Already in New York I started the idea of a National Hungarian Loan, in shares of one, five and ten dollars, with the facsimile of my signature, and of larger shares of fifty and of a hundred dollars with my autograph.  I prepared the smaller shares for generous men, who are not rich, yet desire to help the great cause of Freedom.  It is a noble privilege of the richer to do greater good.  But remember, it is not a gift, it is a loan:  for either Freedom has no name on earth, or Hungary has a future yet; and let Hungary be once again independent, and she has ample resources to pay that small loan, if the people of the United States, remembering the aid received in their own dark hour, vouchsafe to me such a loan.

Hungary has no public debt, it has fifteen millions of population, a territory of more than one hundred thousand square English miles, abundant in the greatest variety of nature’s blessings, if the doom of oppression be taken from it.  The State of Hungary has public landed property administered badly, worth more than a hundred millions of dollars, even at the low price, at which it was already an established principle of my administration to sell it in small shares to suit the poorer classes.

Hungary has rich mines of gold, silver, copper, quicksilver, antimony, iron, sulphur, nickel, opal, and other mines.  Hungary has the richest salt mines in the world—­where the extraction of one hundred weight of the purest stone salt, amounts to but little more than one shilling of your money—­and though that is sold by the government at the price of two to three and a half dollars, and thus the consumption is of course very restricted, this still yields a net revenue of five millions of dollars a year—­to the Government—­but no! there is not government, it is usurpation now! sucking out the lifeblood of the people, crushing the spirit of freedom by soldiers, hangmen, policemen, and harassing the people in its domestic life and the sanctuary of its family with oppression worse than a free American can conceive.

You see by this, gentlemen, that when Hungary is once free—­and free it will be—­she has ample resources to repay your generous loan within a year without any taxation of the people itself; and pay it well, because every shilling of your generous aid will faithfully be employed for its restoration to freedom and independence.  I may point to my whole life as a guarantee to that purpose.  I had millions at my disposal, entrusted to me by my people’s confidence, and here I stand penniless and poor, not knowing what my children will eat to-morrow, if I die to-day; and I am proud that I am poor, and I pledge my honour to you, that every shilling of what your generosity gives for Hungary will be employed for Hungary’s benefit.  In fact, as I have provided for the contingency of anything befalling me, so also I am ready, if it be your people’s will, to admit any control, consistent with the necessary conditions of success.