Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol IV. No. XX. January, 1852.Various
History
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol IV. No. XX. January, 1852.
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
That the enlarged ideas of Kossuth--independent of their eloquent
exposition from his lips--will meet with the largest and profoundest
sympathy from the whole American people, we can not have a doubt. Nor
can we doubt that that sympathy will lend such material aid, as was
never before lent to any cause, not our own. But the question arises,
how far such sympathy and individual aid will help forward a poor,
down-trodden, and distant nation, toward the vigor of health and power.
Sympathies and favoring opinion may do much toward alleviating the pains
of wounded hearts and pride; they may, by urgency of expression, spread,
and new leaven the whole thought of the world; but he is a fast thinker
who does not know that this must be the action of time.
We can not but believe that the strongest sympathy, and the most
generous proffers of individual aid will, after all, help very little
toward practical issues, in any new endeavor of Hungary to be itself
again. Poor Poland is a mournful monument of the truth of what we say.
How then is our great Guest to derive really tangible aid in the
furtherance of what lies so near his heart?
We pose the question, not for political discussion, but as the question
which is giving a slant to all the talk of the town. To break peace with
Austria and with Russia, and openly to take ground, as a government,
with the subdued Hungarians, is what very few presume to hint--much less
to think soberly of. The great Hungarian, himself, would hardly seem to
have entertained such a possibility. We suppose his efforts rather to be
directed toward the enkindling of such a large love of liberty, and such
international sympathy among all people who are really free, as shall
make a giant league of opinion, whose thunders shall mutter their
anathemas against oppression, in every parliament and every congress;
and by congruity of action, as well as congruity of impulse, fix the
bounds to oppression, and fright every tyrant from advance--if not from
security.
In all this we only sketch the color of the Hungarian talk.
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