o bring it over to free America, as to
the natural and most powerful representative of that "Spirit of Liberty"
against which the leagued tyrants are waging a war of extermination with
inexorable resolution. Yes, it was a call of distress entrusted to my
care, to remind America that there is a tie in the destinies of nations;
and that those are digging a bottomless abyss who forsake the Spirit of
Liberty, when within the boundaries of common civilization half the
world utters in agony the call of universal distress.

That is the mission with which I come to your shores; and believe me,
gentlemen, that is the key of that wonderful sympathy with which the
people of this republic answers my humble appeal. There is blood from
our blood in these noble American hearts; there is the great heart of
mankind which pulsates in the American breast; there is the chord of
liberty which vibrates to my sighs.

Let ambitious fools, let the pigmies who live on the scanty food of
personal envy, when the very earth quakes beneath their feet, let even
the honest prudence of ordinary household times, measuring eternity with
that thimble with which they are wont to measure the bubbles of small
party interest, and, taking the dreadful roaring of the ocean for a
storm in a water glass, let those who believe the weather to be calm
because they have drawn a nightcap over their ears, and, burying their
heads into pillows of domestic comfort, do not hear Satan sweeping in a
hurricane over the earth; let envy, ambition, blindness, and the
pettifogging wisdom of small times, artistically investigate the
question of my official capacity, or the nature of my public authority;
let them scrupulously discuss the immense problem whether I still
possess, or possess no longer, the title of my once-Governorship; let
them ask for credentials, discuss the limits of my commission, as
representative of Hungary. I pity all such frog and mouse fighting.

I claim no official capacity--no public authority--no representation;
boast of no commission, of no written and sealed credentials. I am
nothing but what my generous friend, the Senator of Michigan, has justly
styled me, "a private and banished man." But in that capacity I have a
nobler credential for my mission than all the clerks of the world can
write, the credential that I am a "man,"--the credential that I am "a
patriot"--the credential that I love with all sacrificing devotion my
oppressed fatherland and li