Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume One).djvu/233

Rh States tendered any advice even in the affairs of Austria, Hungary and Russia, such advice would have been rejected by the nations, and indignities would have been heaped upon the officious parties. All that part of Kossuth’s mission to England and the United States was hopeless from the beginning, and it seems to be an impeachment of his wisdom to assume that he ever entertained the thought that either country could or would make the cause of Hungary its own, whatever might be the general or official opinion as to the justice of the contest that Hungary had carried on.

His speeches and his private conversations justify the inference that he had a hope that in some way the influence of England and the United States might be exerted effectually in behalf of Hungary, and that through that influence the activity of Russia might be arrested. Although he looked to France for aid to the cause of Hungary, he regarded the coup d’état of Napoleon as an adverse event,—as a step and an important step in the direction of “absolutism.” On one occasion he said: “Look how French Napoleonish papers frown indignantly at the idea that the Congress of the United States dared to honor my humble self, declaring those honors to be not only offensive to Austria, but to all the European powers.”

Mr. Webster delivered a speech in Boston in the month of November, 1849, when it was apprehended that Russia might assume the task of demanding of Turkey the surrender of Kossuth and others, and of executing them for crimes against Austria. On that occasion Mr. Webster claimed that the Emperor of Russia was “bound by the law of nations”: and to that declaration Kossuth often referred. The full text of Mr. Webster’s speech leaves upon the mind the impression that what he then called “the law of nations” was only that general judgment of the civilized nations before which the Czar of Russia “would stand as a criminal and malefactor in the view