stitution, corrupting the whole administration of our
government at home and abroad,--this it is that will disappoint and
defeat the Hungarian patriot's idolised hope. He has come hither as to
the very temple of Freedom, and he finds coiled up under her very altar,
as its guardian, the serpent of Oppression, and already its deadly hiss
has rung in his surprised ear.

American Slavery has much to answer for; but if it adds this to the
mountain of its iniquities, if it is the cause why the hope of bleeding
and fettered Europe is blasted, if it break the noble heart of Hungary's
devoted servant and chief, and more than all, if it cause him to falter
in the cause of universal humanity, what tongue now silent will not join
in execrating it? what heart, hitherto cold, will not consecrate itself
to the work of its abolition?

The nations of the old world, degraded, trampled upon, and bleeding
under the relentless feet of arbitrary power, long and pray for
emancipation. The glorious vision of Liberty flits before their aching
sight. They stretch out their hearts and hands to us. But the
supporters of the old and oppressive forms of government sneer at our
boasted universal freedom, as well they may, and point to our millions
of bondmen. They can say, with truth, that Liberty does not exist here
or anywhere as a realized fact; that it is a chimera and an abstraction,
utterly impracticable; that the people are longing for a dream that has
never been and can never be fulfilled. Neither the foreign oppressor,
nor the foreign oppressed have any foundation in fact for the faith and
the hope of liberty; and much I fear we should do little for the
deliverance of other nations, even if, as we now stand, clinging to
Slavery, we were actually to intervene in their behalf. If we saw any
chance of strengthening and extending our 'domestic institution,' we
might in that case be ready enough to give them our help.

O how plain is it that the one thing which the world claims of us, the
one thing that the great Hungarian has to ask of us, for his own people
and for all Europe, is that we should prove that _Liberty without
Slavery_ is a practicable thing. Let this fact be realized, and the
world's redemption is sure. Show mankind twenty-five millions of human
beings, living together under such free and simple institutions as ours,
with not a single slave among them, and then all that we need do is
done, and our simple existence as a nation bec