Mr. Kasson addressed Kossuth in an ample speech; in which he said:—­

Everywhere have the untrammelled masses of this people, as you passed, lifted up their hands and voices, and supplicated the Almighty to give to you blessing, and to your country redemption.  Let this be some recompense for the privations you have encountered, while, like Aeneas, you have been wandering an exile from your native, captured, prostrate Troy.

I should not do my whole duty without saying, in behalf of the thousands assembled here, that we have an unshaken confidence in Hungary’s chosen leader.  We are not so blind that we cannot observe how no envenomed shaft was fixed to the bow-string against him, in England and America, while he was yet a helpless and powerless refugee, within Turkish hospitality.  But when the people were gathering around him in free countries, shoulder to shoulder—­when even the hearts of statesmen began to open to him, and hope dawned in the Hungarian sky once more, then it was these arrows of detraction darkened the air, shot from the Court of the French Usurper, or from the pensioners of autocratic bounty.  Your patient labours and forbearance in your country’s cause, while thus assailed, have won for you, sir, our sincere respect, and another wreath at the hand of the Muse of History.

Kossuth replied: 

Gentlemen,—­During my brief sojourn in your hospitable city, I have heard so much local pettiness and so much hypocritical tactics of men imported from Austria to advocate the cause of Russo-Austrian despotism in Republican America, and chiefly in your city here, that indeed I began to long for the pure air where the merry sunshine, as well as the melancholy drop of rain, the roaring of the thunder storm, equally as the sigh of the breeze, tell to the oppressors and their tools, and not only to the oppressed, that there is a God in heaven who rules the universe by eternal laws; the Almighty Father of humanity, omnipotent in wisdom, bountiful in His omnipotence, just in His judgment, and eternal in His love; the Lord who gave strength to the boy David against Goliath, who often makes out of humble individuals efficient instruments to push forward the condition of mankind towards that destiny which His merciful will has assigned to it—­His will, against which neither the proud ambition of despots, nor the skill of their obsequious tools can prevail—­in Him I put my trust and go cheerfully on in my duties.  I am in the right way to benefit the cause, noble and just and great, to which I devoted my life; for if there were no success in what I am engaged, the despots would neither fear, nor hate, nor persecute me.

Their persecution imparts more hope to my breast than all your kindness; and I give you my word that if I have the consciousness of having well merited in my past the hatred and the fear of tyrants and their instruments, so may God bless me as I will do all a mortal man can do to merit that hatred and that fear still more.