[_Speech at the Anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans, Jan. 8_.]
F.P. Blair, Esq., in the name of the Democratic Association, pronounced
an elaborate address, vindicating the interposition of the King of
France to aid the American Colonies when they revolted from England, and
pointing out that America, in defence of her institutions, may be called
on to support the masses of the European nations as a breakwater between
herself and Despotism. He showed the certain danger to which English
freedom would be exposed from the triumph of despotism, and asked:--
What have we to expect from neutrality? We may anticipate
the treatment which we received from both belligerents
when Napoleon pressed on to empire over all the nation
as Russia does now.... Can we hope, that when the war
is intended to exterminate the principle of which our government
is the great exemplar, our people will be allowed the immunity
of free trade with the belligerents to grow rich and
strong by their calamities?... The impending danger
can only be averted from us by the ability of the people of
Europe, now kept down by military mercenaries, to rise and
assert their own rights. To encourage such efforts is the duty
of every free people, and of all that would be free....
Shall our government hesitate to denounce, as a violation of
the law of nations, the intervention of the Czar? Shall it
hesitate to declare it a justification of a counter-intervention?...
Our countrymen will not assent to the one-sided
doctrine. They will intervene to lift up those stricken down
by intervention,--
The exiles from Europe--_Liberty_ and _Louis Kossuth_.
The band struck up the well-known Marseilles Hymn, and Kossuth, rising
to respond, was received with prolonged cheers. The music having ceased,
three hearty cheers were given, and Louis Kossuth responded to the toast
and the address in the following remarks, which were received with warm
enthusiasm:--
Gentlemen: I feel sincerely gratified with the honour of being invited
to be present on this solemn occasion, dedicated to the memory of a
glorious as well as highly responsible fact in your history.
There is high political wisdom in the custom yearly to revive the memory
of civil virtue and national glory in the mind of the living generation,
because nothing else is so efficient to keep alive the spirit of
patriotism--that powerful genius, which, like the angels of Scripture,
guards with flaming sword the Paradise of national liberty and
independence. Happy the land where the history of the past is the
history of the people, and not a mere flattery of kings; and
doubly happy the land where the rewards of the past are brightened by
present glory, present happiness; and where the noble deeds of the dead,
instead of being a mournful monument of vanished greatness which saddens
the heart, though it ennobles the mind, are a lasting source of national
welfare to the age and to posterity. But where, as in this your happy
land, national history is the elementary basis of education--where the
very schoolboy is better acquainted with the history of his country than
in monarchies almost the professors are--in such a country it would be
indeed but a ridiculous parading of vanity for a stranger to dwell upon
facts which every child is better acquainted with than he can be. Allow
me therefore, gentlemen, rather briefly to expound what is the practical
philosophy of that great victory which you are assembled to
celebrate--what is the moral of the strain as it presents itself to the
inquirer's mind.
As a man has to pass through several periods of age, each of them marked
with its own peculiarities, before he comes to a settled position in
life, even so a nation. A nation has first to be born, then to grow;
then it has to prove its passive vitality by undergoing a trial of life.
Afterwards it has to prove its active force to rise within its own
immediate horizon. At last, it must take its proper seat amongst the
nations of the world as a power on earth. Every one of these periods of
national life must be gone through. There is no help for it. It is a
necessary process of life. And every one of these life-periods has its
own natural condition, which must be accepted as a necessity, even if we
should not be pleased with it.
Gentlemen, having passed through the ordeal of an earnest life, with the
prospect of yet having to steer through stormy gales, it is natural
that, while I grasp my helm, I gaze at History, as my compass. And there
is no history more instructive than yours, because you have concentrated
within the narrow scope of a few years that natural process of national
life, which elsewhere was achieved only through centuries. It would be a
mistake, and a mistake not without danger, to believe that your nation
is still in its youth because it has lived but seventy-five years. The
natural condition of nations is not measured by years, but by those
periods of the process of life which I have mentioned. And there is no
nation on earth in whose history those periods were so distinctly marked
as in yours. First, you had to be born. That is the period of your
glorious struggle for independence. Endless honour be to those who
conducted it! You were baptized with blood, as it seems to be the
destiny of nations; but it was the genius of Freedom which stood
god-father at your baptism, and gave to you a lasting character by
giving you the Christian name of "_Republic_." Then you had to
grow, and, indeed, you have grown with the luxuriant rapidity of the
virgin nature of the American soil. Washington knew the nature of this
soil, fertilized by the blood of your martyrs and warmed by the sun of
your liberty. He knew it, when he told your fathers that you wanted but
twenty years of peaceful growth to defy any power whatsoever in a just
cause. You have grown through those twenty years, and wisely avoided to
endanger your growth by undertaking a toil not becoming to your growing
age; and there you stood about another twenty years, looking resolutely
but unpretendingly around, if there be anybody to question that you were
really a nation. The question was put in 1812, and decided by that
glorious victory, the anniversary of which you celebrate to-day. That
victory has a deeper meaning in your history than only that of a
repulsed invasion. It marks a period in your national life--the period
of acknowledged, unshakeable security of your national existence. It is
the consummation of your declaration of independence. You have proved by
it that the United States possess an incontestable vitality, having the
power to preserve that independent national position which your fathers
established by the declaration of independence. In reality, it was the
victory of New Orleans by which you took your seat amongst the
independent nations of the world never to be contested through all
posterity.
If the history of New Orleans showed the security of your national
existence, the victorious war against Mexico proved that also your
national interests must be respected. The period of active vitality is
attained. It remains yet to take your seat, not amongst the
_nations_ of the earth, for _that_ you have since the day of
New Orleans, but amongst the _powers_ on earth. What is the meaning
of that word "power on earth?" The meaning of it is, to have not only
the power to guard your own particular interests, but also to have a
vote in the regulation of the common interests of humanity, of which you
are an independent member--in a word, to become a tribunal enforcing the
law of nations, precisely as your supreme court maintains your own
constitution and laws. And, indeed, all argument of statesmanship, all
philosophy of history, would be vain, if I were mistaken that your great
nation is arrived at this unavoidable period of life.
The instinct of the people is in the life of a nation precisely that
which conscience is in the life of man. Before we, in our private life,
arrive at a clear conviction what course we have to adopt in this or
that occurrence, the conscience--that inexplicable spirit in our
breast--tells us in a pulsation of our heart what is right or what is
wrong. And this first pulsation of conscience is very trustworthy. Then
comes the reflective operation of the mind: it now and then lulls
conscience to sleep, now and then modifies particulars, and now and then
raises it to the degree of conviction. But conscience was in advance of
the mind. So is the instinct of the people--the conscience of nations.
Nor needs the highest intellectual power of individuality to feel
offended at the idea that the instinct of the people is always the first
to feel the right and wrong. It is the pulsation of the heart of the
nation; it is the advertisement of conscience, which never heaves
without reason, without necessity.
Indeed, gentlemen, it is not my presence here which elicited that
majestic interest for national law and international rights. Nay, I had
not been here, but for the pre-existence of this interest. It raised
glorious interpreters during the struggles of Greece, when, indeed, I
was yet too young to be in public life. It flashed up, kindled by
Poland's heroic struggles, and it blazed high and broad when we were
fighting the sacred battle of independence for the European continent.
Had this interest and sympathy not existed long ago, I were not now
here. My very freedom is the result of it.
And may I be permitted to mention that there were several concerns quite
unconnected with the cause of Hungary, which have much contributed to
direct public opinion to feel interested in the question of foreign
policy, so naturally connected with the question, What is international
law?
Your relations with Mexico and Central America; the threatened
intervention of European powers in the possible issue of a recent case
which brought so much mourning into many families in the United States;
the question about the Sandwich Islands, which European diplomacy
appeared to contemplate as an appropriate barrier between your Pacific
States and the Indian and Chinese trade; the sad fate of an American
citizen now condemned to the galleys in Africa; and several other
considerations of pressing concern, must necessarily have contributed to
excite the interest of public opinion for the settlement of the
question, What is and what shall be law amongst nations?--law not
dictated by the whims of ambitious despots, but founded upon everlasting
principles, such as republics can acknowledge who themselves live upon
principles.
The cause of Hungary is implicated with the very questions of right, in
which your country in so many respects is concerned. It happens to lie
so broad across the principles of international law, as to occupy not
only the instinct of the people but also the calm reflection of your
statesmen, conspicuous by mature wisdom and patriotism; and herein is
the key, besides the generosity congenial to freemen, why the cause
which I plead is honoured with so rapid a progress in public sentiment.
And let me entreat your permission for one topic more. I received,
during my brief stay in England, some one hundred and thirty addresses
from cities and associations, all full of the same warm sympathy for my
country's cause, which you also have so generously testified. That
sympathy was accorded to me, notwithstanding my frank declaration that I
am a republican, and that my country, when restored to independence, can
be nothing but a republic. Now this is a fact gratifying to every friend
of progress in public sentiment, highly proving that the people are
everywhere honourable, just, noble, and good. And do you know,
gentlemen, which of these numerous addresses were the most glorious to
the people of England and the most gratifying to me? It was one in which
I heard your Washington praised, and sorrow avowed that England had
opposed that glorious cause upon which is founded the noble fame of that
great man; and the addresses--(numerous they were indeed)--in which the
hope and resolution were expressed, that England and the United States,
forgetting the sorrows of the past will in brotherly love go hand in
hand to support the eternal principles of international law and freedom
on earth.
Yes indeed, sir, you were right to say that the justice of your
struggle, which took out of England's hand a mighty continent, is openly
acknowledged even by the English people itself. The memory of the day of
New Orleans must of course recall to your mind the wrongs against which
you so gloriously fought. Oh, let me entreat you, bury the hatred of
past ages in the grave where all the crimes of the past lie mouldering
with the ashes of those who sinned, and take the glorious opportunity to
benefit the great cause of humanity.
One thing let me tell you, gentlemen. _People_ and
_Governments_ are different things in such a country as Great
Britain is. It is sorrowful enough that the people have often to pay for
what the government sinned. Let it not be said in history, that even the
people of the United States made a kindred people pay for the sins of
its government. And remember that you can mightily react upon the public
opinion of Britain, and that the people of Britain can react upon the
course of its own government. It were indeed a great misfortune to see
the government of Great Britain pushed by irritation to side with the
absolutist powers against the oppressed nations about to struggle for
independence and liberty. Even Ireland could only lose by this. And
besides its own loss, this might perhaps be just the decisive blow
against liberty; whereas if the government of England, otherwise
remaining as it is, do but unite with you not to allow foreign
interference with our struggles on the continent this would become
almost a sure guarantee of the victory of those struggles; and,
according as circumstances stand, that would be indeed the most
practical benefit to the noble people of Ireland also, because freedom,
independence, and the principles of natural law could not fail to
benefit their cause, which so well merits the sympathy of every just man
and they have also the sympathy--I know it--of the better half of
England itself.
Hatred is no good counsellor, gentlemen. The wisdom of love is a better
one. What people has suffered more than my poor Hungary has from Russia?
Shall I hate the people of Russia for it? Oh never! I have but pity and
Christian brotherly love for it. It is the government, it is the
principle of the government, which makes every drop of my blood boil and
which must fall, if humanity is to live. We were for centuries in war
against the Turks, and God knows what we have suffered by it! But past
is past. Now we have a common enemy, and thus we have a common interest,
a mutual esteem, and love rules where our fathers have fought.
Gentlemen, how far this supreme duty toward your own interest will allow
you to go in giving life and effect to the principle which you so
generously proclaim, and which your party (as I have understood) have
generously proclaimed in different parts--_that_ you will in your
wisdom decide, remaining always the masters of your action and of your
fate. But that principle will rest; that principle is true; that
principle is just; and you are just, because you are free. I hope
therefore to see you cordially unite with me once more in the
sentiment--"Intervention for non-intervention."
* * * * *