-to resist
the principle that every civic community has not a right to regulate its
own affairs. Whenever one nation interferes with the internal concerns
of another, it is a direct insult to all other nations.

There is a combined effort in Continental Europe to overthrow all free
and liberal institutions. This accomplished, what next?--The efforts of
tyrants will be directed to our institutions. It will be their aim to
break us down. Must not we prevent this event--_peaceably if we
can--forcibly if we must?_ No power will prevail with tyrants and
usurpers but the power of gunpowder or steel.

Kossuth in reply, turning to Governor Wood, said: Before addressing the
assembly, I humbly entreat your excellency to permit me to express, out
of the very heart of my heart, my gratitude and fervent thanks for those
lofty, generous principles which you have been pleased now to pronounce.
I know those principles would have immense value even if they were only
an individual opinion; but when they are expressed by him who is the
elect of the people of Ohio, they doubly, manifoldly increase in weight.

The restoration of Hungary to its national independence is my aim, to
which I the more cheerfully devote my life, because I know that my
nation, once master of its own destiny, can make no other choice, in the
regulation of its institutions and of its government, than that of a
Republic founded upon democracy and the great principle of municipal
self-government, without which, as opposed to centralization, there is
no practical freedom possible.

Other nations enjoying a comparatively tolerable condition under their
existing governments--though aware of their imperfections, may shrink
from a revolution of which they cannot anticipate the issue, while they
know that in every case it is attended with great sacrifices and great
sufferings for the generation which undertakes the hazard of the change.
But that is not the condition of Hungary. My poor native land is in such
a condition that all the horrors of a revolution, when without the hopes
of happiness to be gained by it, are preferable to what it lives to
endure now. The very life on a bloody battle-field, where every
whistling musket-ball may bring death--affords more security, more ease,
and is less alarming than that life which the people of Hungary has to
suffer now. We have seen many a sorrowful day in our past, We have been
by our geographical position, destined as the break