Budapest on 16 November, 1851 - "Manchester Guardian"
Kossuth in England - The Politician
It is one of the characteristics of true greatness that it never shines with greater brilliancy or luster, than when partially obscured by the clouds of adversity. In the hour of triumph, when skill or fortune have crowned the glories of a well foughten field, or closed the strife of words or statecraft in a long contested and intricate diplomatic negotiation, we admire the hero or the statesman by whose exertions such results have been achieved and willingly and cheerfully accord to him the honor which his successful service deserves. But whilst we do this it rarely happens that we see in him any thing more than the triumphant general or accomplished politician; we observe only the external circumstances by which he is surrounded and form little or no estimate of the virtue that may reside within. It is not till he has been tried by the fire or adversity, and found superior to the frowns of fortune that we discover the true and trusty metal of which he is compounded and begin to reverence the man.
So has it been with Louis Kossuth. When in the first instance he startled Europe by presenting at the head of a small body of his countrymen an embattled front to the advancing forces of the Austrian oppressor, and showed at a single stroke the might that lies in a patriot's arm - when, to the amazement of the world, he overthrew the serried ranks of the tyrant at Pesth, and subsequently under circumstances of unexpected difficulty, and in the face of the most overwhelming odds obtained a series of military triumphs such as have rarely been witnessed - even then, when we applauded the hero, and extended all our sympathies to the patriot, we know nothing of the man.
It was not until Kossuth had touched the soil of England, and entered, as it were, into personal and intimate communication with us that we began to understand and to estimate the true qualities of his mind, and the large and statesmanlike views by which his public conduct have been actuated.
Our readers will have observed, with an interest and gratification equal to our own, the honourable reception which has everywhere been accorded to this truly great man since he set foot on the shores of England. During the past fortnight our columns have recorded in ample detail the compliments and honors paid to him at Southampton, at Winchester, in the City of London, in the Metropolitan boroughs, and in all public places in which he has presented himself. His conduct and bearing upon these occasions have been such as cannot have failed to increase the admiration even of those who were predisposed to think well of him. But how must they have operated upon that unworthy band of public writers who, to the shame and scandal of the generous name of Englishmen, have put themselves prominently forward as his detractors and (...)?
We greatly err if these gentlemen have not already deeply repented of the grievous blunder into which they were led by their own mis-judging conceit, by their miscalculation of the influence which they were capable of exercising over the sturdy understanding and generous sympathies of their own countrymen and by their utter ignorance of the character and capacity of the man whom they assailed. They doubtless expected to find in the Hungarian patriot a frothy demagogue, possessed, perhaps, of the vulgar attributes of boldness and courage, but utterly deficient in the mental capacity and commanding qualities necessary to the man we shall undertake to guide the destinies of a nation. They doubtless expected to hear him speak in the turgid and bombastic phraseology common to the Eastern race, from whom the Hungarians derive their origin, and which still remains in the view of the sober nations of Northern Europe, a blot upon their language, and an unpleasing characterising of their rhetoric. Upon the backnied topics of liberty and freedom, they doubtless expected to hear him enlarge, with all the florid and misty eloquence of his native tongue, and with all the headlong recklessness of the political visionary, or revolutionary enthusiast. More than this they did not expect - less they could hardly look for. They regarded him at best as a baffled adventurer - as one who, to advance himself, would not hesitate to break down and destroy all that in the established order of things obstructed his course, but who was utterly incapable of compensating for the havoc so committed, by the establishment of sounder institutions, or the construction of a better system of government.
What, then, must have been their sense of astonishment and discomfiture, when at the moment of his first opening his lips at Southampton, and at every subsequent occasion upon which he has addressed the people of this country, they found him not only a perfect master of English tongue - not only fully conversant with the institutions upon which the constitutional liberties of England are based - not only intimately acquainted with the principles out of which our commercial greatness has sprung - not only wisely cognisant of the liberal system by which alone that greatness can be maintained - not only familiar with the habits and peculiar turn of thought of our people, but entering into the discussion of these topics with a sobriety of diction, a chastity of language, a delicacy of taste, a clearness and precision of view, a soundness of judgment, and a breadth and scope of intellectual capacity, that would have done honour to any of our best statesmen, in their best days. In the presence of such qualities, the venomed shaft of calumny loses its potency, or reverts only to wound the malignant hand by which it is launched.
It seem that, from earliest boyhood, the admiration of Kossuth was directed to the free institutions of England; and that it was one of the chief studies of his life to make himself acquainted with them. With what success those studies were prosecuted, may be gathered from his language and conduct, now that he is actually amongst us. Few Englishmen would appear to possess an equal knowledge of the principles upon which the freedom and liberty of our political institutions are formed, and upon which, amidst the storms and convulsions of continental Europe, they have been maintained in unbroken and increasing vigour.
In our municipal institutions - in the habit and practice of local self-government - in the principle of election and representation in minor matters, as well as in great - in the resistance to any system of general centralisation - in the freedom of the press, and in the native spirit of the people, he sees the elements out of which the sober and rational freedom of Englishmen has sprung, and of which, whilst Englishmen remain true to themselves, and to the traditions of their history, it will never be in the power of any monarch or minister to deprive them.
On the other hand in Russia, he sees the very opposite of all these. He there beholds an empire of serfs ruled over by an arbitrary and despotic power whose will, however unreasonable or ungoverned, is law - whose peremptory scepter stands in the place of council and of Parliament, and to whose ambitious desires there is not an institution in the state to propose a barrier or present an impediment.
In the present unsettled condition of Europe he sees in these two empires - in the empire of England and the empire of Russia, the two great representatives of the opposing principles of despotism and freedom. He sees in them the two presiding powers by whom the destinies of the nations of this quarter of the world must thereafter be influenced or controlled. He knows that things cannot remain as they are - he foresees the coming struggle between despotic power on the one hand and free institutions on the other, and looking upon England as the ancient and indomitable representative of the latter he seeks with a patriot statesman's sagacity to secure beforehand the sympathy and support of the enlightened and generous people for the efforts which his own countrymen are yet sure to make for the restoration of their rights and the vindication of their liberties.
Well and ably is he discharging this self-imposed but most important task. Whilst he would stimulate all our affections towards his people and kindle our disposition to lend them the support of our countenance and sympathy by showing that it is our interest to do so, he says nothing that would provoke or urge us to an armed physical interference or to a head long demonstration in their favour. "What is it," said he, speaking at Southampton, "what is it that I require in the name of my poor country, and in the interests of all oppressed Europe, from great and mighty England? Is it that England should draw the sword to restore Hungary? No, gentlemen. All that I humbly request and wish, and hope is, that England would not abandon Hungary and Europe to oppression - that England would not grant a charter to the Czar to dispose of the destinies of Europe. Public opinion in England can make it a leading principle to acknowledge the natural rights of every nation to dispose of herself and not allow the Czar to interfere with the domestic concerns of whatever nation in Europe it pleases. People of the mighty Albion, that is all and nothing else which oppressed humanity expects, entreats, and hopes for. All the rest that is to do, leave the nations of Europe to do for themselves."
Here speaks at once the patriot and the statesman, and if in Hungary there be left but half-a-dozen minds, impelled by the same spirit, enlarged by the same broad and comprehensive views, and moderated by the same wisdom, the hour cannot be distant when the oppressor's power shall be trampled in the dust and the wandering exile be recalled to bear his part in the regeneration of that deeply-loved native land, whose cause he will never fail to champion with all the force of his genius and all the earnestness of his soul, whilst he ranges an honoured but modest pilgrim through the free and liberal states, whether of Europe or America, people by the stalwart sons of the sturdy and manly Anglo-Saxon race.
Deep and lasting must be the mortification of France when she sees how Kossuth has been received in England, and how he has spoken to Englishmen. She will perceive that she refused not only her hospitality, but even her civilities to one, who, leading a nation to struggle for the recovery of its ancient rights and liberties, had no thought of converting liberty into licence, or of countenancing the atrocious doctrines of Socialism or of Red Republicanism; but who with more than the common talent and energy of mankind, beat the whole powers of his mind to the resistance of an indefensible and insupportable tyranny and to the establishment in its place of a well-ordered system of Constitutional Government in an emancipated state and in the midst of a free people. When to such a man the rulers of France deem it necessary to refuse the poor boon of a passage through their country, lest the infection of his presence should spread a popular phrenzy through the land - well, indeed, may we exclaim, "How are the mighty fallen?"
Life of Kossuth
Louis Kossuth, or Kossuth Lajos (Layosch), as he is called in Hungarian, was born in 1802, at Morok in the Comitat of Zemplin, of an old Protestant family of Hungarian gentry, which had decayed in fighting pertinaciously the battles of the Zapolyas against the usurpations of the house of Habsburg. His mother - that "noble old mother" - of whom he speaks so feelingly in addressing through Lord Palmerston, the British people, in his letter from Viddin, as "wandering, perhaps houseless over the wide plains of Hungary" - brought him up as he might have been educated by a Roman matron. He was sent to the Protestant College of Patak, graduated as jurist at Eperies, and was called to the bar at the "Royal table" at Pesth. Already at the age of three and twenty he was in connection with several members of the Diet, who "loved to listen to the eloquence of the young man." Like Cromwell, in his youth he was given to dissipation, and being already a reformer, his political opponents having seen him upon one occasion play higher and more unfortunately than usual, accused him of having used an orphan fund to which he was trustee, and proposed judicially to summon him to pay it into court, "where on enquiry, it was however found intact, to their confusion."His powers were first acknowledged during the prevalence of the cholera, in 1831, in calming the excitement of the peasantry, who nursed studiously by Austria in suspicion of their masters and landlords, attributed the malady to poison administered by the nobles through the Jews. In 1832 he attended the Diet at Presburg, as proxy of a peeress, with the right to speak but not to vote. Though, according to the constitution, the sittings of the Diet were public, the Government only allowed the publication of the debates by a parliamentary commission, which was so slow in its operations, that the reports lost their interest before they appeared. Kossuth undertook to remedy this evil in some measure, by sending written extracts of the most important speeches and proceedings to all the counties in his news-letters, the form which in the newspaper was first called into existence in the West.
He afterwards endeavoured to ease the great labour of this undertaking by the help of a lithographic press, which, however, in 1834, the government obliged him to give up, and he returned to his former practice of writing. Kossuth at the very early period perceived that the great object of the Imperial Government was to obtain control of the Hungarian finances, that unless these were secured the liberties of Hungary could not be maintained, that the development of those liberties was impossible without the emancipation of the serfs, whose rebellion Austria always held in terror over their Master, and lastly that unless the debates of the Diet were duly published, the corruptive policy of Metternich would in the long run prevail.
On this account, Kossuth repeatedly threatened with prosecution for high treason, obstinately persisted in asserting, at all risks the right of publication, and shortly after the arrest of Baron Wesselenyi, (whom he defended) for his consistent attempts to obtain the enfranchisement of the serfs; Kossuth was incarcerated. After two years' captivity he was brought to trial for high treason, and condemned to four years' imprisonment. In 1840, the growing impatience of the Diet, obliged the Government to grant an amnesty, and Kossuth was liberated two years before the expiration of his sentence, four from the time of his arrest. This period he passed in assiduous study, and gained from the perusal of Shakespeare, of whom he is a passionate admirer, nearly all the knowledge of the English language which he now possesses.
In 1841, Kossuth became the editor of the Pesthi Hirlap, which he conducted with singular ability, and made so popular and powerful an organ that it was purchased by the Austrian Cabinet, to exclude him from its direction. When deprived of his paper, Kossuth formed an association directed against the Austrian trade, which made Hungary exclusively dependent on Austria for her manufactures and her markets; and he found other means to forward his chief views - the preservation of municipal liberties, the control of the finances, and emancipation of the serfs, whom, as a preliminary step, he used untiring efforts to educate and enlighten. In 1846, the aggressive attitude of the Austrian Cabinet, and the centralizing system in attempted to introduce in violation of the old institutions of Hungary, roused universal indignation and resistance, and Kossuth was soon after returned to the Diet, and assumed a prominent position.
Up to that period, Kossuth had played a very up-hill game; obliged to work his own way whilst labouring in competition with Reformers, like Szechenyi and Batthyany, who had all the prestige antecedents, support, fortune, leisure, and rank, and who with brief exceptions, sought throughout the same end by different means. Count Szechenyi's idea was, by the development of material prosperity in the country to overmatch Austria, and he violently opposed Kossuth, as an innovator who disturbed the plans he had been years maturing. It was the belief of Kossuth, that before Austria would allow that point of development in Hungary which Szechenyi looked for, Austria would destroy the prosperity of Hungary and suppress its liberties. Batthyany, who went beyond Szechenyi, and saw through the ulterior designs of Austria, and agreed in the necessity of resisting them, differed constantly from Kossuth in believing their projected execution more remote, and in thinking premature the policy or possibility of the resistance to encroachment on which he, too, was ultimately bent.
The event showed both these patriots that Kossuth's views were the most farsighted, and Szechenyi's long antagonism, like Batthyany's enduring friendship, brought both alike to Kossuth's side, confessing the truth of his previsions in the crisis of their own and of their country's fate. Vexation and anguish brought out the taint of hereditary madness to which Szechenyi succumbed, when Jellachich, marching upon Pesth, verified Kossuth's predications, and Batthyany, when he afterwards repaired to Windischgrath, the Count Egmont of the Hungarian Orange saw his incredulity too late.
Szechenyi despaired of the country then, and Batthyany afterwards; yet on both occasions Kossuth's confidence was justified by the event. This tardy faith had, however, been preceded by a marked distrust in schemes looked on as visionary as the early views of Wilberforce; and to enable Kossuth to carry his great measure, which for years, and in corporative obscurity, he had preservingly prepared, it required the occurrence of the Galician massacres, where 3,000 landlords, or wives, sons, and daughters of landlords, claiming their hereditary rights, were murdered by their own serfs, instigated by the Austrian Cabinet, which for years had forbidden their emancipation. Kossuth succeeded in framing, by the anonymous votes of a parliament of landlords, that great measure - one of the most important ever carried through.
The influence and eloquence of Kossuth was sufficient to persuade these noble masters to complete the boon of freedom they had accorded, by ceding to the peasantry the lands they had occupied as serfs. The jealousy with which he had watched, and skill by which he managed, the national finances, enabled him to frame a scale of compensation, satisfactory to the landlords.
The disasters which have overtaken Hungary have rather tended to cement than to disturb the harmony, and have been powerless to destroy the benefits which Kossuth conferred on millions of his fellow countrymen. The noble and his emancipated peasant have bled on the same field, perished on the same scaffold, and shared the same captivity; but the landlord sleeps secure in the affections of his former serf, and the former serf retains the freedom which he owes to Kossuth, which even Austria dares not snatch away, and remains in the enjoyment of the lands with which his masters had magnanimously endowed him.
It is in this great measure that we must seek the first cause of that wonderful resistance, which enabled a nation limited in number, widely scattered over extensive plains, utterly unarmed and thoroughly surprised, to drive twice back the tide of invasion, to place a mighty empire at their mercy, and to render it more than questionable whether, if not betrayed by Gorgey, it would not successfully have resisted the double aggression to which it succumbed at last. It is in this measure we must seek the cause of a popularity greater and more deeply rooted in misfortune than any modern leader has enjoyed in the zenith of success. Nor is this the sole claim of Kossuth to his country's gratitude. It was not only he who prepared it to resist, but the who alone had faith in its genius, who appreciated its powers and directed that resistance by his inspiriting energy the genius of the Cunot.
This marvelous struggle was not due to any concentration of military talent, such as that which distinguished the French revolution of '93, when a galaxy of great commanders seemed elbowing each other - nor to a martial caste luring on a warlike race. The Hungarian Generals on the whole were simply brave, and not deficient. The officers, long subjected to the demoralizing contact of Austria, less fit to lead than to be led. So that we have in the memorable struggle really two great elements, the soldier's matchless valor, and Kossuth's genius. This is why Kossuth possesses in eastern Europe, that unparalleled prestige, of which his reputation in the west is a remote and indistinct vibration.
Kossuth in England - Kossuth in Manchester 1
Kossuth in England - Kossuth in Manchester 2
Kossuth in England - Kossuth in Manchester 3
