Page:Bohemian poems, ancient and modern (Lyra czecho-slovanska).djvu/21

Rh countrymen of Huss should be contented with the superficial knowledge to be gained from German politicians or more lately from Hungarian emissaries, sources equally untrustworthy and unauthentic, witnesses equally interested in concealing, distorting, or perverting the truth. While, however, I shall not shrink from recording my conviction, that the selfish policy of the Germans and Madjars—the former attempting to swallow up a large portion of the Austrian Empire in an imaginary Germany by means of the Frankfort Parliament, the latter endeavouring to raise themselves upon its ruins, and both plotting the subjugation and oppression of their Slavonic neighbours—has prevented and destroyed the fairest prospects ever opened to a great empire consisting of multifarious and in some cases even heterogeneous elements, the fairest prospects of peace and brother-hood, of independent development and mutual assistance;—while I shall not shrink from recording my conviction of this, I shall confine myself to describing

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