sion to render society, society abhors and rejects. Your labor is in vain, the upholders of capital punishment labor in vain, and you see we do not confound them with society, it is useless for them, they will never take away the guilt of the old law of retaliation. They will never wash away those hideous words upon which for so many centuries has trickled down. the blood from heads severed by the executioner's knife. Gentlemen, I have done! My son, you are to-day in receipt of a great honor, you have been adjudged worthy to contend, perhaps to suffer, for the holy cause of truth. From to-day you enter into the real vital life of our time, that is to say, the struggle for justice and truth. Be proud, you who are but a common soldier of humanity and democracy, you are sitting where Béranger has been seated, where Lamennais has sat. Remain immovable in your convictions, and, though it were to be my last word, if you have need of a thought to strengthen your faith in progress, your belief in the future, your de votion to humanity, your execration of the scaffold, your loathing for all penalties irrevocable and irreparable, remember that before this very bar Lesurques also was arraigned. [Specially translated by Mary Emerson Adams.] Lo KOSSUTH OUIS KOSSUTH was born at Monok in Hungary in 1802. He received a good education, and in his thirtieth year entered the Hungarian Diet, where he served for some six years. Imprisoned by the Austrian Governmert in 1837 on account of his liberal opinions, he was released three years later, and soon afterward became editor of the "Pesth Journal." In 1847 he was once more chosen Deputy to the Diet, and it was largely owing to his efforts that Austria in 1848 found herself constrained to concede a species of autonomy to Hungary. In the following year, when the perfidy of the imperial government drove the Magyars to insurrection, Kossuth was made President of the Republic of Hungary. After the overthrow of the Magyar commonwealth by the combined forces of Austria and Russia, Kossuth fled to Turkey, where he sojourned for a time until he visited England and the United States in the hope of securing the co-operation of those countries in an attempt to restore Hungarian independence. The speeches which he delivered in the United States in 1852 excited great enthusiasm. He lived to see his native land acquire, after the battle of Sadowa, almost complete autonomy, and even exercise ascendency in the councils of the Hapsburg Kaiser, but he never lost his desire for the resuscitation of the former republics, and refused to acquiesce in Austrian rule, even when it had become merely nominal. His later years were passed in Italy, and he died at Turin in 1894. S' LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT ADDRESS AT THE CONGRESSIONAL BANQUET IN WASHINGTON, IR, as once Cyneas, the Epirote, stood among the Sen ators of Rome, who, with an earnest word of selfconscious majesty, controlled the condition of the world and arrested mighty kings in their ambitious march, thus, full of admiration and of reverence, I stand before you, legislators of the new Capitol-that glorious hall of your people's collective majesty. The Capitol of old yet stands, but the spirit has departed from it and come over 15795) to yours, purified by the air of liberty. The old stands a mournful monument of the fragility of human thingsyours as a sanctuary of eternal rights. The old beamed with the red lustre of conquest, now darkened by oppression's gloomy night-yours beams with freedom's bright ray. The old absorbed the world by its own centralized glory-yours protects your own nation against absorption, even by itself. The old was awful with irrestricted power -yours is glorious with having restricted it. At the view of the old nations trembled-at the view of yours humanity hopes. To the old misfortune was only introduced with fettered hands to kneel at the triumphant conqueror's heels -to yours the triumph of introduction is granted to unfortunate exiles, invited to the honor of a seat, and where kings and Cæsars will never be hailed, for their powers, might, and wealth, there the persecuted chief of a downtrodden nation is welcomed as your great Republic's guest, precisely because he is persecuted, helpless, and poor. In the old, the terrible va victis was the rule-in yours, protection to the oppressed, malediction to ambitious oppres sors, and consolation to the vanquished in a just cause. And while out of the old a conquered world was ruled, you in yours provide for the common confederative interests of a territory larger than the conquered world of the old. There sat men boasting their will to be sovereign of the world-here sit men whose glory is to acknowledge the laws of nature and of nature's God, and to do what their sovereign, the people, wills. Sir, there is history in these parallels. History of past ages, and history of future centuries may be often recorded in a few words. The small particulars to which the pas sions of living men cling with fervent zeal-as if the fragile figure of men could arrest the rotation of destiny's wheel; these particulars die away. It is the issue which makes history, and that issue is always logical. There is a necessity of consequences wherever the necessity of position exists. Principles are the Alpha; they must finish with Omega, and they will. Thus history may be told often in a few words. Before yet the heroic struggle of Greece first engaged your country's sympathy for the fate of freedom in Europe, then so far distant, and now so near, Chateaubriand happened to be in Athens, and he heard from a minaret raised upon the Propylæan ruins a Turkish priest in Arabic language announcing the lapse of hours to the Christians of Minerva's town. What immense history in the small fact of a Turkish Imaum crying out: "Pray, man, the hour is running fast, and the judgment draws near. Sir, there is equally a history of future ages written in the honor bestowed by you to my humble self. The first governor of independent Hungary, driven from his native land by Russian violence, an exile on Turkish soil protected by a Mohammedan Sultan against the bloodthirst of Christian tyrants, cast back a prisoner to far Asia by diplomacy, rescued from his Asiatic prison by America, crossing the Atlantic, charged with the hopes of Europe's oppressed nations, pleading, a poor exile, before the people of this great Republic, his down-trodden country's wrongs, and its intimate connection with the fate of the European continent, and with the boldness of a just cause claiming the principles of the Christian religion to be raised to a law of nations; and to see, not only the boldness of the poor exile forgiven, but to see him consoled by the sympathy of millions, encouraged by individuals, meetings, cities, and states, supported by operative aid, and greeted by Congress and by the Government as the nation's guest, honored out of generosity with that honor which only one man before him received-and that man received then out of gratitude with honors such as no potentate can ever receive, and this banquet here, and the toast which I have to thank you for—oh, indeed, sir, there is a history of future ages in all these facts. Sir, though I have the noble pride of my principles, and though I have the inspiration of a just cause, still I have also the conscience of my personal humility. Never will I forget what is due from me to the sovereign source of my public capacity. This I owe to my nation's dignity, and, therefore, respectfully thanking this highly distin guished assembly, in my country's name, I have the boldness to say that Hungary well deserves your sympathythat Hungary has a claim to protection, because it has a claim to justice. But as to myself, permit me humbly to express that I am well aware not to have in all these honors any personal share. Now, I know that even that which might seem to be personal in your toast is only an acknowledgment of a historical fact; very instructively connected with a principle valuable and dear to every repub lican heart in the United States of America. Sir, you were pleased to mention in your toast that I am unconquered by misfortune and unseduced by ambition. Now, it is a providential fact that misfortune has the privilege to ennoble man's mind and to strengthen man's character. There is a sort of natural instinct of human dignity in the heart of man, which steels his very nerves not to bend beneath the heavy blows of a great adversity. The palm tree grows best beneath a ponderous weight—even so the character of man. There is no merit in it-it is a law of |