I. As to the Catholic religion--I indeed am a Protestant, not only by birth, but also by conviction; and warmly penetrated by this conviction, I would delight to see the same shared by the whole world. But before all, I am mortally opposed to intolerance and to sectarism. I consider religion to be a matter of conscience which every man has to arrange between God and himself. And therefore I respect the religious conviction of every man. I claim religious liberty for myself and my nation, and must of course respect in others the right I claim for myself. There is nothing in the world capable to rouse a greater indignation in my breast than religious oppression. But particularly I respect the Catholic religion, as the religion of some seven millions of my countrymen, to whom I am bound in love, in friendship, in home recollections, in gratitude, and in brotherhood, with the most sacred ties. And I am proud to say, that as in general it is a pre-eminent glory of my country, to be attached to the principle of full religious liberty without any restriction, for all to all, so it is the particular glory of my Roman Catholic countrymen not to be second to any in the world, on the one side in attachment to their own religion, and on the other side in toleration for other religions. The Austrian dynasty having been continually encroaching upon the chartered right of Protestantism, who were those who struggled in the first rank for our rights? Our Roman Catholic countrymen! It was a glorious sight, almost unparalleled in history, but was also fully appreciated by the Hungarian Protestants. All of us, man by man, would rather sacrifice life, and blood, and goods, than to allow that a hair's breadth should be crushed from the religious liberty of our Roman Catholic countrymen.