Faneuil Hall, May 14, 1852: “Some take me here for a visionary. Curious, indeed, if that man who, a poor son of the people, has abolished an aristocracy of a thousand years old, created a treasury of millions out of nothing, an army out of nothing, and directed a revolution so as to fix the attention of the whole world upon Hungary, and has beaten the old, well-provided power of Austria, and crushed its future by his very fall, and forsaken, abandoned, alone, sustained a struggle against two empires, and made himself in his very exile feared by czars and emperors, and trusted by foreign nations as well as his own,—if that man be a visionary therefor, so much pride I may be excused, that I would like to look face to face into the eyes of a practical man on earth.”
In closing so much of my review of Kossuth’s sojourn in Massachusetts as relates to the incidents of his visit to Boston and the neighboring cities and towns, I may be permitted to devote a few lines to my acquaintance with him. To my position as Governor of the State, to the paragraph in my address to the Legislature, to my letter of invitation, and to my speech of welcome from the steps of the State House, he gave much more consideration than was deserved; and on many occasions I received evidences of his friendship and confidence.
I class Kossuth among the small number of great men, whether he be classed among orators, philosophers, students of history and government, or as an advocate of the largest range of individual freedom that is consistent with the good order of society.
The great orators have appeared and the great orations have been delivered in revolutionary periods; and this has been illustrated most strikingly when states have been menaced by the fear of transition from a constitution of freedom to a government of tyranny. Of the great orations of this class, the most signficant are the orations of Demosthenes in behalf of
