hungary.

I remember that when one of your glorious Stars (Florida, I think it was) was about to be introduced, the question of discussion and objection became, that the distance was great. It was argued that the limits of the government would be extended so far, that its duties could not be properly attended to. The President answered, that the distance was not too great, if the seat of government could be reached in thirty days. So far you have extended your territory; and I am almost inclined to ask my poor Hungary to be accepted as a Star in your glorious galaxy. She might become a star in this immortal constellation, since she is not so far as thirty days off from you.

What little English I know, I learned from your Shakspeare, and I learned from him that "there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy." Who knows what the future may bring forth? I trust in God that all nations will become free, and that they will be united for the internal interests of humanity, and in that galaxy of freedom I know what place the United States will have.

One word more. When John Quincy Adams assumed for the United States the place of a power on earth, he was objected to, because it was thought possible that that step might give offence to the Holy Alliance. His answer was in these memorable words: "The United States must take counsel of their rights and duties, and not from their fears."

The Anglo-Saxon race represents constitutional governments. If it be united for these, we shall have what we want, Fair Play; and, relying "upon our God, the justness of our cause, iron wills, honest hearts and good swords," my people will strike once more for freedom, independence, and for Fatherland.

XLV. THE MARTYRS OF THE AMERICAN

REVOLUTION.

[Lexington, May 11th.]

KOSSUTH having been invited to visit the first battle fields of the Revolution, was accompanied by several members of the State Committee, on May 11th, to West Cambridge, Lexington, and Concord. He had already visited Bunker Hill on the 3d of May, but we have not in these pages found room for his speech there. At West Cambridge he was addressed by the Rev. Thomas Hill, and replied; at Lexington also he received two addresses, and the following was his reply:

[ocr errors]

Gentlemen, It has been often my lot to stand upon classical ground, where the whispering breeze is fraught with wonderful tales of devoted virtue, bright glory, and heroic deeds. And I have sat upon ruins of ancient greatness, blackened by the age of centuries; and I have seen the living ruins of those ancient times, called men, roaming about the sacred ground, unconscious that the dust which clung to their boots, was the relic of departed demigods-and I rose with a deep sigh. Those demigods were but men, and the degenerate shapes that roamed around me, on the hallowed ground, were also not less than men. The decline and fall of nations impresses the mark of degradation on nature itself. It is sad to think upon-it lops the soaring wings of the mind, and chills the fiery arms of energy. But, however dark be the impression of such ruins of vanished greatness upon the mind of men who themselyes have experienced the fragility of human fate, thanks to God, there are bright spots yet on earth, where the recollections of the past, brightened by present prosperity, strengthen the faith in the future of mankind's destiny. Such a spot is this.

Gentlemen, should the reverence which this spot commands allow a smile, I might feel inclined to smile at the eager controversy whether it was at Lexington or Concord that the fire of the British was first returned by Americans. Let it be this way or that way,-it will neither increase nor abate the merit of the martyrs who fell here. It is with their blood

OBEDIENCE TO THE GENIUS OF THE TIME. 311

that the preface of your nation's history is written. Their death was, and always will be, the first bloody revelation of America's destiny; and Lexington, the opening scene of a revolution, of which Governor Boutwell was right to say, that it is destined to change the character of human governments, and the condition of the human race.

Should the Republic of America ever lose the consciousness of this destiny, that moment would be just so surely the beginning of America's decline, as the 19th of April, 1775, was the beginning of the Republic of America.

Prosperity is not always, gentlemen, a guarantee of the future, if it be not accompanied with a constant resolution to obey the call of the genius of the time. Nay, material prosperity is often the mark of real decline, when it either results in, or is connected with, a moral stagnation in the devoted attachment to principles. Rome was never richer, never mightier than under Trajan, and still it had already the sting of death in its very heart.

To me, whenever I stand upon such sacred ground as this, the spirits of the departed appear like the prophets of future events. The language they speak to my heart is the revelation of Providence.

The struggle of America for independence was providential. It was a necessity. Those circumstances which superficial consideration takes for the motives of the glorious Revolution, were but accidental opportunities for it. Had those circumstances not occurred, others would have occurred, and might have presented perhaps a different opportunity ; but the Revolution would have come. It was a necessity, because the colonies of America had attained that lawful age in the development of all the elements of national existence, which claims the right to stand by itself, and cannot any longer be led by a child's leading strings, be the hand which leads it a mother's or a step-mother's. Circumstances and the connection of events were such, that this unavoidable emancipation had to pass the violent concussion of severe trials. The immortal glory of your forefathers was, that they did not shrink to accept the trial, and were devoted and heroic to sacrifice themselves to their country's destiny. And

« AnteriorContinuar »