tions assumed by Kossuth were faithfully performed. General Klapka organized a legion in Italy of four thousand Hungarians. The overthrow of the Tory Party in England, which Kossuth had predicted and promised, was achieved, and thus the neutrality of Great Britain was secured.
Kossuth’s speeches in England were delivered under the influence of the highest incentives by which an orator and patriot could be moved. With the utmost confidence in his ability to perform what he had promised, he had pledged his honor for the neutrality of England. As he then believed, the fate of Hungary was staked upon the fulfilment of that pledge. Hence it came to pass that his speeches in England in May, 1859, were on a higher plane than the speeches that he delivered in the years 1851 and 1852. At the former period he had no hope of immediate relief for Hungary; in 1859 he imagined that the day of the deliverance of his country was at hand, and that the neutrality of England was a prerequisite, or at least a coincident condition.
It is not too much to say that the following extract from his speech in the London Tavern justifies every claim that has been made in behalf of Kossuth as a patriot and an orator:
“The history of Italy during the last forty years is nothing
but a record of groans, of evergrowing hatred and discontent,
of ever-recurring commotions, conspiracies, revolts and
revolutions, of scaffolds soaked in the blood of patriots, of the
horrors of Spielberg and Mantua, and of the chafing anger with
which the words, ‘Out with the Austrians,’ tremble on the
lips of every Italian. These forty years are recorded in
history as a standing protest against those impious treaties. The
robbed have all the time loudly protested, by words, deeds,
sufferings, and sacrifice of their lives, against the compact of
the robbers. Yet, forsooth, we are still told that the treaties
of 1815 are inviolable. Why, I have heard it reported that
