That is the mission with which I come to your shores; and believe me, gentlemen, that is the key of that wonderful sympathy with which the people of this republic answers my humble appeal.  There is blood from our blood in these noble American hearts; there is the great heart of mankind which pulsates in the American breast; there is the chord of liberty which vibrates to my sighs.

Let ambitious fools, let the pigmies who live on the scanty food of personal envy, when the very earth quakes beneath their feet, let even the honest prudence of ordinary household times, measuring eternity with that thimble with which they are wont to measure the bubbles of small party interest, and, taking the dreadful roaring of the ocean for a storm in a water glass, let those who believe the weather to be calm because they have drawn a nightcap over their ears, and, burying their heads into pillows of domestic comfort, do not hear Satan sweeping in a hurricane over the earth; let envy, ambition, blindness, and the pettifogging wisdom of small times, artistically investigate the question of my official capacity, or the nature of my public authority; let them scrupulously discuss the immense problem whether I still possess, or possess no longer, the title of my once-Governorship; let them ask for credentials, discuss the limits of my commission, as representative of Hungary.  I pity all such frog and mouse fighting.

I claim no official capacity—­no public authority—­no representation; boast of no commission, of no written and sealed credentials.  I am nothing but what my generous friend, the Senator of Michigan, has justly styled me, “a private and banished man.”  But in that capacity I have a nobler credential for my mission than all the clerks of the world can write, the credential that I am a “man,”—­the credential that I am “a patriot”—­the credential that I love with all sacrificing devotion my oppressed fatherland and liberty; the credential that I hate tyrants, and have sworn everlasting hostility to them; the credential that I feel the strength to do good service to the cause of freedom; good service as perhaps few men can do, because I have the iron will, in this my breast, to serve faithfully, devotedly, indefatigably, that noble cause.

I have the credential that I trust to God in heaven, to justice on earth; that I offend no laws, but cling to the protection of laws.  I have the credential of my people’s undeniable confidence and its unshaken faith, to my devotion, to my manliness, to my honesty, and to my patriotism; which faith I will honestly answer without ambition, without interest, as faithfully as ever, but more skilfully, because schooled by adversities.  And I have the credential of the justice of the cause I plead, and of the wonderful sympathy, which, not my person, but that cause, has met and meets in two hemispheres.

These are my credentials, and nothing else.  To whom this is enough, he will help me, so far as the law permits and is his good pleasure.  To whom these credentials are not sufficient, let him look for a better accredited man.