Mr. Mayor and citizens of Jersey, I indeed apprehend you will have much disappointed those who endeavoured by ridicule to drive our cause out of fashion.  You have shown them to-day that the cause of liberty can never be out of fashion with Americans.  I thank you most cordially for it; the more because I know that long before yesterday sympathy with the cause of liberty has been in fashion with you.  I am here on the borders of a state noted for its fidelity and sacrifices in the struggle for your country’s freedom and independence:  to which the State of New Jersey has, in proportion to its population, sacrificed a larger amount of patriotic blood and of property, than any other of your sister states.  I myself have read the acknowledgment of this in Washington’s own yet unedited hand-writings.  And I know also that your state has the historical reputation of having been a glorious battle-field in the struggle for the freedom you enjoy.

There may be some in this assembly with whom the sufferings connected with one’s home being a battle-field, may be a family tradition yet.  But is there a country in the world where such traditions are more largely recorded than my own native land is?  Is there a country, on the soil of which more battles have been fought—­and battles not only for ourselves, but for all the Christian, all the civilized world?  Oh, home of my fathers! thou art the Golgotha of Europe.

I defy all the demoniac skill of tyranny to find out more tortures,—­moral, political, and material,—­than those which now weigh down my fatherland.  It will not bear them, it cannot bear them, but will make a revolution, though all the world forsake us.  But I ask, is there not private generosity enough in America, to give me those funds, through which my injured country would have to meet fewer enemies, and win its rights with far less bloodshed; or shall the venom of calumny cause you to refuse that, which, without impairing your private fortunes or risking your public interests, would mightily conduce to our success?

Allow me to quote a beautiful but true word which ex-Governor Vroom spoke in Trenton last night.  He said:  “Let us help the man; his principles are those engrafted into our Declaration of Independence.  We cannot remain free, should all Europe become enslaved by absolutism.  The sun of freedom is but one, on mankind’s sky, and when darkness spreads it will spread over all alike.”  The instinct of the people of Hungary understood, that to yield at all to unjust violence, was to yield everything; and to my appeals they replied, Cursed be he who yields!  Though unprepared, they fought; our unnamed heroes fought and conquered,—­until Russia and treachery came.  And though now I am an exile, again they will follow me; I need only to get back to them and bring them something sharper than our nails to fight with for fatherland and humanity; then in the high face of heaven we will fight out the battle of freedom once more.  This is my cause, and this my plea.  It is there in your hearts, written in burning words by God himself, who made you generous by bestowing on you freedom.