Well: I can bear all this, if it be but fruitful of good for my beloved
fatherland. But I look up to Almighty God, and ask in humility, whether
unscrupulous and mean suspicion shall succeed in stopping the flow of
that public and private aid to me, from republican America and from
American republicans, without which I cannot organize and combine our
forces.
Mr. Mayor and citizens of Jersey, I indeed apprehend you will have much
disappointed those who endeavoured by ridicule to drive our cause out of
fashion. You have shown them to-day that the cause of liberty can never
be out of fashion with Americans. I thank you most cordially for it; the
more because I know that long before yesterday sympathy with the cause
of liberty has been in fashion with you. I am here on the borders of a
state noted for its fidelity and sacrifices in the struggle for your
country's freedom and independence: to which the State of New Jersey
has, in proportion to its population, sacrificed a larger amount of
patriotic blood and of property, than any other of your sister states.
I myself have read the acknowledgment of this in Washington's own yet
unedited hand-writings. And I know also that your state has the
historical reputation of having been a glorious battle-field in the
struggle for the freedom you enjoy.
There may be some in this assembly with whom the sufferings connected
with one's home being a battle-field, may be a family tradition yet. But
is there a country in the world where such traditions are more largely
recorded than my own native land is? Is there a country, on the soil of
which more battles have been fought--and battles not only for ourselves,
but for all the Christian, all the civilized world? Oh, home of my
fathers! thou art the Golgotha of Europe.
I defy all the demoniac skill of tyranny to find out more
tortures,--moral, political, and material,--than those which now weigh
down my fatherland. It will not bear them, it cannot bear them, but will
make a revolution, though all the world forsake us. But I ask, is there
not private generosity enough in America, to give me those funds,
through which my injured country would have to meet fewer enemies, and
win its rights with far less bloodshed; or shall the venom of calumny
cause you to refuse that, which, without impairing your private fortunes
or risking your public interests, would mightily conduce to our success?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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