You were far from anticipating that the issue of our struggle would become an opportunity for your country to take that position which Divine Providence has evidently assigned to you; I mean the position of a power, not restricted in its influence to the Western Hemisphere, but reaching across the earth.  You had not thought that it is the struggle of Hungary which will call on you to fulfil the prophecy of Canning; who comprehended, that it is the destiny of the New World to redress the balance of power in the Old.

The universal importance of our contest has been but late revealed.  It has been revealed by the interference of Russia, by our fall, and by its more threatening results.

Now, it has become evident to all thinking men, that the balance of power cannot be redressed unless Hungary is restored to national independence.  Consequently if it be your own necessity to weigh in the scale of the powers on earth, if it be your destiny to redress the balance of power, the cause of Hungary is the field where this destiny will have to be fulfilled.

And it is indeed your destiny.  Russian diplomacy could never boast of a greater and more fatal victory than it had a right to boast, should it succeed to persuade the United States not to care about her—­Russia accomplishing her aim to become the ruling power in Europe; the ruling power in Asia; the ruling power of the Mediterranean sea.  That would be indeed a great triumph to Russian diplomacy, greater than her triumph over Hungary; a triumph dreadful to all humanity, but to nobody more dreadful than to your own future.

All sophistry is in vain, gentlemen; there can be no mistake about it.  Russian absolutism and Anglo-Saxon constitutionalism are not rival but antagonist powers.  They cannot long continue to subsist together.  Antagonists cannot hold equal position; every additional strength of the one is a comparative weakening of the other.  One or the other must yield.  One or the other must perish or become dependent on the other’s will.

You may perhaps believe that that triumph of diplomacy is impossible in America.  But I am sorry to say, that it has a dangerous ally, in the propensity to believe, that the field of American policy is limited geographically; that there is a field for American, and there is a field for European policy, and that these fields are distinct, and that it is your interest to keep them distinct.

There was a time in our struggle, when, if a man had come from America, bringing us in official capacity the tidings of your brotherly greeting, of your approbation and your sympathy, he would have been regarded like a harbinger of heaven.  The Hungarian nation, tired out by the hard task of dearly but gloriously bought victories, was longing for a little test, when the numerous hordes of Russia fell upon us in the hour of momentary exhaustion.  Indignation supplied the wanted rest, and we rose to meet the intruding