nearly 200,000 Russians.  No power cheered our bravely won independence, by diplomatic recognition; not even the United States, though they always professed their principle to be that they recognise every de-facto government.  We therefore had the right to expect a speedy recognition from the United States.  Our struggle rose to European height, but we were left alone to fight for the world; and we had no arms for the new battalions, gathering up in thousands with resolute hearts and empty hands.

The recognition of our independence being withheld, commercial intercourse for procuring arms abroad was impossible—­the gloomy feeling of entire forsakedness spread over our tired ranks, and prepared the field for the secret action of treachery; until the most sacrilegious violation of those common laws of nations was achieved and the code of “nature and of nature’s God,” was drowned in Hungary’s blood.  And I, who on the 15th of March, 1848, saw the principle of full civil and religious liberty triumphing in my native land—­who, on the 15th of March, 1849, saw this freedom consolidated by victories—­one year later, on the 15th of March, 1850, was on my sorrowful way to an Asiatic prison.

But wonderful are the works of Divine Providence.

It was again in the month of March, 1851, that the generous interposition of the United States cast the first ray of hope into the dead night of my captivity.  And on the 15th of March, 1852, the fourth anniversary of our Revolution, guided by the bounty of Providence, here I stand in the very heart of your immense Republic; no longer a captive, but free in the land of the free, not only not desponding, but firm in confidence of the future, because raised in spirits by a swelling sympathy in the home of the brave, still a poor, a homeless exile, but not without some power to do good to my country and to the cause of liberty, as my very persecution proves.

Such is the history of the 15th of March, in my humble life.  Who can tell what will be the character of the next 15th of March?

Nearly two thousand years ago the first Caesar found a Brutus on the Ides or 15th of March.  May be that the Ides of March, 1853, will see the last of the Caesars fall under the avenging might of a thousand-handed Brutus—­the name of whom is “the people”—­inexorable at last after it has been so long generous.  The seat of Caesars was first in the south, from the south to the east, from the east to the west, and from the west to the north.  That is their last abode.  None was lasting yet.  Will the last, and worst, prove luckier?  No, it will not.  While the seat of Caesars was tossed around and thrown back to the icy north, a new world became the cradle of a new humanity, where in spite of the Caesars, the genius of freedom raised (let us hope) an everlasting throne.  The Caesar of the north and the genius of freedom have not place enough upon this earth for both of them; one must yield and be crushed beneath the heels of the other.  Which is it?  Which shall yield?—­America may decide.