Select Speeches of Kossuth - Kossuth
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And still Americans doubt that we are on the eve of a terrible
revolution; and they ask, What use can I make of any material aid? when
Italy is a barrel of powder, which the slightest spark may light.
In respect to foreign rule, GERMANY is more fortunate than Italy. From
the times of the treaty of Verdun, when it separated from France and
Italy, through the long period of more than a thousand years, no foreign
power ever has succeeded to rule over Germany; such is the resistive
power of the German people to guard its national existence. The tyrants
who swayed over them were of their own blood. But to subdue German
liberty, those tyrants were always anxious to introduce foreign
institutions. First, they swept away the ancient Germanic right, the
common law so dear to the English and American, an eternal barrier
against the encroachments of despotism, and substituted for it the iron
rule of the imperial Roman law. The rule of papal Rome over the minds of
Germany crossed the mountains together with the Roman law, and a
spiritual dependency was to be established all over the world. The wings
of the German eagle were bound, that it should not soar up to the sun of
truth. But when the oppression became too severe, the people of Germany
rose against the power of Rome;--not the princes,--though they too were
oppressed: but the son of the miner of Eisenach, the poor friar, Martin
Luther, defied the Pope on his throne, and at his bidding the people of
Germany proved, that it is strong enough to shake off oppression; that
it is worthy, and that it knows how, to be free. And again, when the
French, under their Emperor, whose genius comprehended everything except
freedom, extended their moral sway over Germany, when the princes of
Germany thronged around the foreign despot, begging kingly crowns from
the son of the Corsican lawyer, with whom the Emperors were happy to
form matrimonial alliances--with the man who had no other ancestors than
his genius,--then it was again the people, which did not join in the
degradation of its rulers, but jealous to maintain their national
independence, turned the foreigner out though his name was Napoleon, and
broke the yoke asunder, which weighed as heavily upon their princes as
upon themselves. And still there are men in America who despair of the
vitality of the Germans, of their indomitable power to resist
oppression, of their love of freedom, and of their devotion to it,
proved by a glorious history of two thousand years. The German race is a
power, the vitality and influence of which you can trace through the
_world's_ history for two thousand years; you can trace it through
the history of science and heroism, of industry, and of bold
enterprizing spirit. Your own country, your own national character, bear
the mark of German vitality. Other nations, now and then, were great by
some great men--the German people was always great by itself.
But the German princes cannot bear independence and liberty; they had
rather themselves become slaves, the underlings of the Czar, than allow
that their people should enjoy some liberty. An alliance was therefore
formed, which they blasphemously called the Holy Alliance,--with the
avowed purpose to keep the people down. The great powers guaranteed to
the smaller princes--whose name is Legion, for they are many,--the power
to fleece and torment their people, and promised every aid to them
against the insurrection of those, who would find that for liberty's
sake it is worth while to risk their lives and property. It was an
alliance for the oppression of the nations, not for the maintenance of
the princely prerogative. When the Grand-Duke of Baden, in a fit of
liberality, granted his people the liberty of the press, the Emperor of
Austria and the King of Prussia abolished the law, though it had been
carried unanimously by the Legislature of Baden and sanctioned by the
prince.--The Holy Alliance had guaranteed to the princes the power to
oppress, but not the power to benefit their people.
But though the great powers interfered often in the principalities and
little kingdoms of Germany, indeed as often as the spirit of liberty
awoke, yet they themselves avoided every occasion which would have
forced them to request the aid of their allies, and especially of
Russia. They knew too well, that to accept foreign aid against their own
people, was nothing else than to lose independence, and was morally the
same as to kneel down before the Czar and to take the oath of
allegiance. A government which needs foreign aid against its own people,
avows that it cannot stand without foreign aid. Take that foreign
aid--interference!--away, and it falls.
The dynasties of Austria and Prussia were aware of this. They therefore
yielded, as often as their encroachments met a firm resistance from the
people. When my nation so resolutely resisted in 1823 the attempt to
abolish the constitution, Prince Metternich himself advised the Emperor
Francis to yield, and even humbly to apologize to the Diet of 1825. The
King of Prussia granted even a kind of constitution rather than claim
the assistance of the Czar. Herein you may find the explanation of the
fact that the continent of Europe is not yet republican. The spirit of
freedom, when roused by oppression, was lulled into sleep by
constitutional concessions. The Czar of Russia was well aware, that this
system of compromise prevents his intruding into the domestic concerns
of Europe, which would lead him to the sovereign mastership over all; he
therefore did everything to push the sovereigns to extremities. But this
did not succeed, until by a palace-revolution in Vienna a weak and cruel
youth was placed on the throne of Austria, and a passionate woman got
the reins of government in her hand, and an unprincipled, reckless
adventurer was ready to carry out every imperial whim, regardless of the
honour of his country and the interests of his master. Russia at last
got her aim. Rather than acknowledge the rights of Hungary, they bowed
before the Czar, and gave up the independence of the Austrian throne;
they became the underlings of a foreign power, rather than allow that
one of the peoples of the European Continent should be really free.
Since the fall of Hungary, Russia is the real sovereign of all Germany;
for the first time Germany has a foreign master! and you believe that
Germany will bear that in the nineteenth century which it never yet has
borne? Bear that in fulness of age which it never bore in childhood?
Soon after, and through the fall of Hungary, the pride of Prussia was
humiliated. Austrian garrisons occupied Hamburg; Schleswig-Holstein was
abandoned, Hessia was chastised, and all that is dear to Germans
purposely affronted. Their dreams of greatness, their longing for unity,
their aspirations of liberty, were trampled down into the dust, and
ridicule was thrown upon all elevation of mind, upon all manifestation
of patriotism. Hassenburg, convicted of forgery by the Prussian courts,
became Minister in Hessia; the once outlawed Schwarzenbeg, and Bach, a
renegade republican, Ministers of Austria. The peace of the graveyard,
which tyrants, under the name of order, are trying to enforce upon the
world, has for its guardians outlawed reprobates, forgers, and
renegades. Could you believe that with such elements the spirit of
liberty can be crushed? Tyrants know that to habituate nations to
oppression, the moral feeling of the people has to be killed. But could
you really believe that the moral feeling of such a people as the
German, stamped in the civilization of which it was one of the
generating elements, can be killed, or that it can bear for a long while
such an outrage? Do you think that the people which met the insolent
bulls of the Pope in Rome by the Reformation and the thirty years' war,
and the numberless armies of Napoleon by a general rising--that this
people will tamely submit to the Russian influence, more arrogant than
the Papal pretensions, more disastrous than the exactions of the French
Empire? They broke the power of Rome and of Paris; will they agree to be
governed by St. Petersburg? Those who are accustomed to see in history
only the Princes, will say Aye, but they forget that since the
Reformation it is no longer the Princes who make the history, but the
People; they see the tops of the trees are bent by the powerful northern
hurricane, and they forget that the stem of the tree is unmoved.
Gentlemen, the German princes bow before the Czar, but the German people
will never bow before him.
Let me sum up the philosophy of the present condition of Germany in
these few words: 1848 and 1849 have proved that the little tyrants of
Germany cannot stand by themselves, but only by their reliance upon
Austria and Prussia. These again cannot stand by themselves, but only by
their reliance upon Russia. Take this reliance away, by maintaining the
laws of nations against the principle of interference,--(for the joint
powers of America and England can maintain them)--and all the despotic
governments, reduced to stand by their own resources of power, must fall
before the never yet subdued spirit of the people of Germany, like
rotten fruit touched by a gale.
Let me now speak about the condition of my own dear native land. I hope
not to meet any contradiction when I say that no condition can and will
endure, which is so bad, so insupportable, that, by trying to change it,
a people can lose nothing, and may gain everything. No condition can and
will endure, the maintenance of which is contrary to every interest of
every class. A revolution on the contrary is unavoidable, when every
interest of every class wishes and requires it. I will first speak of
the lower, and still the most powerful of all, of the material interest.
There are some countries, where, however insupportable the condition of
the masses, still the government has an ally in the mighty and
influential class of bankers, who lend their money to support despotism,
and in those who have invested their fortunes in the shares of these
loans, negotiated by bankers, who speculate on and with the fortunes of
small capitalists. That class of men, partly tools of oppression,
partly the fools of the tools, exists not in Hungary. We have no such
bankers in Hungary, and but a very small inconsiderable number who have
invested their fortunes in such loan-shares. And even the few who had
been playing in the fatal loan-share game have withdrawn from it, at any
price, because they feared to lose all. From that quarter therefore the
House of Austria has no ally in Hungary.
As to our former aristocracy, a class influential by its connections,
and by its large landed property: you remember that, when we succeeded
to abolish the feudal charges, and converted millions of our countrymen,
of different religion and different language, out of leaseholders into
free landed proprietors, we guaranteed an indemnification to the
landowners for what they lost. From a farm of about thirty-five to fifty
acres of land, the farmer had to work one hundred and two days a year
for the landowner; to give him the ninth part of all his crops, half a
dollar in ready money, besides particular fees for shopkeeping, brewery,
mill, &c. We freed the people from all the encumbrances, and, thanks to
God! that benefit never more can be torn from the people's hands. The
aristocracy consented to it, because we had guaranteed full
indemnification. The very material existence of this class of former
landowners is depending on that indemnification, to defray their debts,
(which they formerly had the habit wantonly to contract,) and to provide
for the cultivation of their own large allodial property, which they
formerly cultivated by the hands of their leaseholders, but now have to
invest capital into.
Now this indemnification, amounting to one hundred millions of dollars,
the House of Austria never can realize. You know, with its centralized
government, which is always very expensive, with its standing army of
600,000 men, the only support of its precarious existence, with its army
of spies and secret police, with its system of corruption and robbery,
with its fourteen hundred millions of debt, with its eternal deficit in
its current expenditures, with its new loans to pay the interest of the
old, and an unavoidable bankruptcy impending,--this indemnification
Austria never can pay to the former aristocracy of Hungary. The only
means to get this indemnification is the restoration of Hungary to its
independence by a new revolution. Independent Hungary can pay it,
because it has no debts, will want no large standing armies, and will
have a cheap administration, because not centralized, but municipal, the
people governing itself in and through municipalities, the cheapest of
all governments.
Hungary has already pointed out the fund, out of which that
indemnification can and will be paid, without any imposition upon the
people, or any loss to the commonwealth. Hungary has large State lands,
belonging to and administered by the commonwealth. I have mathematically
proved that the landed property of the State, sold in small parcels to
those who have yet no land, connected with a banking operation founded
upon that property itself, to facilitate the payment of the price, is
more than sufficient for that indemnification; besides, a small land tax
(which the new owners of that immense property, divided into small
farms, will have to pay, as other landed proprietors), will yield more
revenue to the Commonwealth than all the proceeds of domestic
administration.
This my proposition, having been submitted to the National Assembly, was
accepted and approved, and has attached to the Revolution the numerous
class of farm-labourers who have not yet their own farms, but who
contemplated with the liveliest joy this benevolent provision, which
Austria can never execute; since, financially ruined as she is, she
cannot be contented either with the tax revenue or the banking
arrangement, to defray the indemnification; she sells the stock whenever
she can find a man to buy it.
But here is a remarkable fact, proving how little is the future of
Austria contemplated as sure even by its votaries. When any one is
willing to sell landed property in Hungary, foreign bankers, Austrian
capitalists buy it readily at an enormous price, because they know that
private transactions will be respected by our revolution; but _from
the Government_, nobody buys a single acre of land, because every man
knows that such a transaction must be considered void. Nay more, not
even as a gift is an estate accepted by any one from the present
government. Haynau himself was offered in reward a large landed property
by the government; he did not accept it, but preferred a comparatively
small sum of money, not amounting to one-tenth of the value of the
offered land, and he bought from a private individual a landed property,
for the money, because that, being a private transaction, is sure to
stand: whereas in the future of the Austrian government in Hungary not
even its Haynaus have confidence.
The manufacturing interests in Hungary anxiously wish, and must wish, a
revolution, because manufacturing industry is entirely ruined now by
Austria. All favour, encouragement, and aid, which the national
government imparted to industry, is not only withdrawn, but replaced by
the old system,--which is, neither to allow Hungary free trade, so as to
buy manufactured articles where they can be had in the best quality or
at the cheapest price, nor to permit manufacturing at home; but to
preserve Hungary in the position of a colonial market--a condition
always regarded as insupportable, and sufficient motive for a
revolution, as you yourselves from your own history know.
The commercial interest anxiously desire a revolution, because there
exists, in fact, no active commerce in Hungary, the Hungarian commerce
being degraded into a mere broker-ship of Vienna.
All those who have yet in their hands the Hungarian bank notes issued by
my government, must wish a revolution; because Austria, alike foolish as
criminal, has declared them to be without value--thus they cannot be
restored to value but by a revolution. The amount of those bank notes in
the hands of the people is yet about twenty millions of dollars. No
menaces, no cruelty can induce the people to give it up to the usurper;
they put it into bottles and bury it in the earth. They say: it is good
money when Kossuth comes home. But while no menaces of Austria can
induce the people to give up this treasure of our impending revolution,
a single line of mine, sent home, is obeyed, and the money is treasured
up where I have designated.
Do you now understand, gentlemen, by what motive I say that once at home
in command--if once our struggle is commenced, I do not want your
material aid, and neither wish nor would accept all your millions--but
that I want your material aid to get home, and to get home _in such a
way_ as will inspire confidence in my people, by seeing me bring home
the only thing which it has not--ARMS!
But I am asked, where will I land? That, of course, I will not
say--perhaps directly at Vienna, like a Montgolfier, in a balloon; but
one thing I may say, because that is no secret:--remember that all Italy
is a sea-coast, and that Italy has the same enemy as Hungary--that Italy
is the left wing of that army of which Hungary is the right wing, and
that in Italy 40,000 Hungarian soldiers exist, as also, in general, in
the Austrian army 140,000 Hungarians. More I can, and will not say on
the subject.
But I will say that all the amount of taxation the people of Hungary
formerly had to pay was but four and a half million dollars, and now it
has to pay sixty-five million dollars; that landowners offer their land
to the government, to get rid of the land tax, which is larger than all
the revenue; that we have raised 600,000 hundredweight of tobacco--now,
the monopoly of tobacco being introduced, the people no longer smokes
and has burnt its tobacco seed. We have raised 120 million gallons of
wine. Gentlemen, I come not to interfere with the domestic concerns of
America. I have no opinion about the Maine liquor-law. For myself I am
very fond of water, but still may say it is my opinion, it will be many
years before the Maine liquor-law will pass through all Europe. Well,
gentlemen, I was about to say, one half of the vineyards are cut
down;--hundreds of thousands live upon horticulture and fruit
cultivation; yet the trees are cut down to escape the heavy taxation
laid upon them. The stamp tax is introduced, the most insupportable to
freemen--village is divided from village, town from town, city from
city, by custom-lines--the poor peasant woman, bringing a dozen of eggs
to the market, has to pay the consumption-tax, before she is permitted
to enter; and when she brings medicine home for her sick child she has
again to pay before permitted to enter her home.
And besides this material oppression, and the daily and nightly
vexations connected with it,--the Protestants deprived of the
self-government of their church and school, for which they have thrice
taken up arms victoriously in three centuries,--the Roman Catholics
deprived of the security of their church property,--the people of every
race deprived of its nationality, because there exists no public life
wherein to exert it, no national existence, no constitution, no
municipalities, no native law, no native officials, no security of
person and of property, but arbitrary power, martial law, and the
hangman and the jail,--and on the other side Hungarian patriotism,
Hungarian honour, Hungarian heroism, Hungarian vitality, stamped in the
vicissitudes of one thousand years, and _the consciousness that we
have beaten Austria_, when we had no army, no money, no friends, and
the knowledge that now we have an army, and for home purposes have money
in the safe-guarded bank notes, and have America for a friend; and in
addition to all this, the confidence of my people in my exertions, and
the knowledge of these exertions; of which my people is quite as well
informed as yourselves, nay, more, because it sees and knows what I do
at home, whereas you see only what I do here--well, if with all this you
still doubt about the struggle in Europe being nigh, and still despair
of its chance of success, then God be merciful to my poor brains, I know
not what to think.
Some here take me for a visionary. Curious, indeed, if that man who, a
poor son of the people, took the lead in abolishing feudal injustices a
thousand years old, created a currency of millions in a moneyless
nation, and suddenly organized armies out of untrained masses of
civilians; directed a revolution so as to fix the attention of the whole
world upon Hungary, beat the old, well-provided power of Austria, and
crushed its future by his very fall, and forsaken, abandoned, in his
very exile is feared by Czars and Emperors, and trusted by foreign
nations as well as his own--if that man be a visionary, then for so much
pride I may be excused that I would like to look face to face into the
eyes of a practical man on earth.
Gentlemen, I had many things yet to say. The condition, change, and
prospects of Europe are not spoken of so easily, as you have seen, when
only the condition of my own country is touched. I don't know that I
shall succeed, but I will try to say something about TURKEY.
Turkey! which deserves your sympathy because it is the country of
municipal institutions, the country of religious toleration. Turkey,
when she extended her sway over Transylvania and half of Hungary, never
interfered with the way in which the inhabitants chose to govern
themselves; she even allowed those who lived within her dominions to
collect there the taxes voted by independent Hungary, with the aim to
make war against the Porte. Whilst in the other parts of Hungary,
Protestantism was oppressed by the Austrian policy, and the Protestants
several times compelled to take up arms for the defence of religious
liberty in Transylvania, under the sovereignty of the Porte the
Unitarians got political rights, and Protestantism grew up under the
protecting wings of the Ottoman power.
The respect for municipal institutions is so deeply rooted in the minds
of the Turks, that at the time when they became masters of the Danubian
provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia, they voluntarily excluded
themselves from all political rights in the newly acquired provinces;
and up to the present day, they do not allow that a mosque should be
built, or that a Turk should dwell and own landed property across the
Danube. They do not interfere with the taxation or with the internal
administration of these provinces; and the last organic law of the
Empire, the Tanzimat, is nothing but the re-declaration of the rights of
municipalities, guaranteeing them against the centralizing encroachment
of the Pashas. Whilst Czar Nicholas is about to convert the Protestant
population of Livonia and Estland to the Greek church by force and by
alluring promises, the liberal Sultan Abdul Medjid grants full religious
liberty to all sects of Protestantism. But we are accustomed to look
upon Turkey as upon a third-rate power, only because in 1828 it was
defeated by Russia. Let us now see how the balance stood at that time,
and how it stands now.
In 1828 the Turkish population was full of hatred on account of the
extermination of the Janissaries. The Christian population were ready to
rise against the government, on account of the events of the Greek war.
Albania was in revolt, because it was opposed to the system of
conscriptions for regular military service. Anatolia was discontented on
the same ground. Mehemet Ali possessed Egypt, and paralyzed the action
of the government in Arabia and Syria. Servia had just laid down arms,
but had not yet concluded peace. The Danubian principalities, though
unfavourable to Russia, were not hearty in support of the Porte, and
remained apathetic under the occupation of Russia. The revenue did not
exceed 400,000,000 piastres (20,000,000 dollars), and was insufficient
for a second campaign. The new army was not yet organized, and amounted
only to 32,000 men, without tried generals. The fleet had been destroyed
at Navarino. The foreign diplomatists had left the empire, and the
capital was exposed to an attack of the enemy. In such a position no
European government could have risked a war.
Russia had just defeated Persia, and by this victory got access to the
Asiatic provinces of the Turkish empire; it had therefore to defend the
frontiers on both sides. Russia had not yet entered into Circassia, and
could therefore rally all her forces; she had not yet abolished the
Poland of 1815, and could leave it without garrisons; she had not yet
roused the hatred or the jealousies of Europe. She had engaged all the
natural allies of the Porte into a combination for rousing the
populations of her enemy, and by her diplomacy she gained the power of
bringing her fleet into the Mediterranean, for blockading the ports of
Turkey; and Navarino opened for her the Black Sea, where she had
thirteen men-of-war. Not disturbed by the Porte, by Circassia, by
Poland, by France, or by England, she had prepared two years for this
war, whilst her enemy, passing through a terrible crisis, was without
money, without an organized army, without a fleet, without other
resources than the feeble Mussulman population on the seat of war.