unites you to us, than separates you. Would you have the
_advantages_ of the connection, without the _duties_ which
spring out of it? Disregard of duty sooner or later kills advantage. I
need not remind you what a link of nature, blood, language, science,
industry, religion, civilization, exists between you and us, and binds
us ever tighter. You cannot help feeling at home our condition in
Europe. Our peace or war, our civilization or barbarism, our freedom or
oppression, our wealth or starvation, progress or retrogression,
_must_ act upon you, just as your condition reacts upon us. The
link between the destinies of Christendom cannot be cut asunder. In
fact, there never yet was a time when Europe more demanded that you
should have _some_ policy towards it; and indifference is none at
all. At this moment it is under universal oppression of _social,
political_, and _religious_ liberty,--the three treasures which
make your glory and happiness. This oppression is ordered by Russia, and
executed by her satellites. The elected President of France has
impiously stabbed the constitution, to make himself Emperor. The
Austrian Ministry has openly declared that the absolutist powers will
maintain him. Thus the impulse of revolution has been given; its
vibration will be felt throughout Europe and in my fatherland. Never
will you have an opportunity more glorious for you, and more favourable
to mankind, for adopting a real policy founded upon principles.

The people of Hungary have abundant motives to risk life for freedom and
independence. Once we had a nationality; now we have none. Once we had a
constitution;--by the blessing of God we succeeded to transform it three
years ago from an aristocratic to a democratic one;--now Hungary has no
constitution at all. For a thousand years we were a free people; we are
now so no longer. Like a flock of sheep, we are appropriated, not by the
Austrian empire, not by the nation, but by a despotic ambitious family.
We had freedom of the press. Not nineteen years ago, I began the
struggle, and endured three years imprisonment for it; but we won that
great right of mankind--free expression of thought. Now there is no
press at all in Hungary; there is only the hangman and martial law. We
established equal protection for every religion; now there is equal
oppression for all. The Protestant Church had its own self-government
for its churches and schools, won by victorious arms and secured by a
hund