in Hungary's chosen
leader. We are not so blind that we cannot observe how no envenomed
shaft was fixed to 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 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