is granted to unfortunate exiles who are invited to the honour of a seat.  And where Kings and Caesars never will be hailed for their power and wealth, there the persecuted chief of a downtrodden nation is welcomed as your great Republic’s guest, precisely because he is persecuted, helpless, and poor.  In the old, the terrible voe victis! was the rule; in yours, protection to the oppressed, malediction to ambitious oppressors, and consolation to a vanquished just cause.  And while from the old a conquered world was ruled, you in yours provide for the common federative interests of a territory larger than that old conquered world.  There sat men boasting that their will was sovereign of the earth; here sit men whose glory is to acknowledge “the laws of nature and of nature’s God,” and to do what their sovereign, the People, wills.

Sir, there is history in these contrasts.  History of past ages and history of future centuries may be often recorded in small facts.  The particulars to which the passion of living men clings, as if human fingers could arrest the wheel of Destiny, these particulars die away; it is the issue which makes history, and that issue is always coherent with its causes.  There is a necessity of consequences wherever the necessity of position exists.  Principles are the alpha:  they must finish with omega, and they will.  Thus history may be often told in a few words.

Before the heroic struggle of Greece had yet engaged your country’s sympathy for the fate of freedom, in Europe then so far distant and now so near, Chateaubriand happened to be in Athens, and he heard from a minaret raised upon the Propylaeum’s ruins a Turkish priest in the Arabic language announcing the lapse of hours to the Christians of Minerva’s town.  What immense history there was in the small fact of a Turkish Imaum crying out, “Pray, pray! the hour is running fast, and the judgment draws near.”

Sir, there is equally a history of future ages written in the honour bestowed by you on my humble self.  The first Governor of Independent Hungary, driven from his native land by Russian violence; an exile on Turkish soil, protected by a Mahommedan Sultan from the blood-thirst of Christian tyrants; cast back a prisoner to far Asia by diplomacy; was at length rescued from his Asiatic prison, when America crossed the Atlantic, charged with the hopes of Europe’s oppressed nations.  He pleads, as a poor exile, before the people of this great Republic, his country’s wrongs and its intimate connection with the fate of the European continent, and, in the boldness of a just cause, claims that the principles of the Christian religion be raised to a law of nations.  To see that not only is the boldness of the poor exile forgiven, but that he is consoled by the sympathy of millions, encouraged by individuals, associations, meetings, cities, and States; supported by effective aid and greeted by Congress and by Government as the nation’s guest; honoured, out of generosity, with that honour which only one man before him received (a man who had deserved them from your gratitude,) with honours such as no potentate ever can receive, and this banquet here, and the toast which I have to thank you for:  oh! indeed, sir, there is a history of future ages in all these facts!  They will go down to posterity as the proper consequences of great principles.