417
WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1853
country liberty, as I wished the world liberty, but I did not wish to disregard our relations and obligations to other countries. He was hailed, he was greeted, he was welcomed, on some occa- sions, more triumphantly than even La Fayette, the friend of Washington. Compare the men, compare their feelings, their impulses, and their actions,-and- "---that was, to this, Hyperion to a stayr." What claims had he upon us? He had claims of sympathy. If he had ever flashed his sword for liberty, he had a claim upon our admiration and our fraternal feelings. But he had not done it. He had left Hunga1:y, he had denounded Gorgey, and had thrown upon him the responsibility of the Government. He disregarded his col- leagues in office when he was at the head of affairs in Hungary. He threw all the responsibility upon Gorgey when Gorgey was helpless, and he himself had retreated with five thousand men. A beautiful army for liberty! Five thousand men alone, would strike for liberty against thousands on thousands. Yet he retreated with a body-guard of five thousand. And after he had negotiated for a succedaneum, for a resting-place, he went away, leaving "poor Hungary" down trodden and bleeding. It is known, now, that somebody humbugged us, or we humbugged ourselves. Sir, it was Kossuth that humbugged the whole of us. Mr. Mason. Not all of us. Mr. Houston. We have to take it collectively. Kossuth was received here not only as our own chieftains and warriors have been received, but he appeared in the Senate Chamber in a costume with which Washington would never have entered and departed. He appeared at that desk with a sword at his side. My blood boiled when I saw it; for I detest tyranny or a symbol of despotism in any way, or any approach of the military to an equality with the civil. He wore at his side, in the halls of legislation, a sword, a thing that Washington never did, but to surrender it with his power to the counsellors of his country. Yet Kossuth entered and left the Chamber with ·an unfleshed sword upon his thigh; for he never saw the face of an enemy in his life. Think you not, if spirits have ubiquity, that the spirit of Washington did not revisit the earth, and contemplate with supreme indignation a scene that seemed, even by a symbol, to menace the work of his hands? Sir, these things have passed and gone, and I have but little to say in regard to them. If Kossuth had been the representative of gallant and daring
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