These are the immediate consequences of the downfall of the principle of self-government in Hungary, by the violence of foreign interference. But if this great principle is not restored to its full weight by the restoration of Hungary's sovereign independence, then you will see yet other consequences in your own country. _Your_ freedom and prosperity is hated as dangerous to the despots of Europe. If you do not believe me, believe at least what the organs of your enemies openly avow themselves. Pozzo di Borgo, the great Russian diplomatist, and Hulsemann, the little Austrian diplomatist, repeatedly in 1817 and 1823, published that despotism is in danger, unless yourselves become a king-ridden people. If you study the history of the Hungarian struggle, you can also see the way by which the despots will carry their design. The secret power of foreign diplomacy will foster amongst you the principle of centralization; and, as is always the case, many who are absorbed in some special aims of your party politics will be caught by this snare; and when you, gentlemen of the south, oppose with energy this tendency, dangerous to your dear principle of self-government, the despots of Europe will first foment and embitter the quarrel and kindle the fire of domestic dissensions, and finally they will declare that your example is dangerous to order. Then foreign armed interference steps in for centralization here, as for monarchy in the rest of America. Indeed, gentlemen, if there is any place on earth where this prospect should be considered with attention, with peculiar care, it is here in the southern states of this great union, because their very existence is based on the great principle of self-government. But some say there is no danger for the United States, in whatever condition be the rest of the world. I am astonished to hear that objection in a country, which, by a thousand ties, is connected with and interested in the condition of the foreign world. It is your own government which prophetically foretold in 1827, that _the absolutism of Europe will not be appeased until every vestige of human freedom has been obliterated even here_. And is it upon the ruins of Hungary that the absolutist powers are now about to realize this prophecy?