liberty:  he knew that man’s breast cannot maintain in ascendancy two great passions at once.  He gave them ambition and excluded the spirit of liberty.  This ambition got hold of all the Sclave nations through Europe; so Panslavism became the source of a movement, not of nationality, but of the dominion of languages.  That word “language” replaced every other sentiment, and so it became a curse to the development of liberty.

Only one part of the Sclavonic races saw the matter clear, and withstood the current of this dark Russian plot.  These were the Polish Democrats—­the only ones who understood that to fight for liberty is to fight for nationality.  Therefore they fought in our ranks, and were willing to flock in thousands upon thousands to aid us in our struggle; but we could not arm them, so I would not accept them.  We ourselves had a hundredfold more hands ready to fight than arms—­and there was nobody in the world to supply us with arms.

Now let me see what was the condition of Hungary under these circumstances.

Eight hundred and fifty years ago, when the first King of Hungary, St. Stephen, becoming Christian himself, converted the Hungarian nation to Christianity, it was the Roman Catholic clergy of Germany whom he invited to assist him in his pious work.  They did assist him, but the assistance, as happens with human nature, was accompanied by some worldly designs.  Hungary offered a wide field to the ambition of foreigners, and they persuaded the King to adopt a curious principle, which he laid down in his last Will and Testament—­that it is not good for the people of a country to be but of one extraction and speak but one tongue.  A second rule was, to adopt the language of the Church—­Latin—­for the language of government, legislature, law and all public proceedings.  This is the origin of that fatality, that Democracy did not grow up for centuries in Hungary.  The public proceedings being in Latin, the laws given in Latin, public instruction carried on in Latin, the great mass of the people, who were agriculturists, did not partake in any of this; and the few who in the ranks of the people partook in it, became severed and alienated from the people’s interests.  This dead Latin language, introduced into the public life of a living nation, was the most mischievous barrier against liberty.  The first blow to it was stricken by the Reformation.  The Protestant Church, introducing the national language into the divine services, became a medium to the development of the spirit of liberty, and so our ancient struggles for religious liberty were always connected with the maintenance of political rights.  But still, Latin public life went on down to 1780.  At that time, Joseph of Hapsburg, aiming at centralization, replaced the Latin by the German tongue.  This roused the national spirit of Hungary; and our forefathers seeing that the dead Latin language, excluding the people from the public concerns, cannot be propitious to