Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume One).djvu/238

Rh He seemed also to foresee the unity of Italy, although he overestimated the tendency there towards republican institutions. He declared that Austria studded the peninsula of Italy with bayonets, and that she was able to send her armies to Italy because Russia guarded her eastern frontier. His residence in Italy for a third of a century was due to his admiration for the history of the Italian peoples, and his belief in the capacity of the Italian races for the business of government. “The spirit of republican liberty, the warlike genius of ancient Rome, were never extinguished between the Alps and the Faro.” He declared that every stain upon the honor of Italy was connected with foreign rule, and that the petty tyrants of Italy had been kept on their tottering thrones through the intervention of Austria, Germany and France.

At the end he placed the responsibility for the domination of absolutism upon the Continent of Europe to the intervention of Russia and to her recognized supremacy in war. He appreciated the fact that Russia in coalition with Austria or Germany or France was more than the equal of the residue of the Continent, whether combined for offensive or defensive operations.

In the many speeches which Kossuth made in the United States, he endeavored to impress upon his hearers the conviction that the absolutism, under which Europe was then groaning, would extend to America. This view made a slight impression only. To the common mind the ocean and the distance seemed a sufficient protection. In the lifetime of Kossuth, absolutism, both in church and state, has lost much of power on the Continent of Europe, while in America it has no abiding place.

Kossuth did not err in his opinion as to the policy of Russia in European affairs; but that policy never extended to America, even in thought. Of that policy Kossuth said: “It is already long ago that Czar Alexander of Russia declared that