nce of
power cannot be redressed unless Hungary is restored to national
independence. Consequently if it be your own necessity to weigh in the
scale of the powers on earth, if it be your destiny to redress the
balance of power, the cause of Hungary is the field where this destiny
will have to be fulfilled.

And it is indeed your destiny. Russian diplomacy could never boast of a
greater and more fatal victory than it had a right to boast, should it
succeed to persuade the United States not to care about her--Russia
accomplishing her aim to become the ruling power in Europe; the ruling
power in Asia; the ruling power of the Mediterranean sea. That would be
indeed a great triumph to Russian diplomacy, greater than her triumph
over Hungary; a triumph dreadful to all humanity, but to nobody more
dreadful than to your own future.

All sophistry is in vain, gentlemen; there can be no mistake about it.
Russian absolutism and Anglo-Saxon constitutionalism are not rival but
antagonist powers. They cannot long continue to subsist together.
Antagonists cannot hold equal position; every additional strength of the
one is a comparative weakening of the other. One or the other must
yield. One or the other must perish or become dependent on the other's
will.

You may perhaps believe that that triumph of diplomacy is impossible in
America. But I am sorry to say, that it has a dangerous ally, in the
propensity to believe, that the field of American policy is limited
geographically; that there is a field for American, and there is a field
for European policy, and that these fields are distinct, and that it is
your interest to keep them distinct.

There was a time in our struggle, when, if a man had come from America,
bringing us in official capacity the tidings of your brotherly greeting,
of your approbation and your sympathy, he would have been regarded like
a harbinger of heaven. The Hungarian nation, tired out by the hard task
of dearly but gloriously bought victories, was longing for a little
test, when the numerous hordes of Russia fell upon us in the hour of
momentary exhaustion. Indignation supplied the wanted rest, and we rose
to meet the intruding foe; but it was natural that the nation looked
around with anxiety, whether there be no power on earth raising its
protesting voice against that impious act of trampling down the law of
nations, the common property of all humanity? no power on earth to cheer
us by a word of approbat