One word more.  When John Quincy Adams assumed for the United States the place of a power on earth, he was objected to, because it was thought possible that that step might give offence to the Holy Alliance.  His answer was in these memorable words:  “The United States must take counsel of their rights and duties, and not from their fears.”

The Anglo-Saxon race represents constitutional governments.  If it be united for these, we shall have what we want, Fair Play; and, relying “upon our God, the justness of our cause, iron wills, honest hearts and good swords,” my people will strike once more for freedom, independence, and for Fatherland.

* * * * *

XLV.—­THE MARTYRS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

[Lexington, May 11th.]

Kossuth having been invited to visit the first battle fields of the Revolution, was accompanied by several members of the State Committee, on May 11th, to West Cambridge, Lexington, and Concord.  He had already visited Bunker Hill on the 3d of May, but we have not in these pages found room for his speech there.  At West Cambridge he was addressed by the Rev. Thomas Hill, and replied:  at Lexington also he received two addresses, and the following was his reply:—­

Gentlemen,—­It has been often my lot to stand upon classical ground, where the whispering breeze is fraught with wonderful tales of devoted virtue, bright glory, and heroic deeds.  And I have sat upon ruins of ancient greatness, blackened by the age of centuries; and I have seen the living ruins of those ancient times, called men, roaming about the sacred ground, unconscious that the dust which clung to their boots, was the relic of departed demigods—­and I rose with a deep sigh.  Those demigods were but men, and the degenerate shapes that roamed around me, on the hallowed ground, were also not less than men.  The decline and fall of nations impresses the mark of degradation on nature itself.  It is sad to think upon—­it lops the soaring wings of the mind, and chills the fiery arms of energy.  But, however dark be the impression of such ruins of vanished greatness upon the mind of men who themselves have experienced the fragility of human fate, thanks to God, there are bright spots yet on earth, where the recollections of the past, brightened by present prosperity, strengthen the faith in the future of mankind’s destiny.  Such a spot is this.

Gentlemen, should the reverence which this spot commands allow a smile, I might feel inclined to smile at the eager controversy whether it was at Lexington or Concord that the fire of the British was first returned by Americans.  Let it be this way or that way,—­it will neither increase nor abate the merit of the martyrs who fell here.  It is with their blood that the preface of your nation’s history is written.  Their death was, and always will be, the first bloody revelation of America’s destiny; and Lexington, the opening scene of a revolution, of which Governor Boutwell was right to say, that it is destined to change the character of human governments, and the condition of the human race.