of calumnies. I may reserve it for my pen. But inasmuch as the basis of
all the calumnies lies in general ignorance concerning the relation of
the Magyars to other races of Hungary, permit me to speak on the
question of NATIONALITIES, a false theory of which plays so mischievous
a part in the destinies of Europe. No word has been more misrepresented
than the word Nationality, which is become in the hands of absolutism a
dangerous instrument against liberty.

Let me ask you, gentlemen: are you, the people of the United States, a
_nation_, or not? Have you a _national_ government, or not?
You answer, yes: and yet you are not all of one blood, nor of one
language. Millions of you speak English; others French, German, Italian,
Spanish, Danish, and even several Indian dialects: yet you are a nation.
Neither your central government, nor those of separate states, nor your
municipalities, legislate or administer in every language spoken among
you; yet you have a national government.

Now, suppose many of you were struck with the curse of Babel, and
exclaimed, "This union is an oppression! our laws, our institutions, our
state and city governments, are an oppression! What is union to us? what
are rights? what avail laws? what is freedom? what is geography? what
is community of interests to us? They are all nothing; LANGUAGE is
everything. Let us divide the Union, divide the states, divide the very
cities, divide the whole territory, according to languages. Let the
people of every language become a separate state: for every nation has a
right to national life, and to us, the language, and nothing else, is
the nationality. Unless the state is founded upon language, its
organization is tyranny."

What then would become of your great Union? What of your constitution,
the glorious legacy of your greatest man? What of those immortal stars
on mankind's moral sky? What would become of your country itself,
whence the spirit of freedom soars into light, and rising hope
irradiates the future of humanity? What would become of this grand,
mighty complex of your republic, should her integrity ever be rent by
the fanatics of language? Where now she walks among the rising temples
of liberty and happiness, she soon would tread upon ruins, and mourn
over human hopes. But happy art then, free nation of America, founded on
the only solid basis,--liberty! a principle steady as the world, eternal
as the truth, universal for every climate, for ev