ofession to have
presented from our ranks some prominent individual who has generously
and boldly engaged in the service; and Hungary has furnished to the
world one of the most striking in the brilliant series of illustrious
examples. As early as the year 1840, the public history of Hungary had
made us acquainted with the distinguished part which a Mr. Kossuth, an
attorney, as he was then described, had performed in sustaining the laws
of his country. Mr. Kossuth, the Attorney of that day, has since matured
into the Counsellor, Statesman, Patriot, Governor, and now stands before
us the Exile more distinguished for his firmness and undaunted courage
in his last reverse than for his exaltation by the free choice of his
countrymen. After the years of your imprisonment and painful anxiety had
worn away, and the illegal measure of your arrest had been publicly
acknowledged, we found you restored to your personal liberty, and again
ardently engaged in the great cause of your country's freedom. At the
meeting of the Diet of Hungary which was held in November, 1847, and
before the flame of revolution had illuminated Europe, we found a series
of acts resolved upon by that body, which declared an equality of civil
rights and of public burdens among all classes, denominations, and races
in Hungary and its provinces, perfect toleration for every form of
religion, an extension of the elective franchise, universal freedom in
the sale of landed property, liberty to strangers to settle in the
country, the emancipation of the Jews, the sum of eight millions set
apart to encourage manufactures and construct roads, and the nobles of
Hungary, by a voluntary act, abolishing the old tenure of the lands,
thereby constituting the producing classes to be absolute owners of
nearly one half of the cultivated territory in the kingdom. This great
advance made by your country in a system of benign and ameliorating
legislation, was checked by occurrences which are too fresh in your
recollection to require a recapitulation. We welcome you among us; we
tender you our admiration for your efforts; our sympathy for your
sufferings; our cordial wishes that your persevering labours may be
successful in restoring your country to her place among nations, and her
people to the enjoyment of those blessings of civil and religious
liberty, to which, by their intelligence and bravery, and by the _laws
of nature and of nature's God_, they are justly entitled. Our
pr