if we
could remain silent when political events are arresting and absorbing
public attention, and threatening to rouse all the passions of the human
heart, and to shake the earth out of its place. This present time, in
which we are living, is no holiday, when a man can throw himself down in
the shade, and dream his soul away. The fires, that are kindling on the
earth, flash their portentous light into the inmost retirement of
private life. The world is resounding with great events. And cold indeed
must be our hearts, we are not worthy to live at so momentous, so
unprecedented a period, if we refuse to be reminded of those
indissoluble ties of a common nature and a common interest, which the
course of things is laying bare to all men's view. As you are men, human
beings, your hearts must beat with a new and stirring sympathy for the
great Public of Christendom, of which you are each an inseparable
portion, when you see the second great nation of Europe, after all the
terrible experience of the last three-quarters of a century, again
falling prostrate in the dust beneath the blow of a base usurper, with
no great exploits at his back to extenuate the insolence of the brutal
deed; again laid low beneath a despot's feet by that vulgar instrument
of power, a standing army. I think there can hardly be found in modern
history any parallel to this outrage upon truth, freedom, and
humanity--to this implied contempt for human rights and human nature. A
robber-hand has seized the great French nation, and flung it down into
the dust to be trampled upon at pleasure. At such startling tidings,
what man is there so humble or so weak, who can repress the solemn
appeal to God, which must rise instinctively from every heart of flesh?
Who can help having his attention arrested and engrossed? Who does not
long to be saying something, doing something, or suffering something,
for the outraged rights, the imperilled interests of our Common
Humanity, our One Nature?

But above all, who that has seen, who that has heard the great Hungarian
exile, who has come to us, bringing his unhappy country in his heart,
that does not feel his kindred to his oppressed brethren everywhere? I
have looked full into those large, sad eyes, in which one seems to look
into the great deep of a nation's sorrows. I have heard that voice,
coming from his inmost soul, with which he pleaded for his dear native
land, and I cannot so much as try to tell you of the profoun