Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume One).djvu/228

Rh In like manner the words “freedom” and “liberty,” in their application, have been limited to classes and castes, and to individual communities and states. The earliest and best expression of the universality of the idea of liberty belongs to America, but in America even its practical realization is a recent event. Previous to the nineteenth century, America was the only land in which it was possible to found a state freed from the domination of the church, or to establish a church freed from the domination of the state; and in one half of the American continent this degree of freedom does not exist even now, when we approach the twentieth century.

Of the great orators of the world, it was Louis Kossuth who first gave to the word “liberty” the largest possible signification. Burke approached the idea, but he seemed not to comprehend its universality. In his oration on Conciliation with America he said: “In Virginia and the Carolinas they have a vast multitude of slaves. When this is the case in any part of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. Freedom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a kind of rank and privilege. Not seeing, then, that freedom as in countries where it is a common blessing, and as broad and general as the air, may be united with much abject misery, with all the exterior of servitude, liberty looks among them like something that is more noble and liberal.”

Although Burke speaks of countries where freedom was a common blessing, it is apparent that the expression was a figure of speech rather than a statement of existing facts. Kossuth came to the Western World, not as the exponent merely of the sufferings and wrongs endured by the people of Hungary, but he announced and advocated boldly the most advanced theories of individual and national freedom, and of the mutuality of the obligations resting upon states.

Of the many speeches made by Kossuth in the United States, precedence may be given to his speech in Faneuil Hall,