That was a sorrowful sight indeed.  To meet opposition we must be prepared.  There is no truth yet but has been opposed:  the car which leads truth to triumph must pass over martyrs; that is the doom of humanity.  Mankind, though advanced in intellectual skill, is pretty much the same in heart as it was thousands of years ago—­if not worse; for wealth and prosperity do not always improve the heart.  It is sorrowful to see that not even such a cause as that which I plead, can escape from being dragged down insultingly into the mud.  With the ancient Greeks, the head of an unfortunate was held sacred even to the gods.  Now-a-days, with some,—­but let us be thankful! only with some few degenerate persons,—­even calamity like ours is but an occasion for a bad joke.  Jesus Christ felt thirsty on the cross, and received vinegar and wormwood to quench the thirst of his agony.  Oh ye spirits of my country’s departed martyrs, sadden not your melancholy look at mean insult.  The soil which you watered by your blood will yet be free, and that is enough!  Ye will hear glad tidings about it when I join your ranks.

But now, as for myself.  When I was in private life, I despised to become rich, and sacrificed thousands to the public, and often saw my own family embarrassed by domestic cares.  I refused indemnifications, and lived poor.  When raised to the highest place in my country, and provided with an allowance four times as great as your President’s, I still lived in my old modest way.  I had millions at my disposal, yet I went into exile penniless.  Who now are ye, or what like proof have ye given of not adoring the “Almighty Dollar,” who dare to insult my honour and call me a sturdy beggar, and ask in what brewery I will invest the money I get from Americans?  And why? because I ask a poor alms to prepare the approaching struggle of my country; because I cannot and may not tell the public (which is to tell my country’s enemy), how I dispose of the sums which I receive.  And Americans, pretending to be republicans, pretending to sympathize with liberty, and wield that light artillery of Freedom,—­the Press,—­try to put on me mean stigmas, in order to make it impossible for me to aid the contest of Hungary for its own and mankind’s liberty.

Indeed, it is too sad.  The consul of ancient Rome, Spurius Postumius, was once caught in a snare by the Samnites, and was ordered to pass under the yoke with all his legions.  When he hesitated to submit, a captain cried to him:  “Stoop, and lead us to disgrace for our country’s sake.”  And so he did.  The word of the captain was true:  our country may claim of us, to submit even to degradations for its benefit.  But I am sorry that it is in America I had to learn, there are in a patriot’s life trials still bitterer than even that of exile.

Well:  I can bear all this, if it be but fruitful of good for my beloved fatherland.  But I look up to Almighty God, and ask in humility, whether unscrupulous and mean suspicion shall succeed in stopping the flow of that public and private aid to me, from republican America and from American republicans, without which I cannot organize and combine our forces.