The Sun.
London, England, 1853-02-19 00:00:00

M. KOSSUTH.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE BUN.
Sir,—You having inserted in your journal of this
evening my letter in relation to M. Kossuth and the
pseudo-proclamation attributed to him, I feel confident
that you will give place in your columns to the docu-
ments which I now enclose,—Believe me, sir, your
obliged servant, MAY NE Rm.
February 18,

(Copy.)
TO CAPTAIN MAYNE REED.

London, Feb. 18, 1853.
My dear Sir,—l feel myself under high obligations
for the generous and chivalric manner in which you
stepped forth to do me justice when you knew me to be
wronged in that " proclamation matter ;" as, also, I feel
bound to lasting gratitude towards you for the noble
readiness with which you gave me at once your helping
hand, at my request, to aid me to reach the field of that
action, which I did not approve, but which, of course,
I must have been anxious to join.
Your generous assistance, which you readily granted
me, I can the more appreciate, as, I am sorry to say,
with us there are many difficulties even in reaching any
field of honourable danger at all. We are not free to
move. Evidence of it, that when, not long ago my
departed dear mother was on her deathbed in exile, a
certain " constitutional" Government would allow me to
go to imprint the parting kiss of filial devotion on her
brow, upon the condition only that I should submit to
the disgraceful profanation of being accompanied by a
gendarme to my dying mother's bed.
I thank you, sir, most affectionately for that your as-
sistance, as well as for your chivalric defence.
I was just about myself to publish a formal disavowal
of that " proclamation to the Hungarian soldiers."
I hope you, as well as every Englishman, will appre-
ciate my motives for not having done it earlier.
My motive, sir, was this—that my disavowal would
of course have been telegraphed to Austrian quarters ;
and, supposing the fight in Italy still pending, might
have possibly done some harm to my beloved brethren
in oppression, the Italians. So I took it to be my sim-
ple duty rather silently to submit to whatever virulent
indignity, than to harm the chances of the struggling
patriots at Milan, who, though inconsiderately and at
an ill-chosen moment, risked their blood, and life, and

their sacred honour, to free their country from insup-
portable oppression, and that a foreign one too; just as
England once rose and risked blood, and life, and sacred
honour—nay more, sent one king to the scaffold and one
other into eternal exile...to free herself from oppression,
though it was not a foreign one.
The history of past revolutions is but too readily for-
gotten by those who now reap their fruits in peace and
happiness ; but I would like to recal it to memory now,
when men will be but too ready to add bitter blame to
the misfortune of the vanquished.
I certainly, sir, did highly disapprove of any idea of
rising in Italy now, but the failure of the unfortunate
victims I will consider but as a new claim upon my
compassion and sympathy. Men in the peaceful enjoy-
ment of freedom and prosperity can scarcely imagine
what aspirations and what thoughts can and must cross
the hearts of a people suffering what Italy does. That
should be borne in mind before we cast the stone of
blame upon those who fell.
I, sir, am so much penetrated by this sentiment that,
were it not for higher motives, which are entirely of no
personal susceptibility, that I am not permitted to take
upon myself the imputation of an imprudent act which
I did not commit, I, perhaps, would have preferred to
be injured by letting pass in silence the whole procla-
mation matter, and all the venomous slander connected
with it.
But for those higher motives I indeed feel infinitely
obliged to you for having so generously undertaken to
vindicate my prudence and my plain but honest cha-
racter.
May be that this your chivalry will entirely dispense
me from the necessity of any further public steps in that
respect. That I shall see, and leave, in the meantime,
my ready disavowal where it is.
However, as, following the generous impulse of your
heart, you may, perhaps, feel inclined to fight on the
battle, if required, in which you so nobly engaged, I
thought it perhaps, be as well to state to you
some particulars.
I think an intelligent reader of that purported pro-
clamation may have at once got aware of its not being
genuine in reading it. Because to say, in one and the
same document, something to this effect, "Isend the bearer
to you, that he may inform me, who amongst you are
faithful and true, and inform you how you should organ-
ise," and to say, in the same document, as it were with
the same breath, "Rise, strike, the moment is at hand,"
which is so much as to say, "Don't organise." This is,
indeed, too absurd a blunder in logic to be belieVed.
Do I then • disavow the sentiments contained in that
document ? No, sir. All my life is and will be summed
up in this ideaM" My country's freedom. My country's
right." And consistently with this I am, and will remain,
an irreconcileable enemy to Francis Joseph of Austria,
who stole by perjury into my country's sacred rights,
freedom, constitution, laws, and national existence ; and,
beaten back in his criminal attack, robbed it by treason
and by foreign force, and now murders it. Yes, sir, I
avow openly these my sentiments, and trust in God that
the day of justice and retribution will soon come. And
why should I not avow them ? lam not bound to any
allegiance to Francis Joseph of Austria, not I, nor my
exiled countrymen, not our dear Hungary. He is no
lawful sovereign of Hungary. Justice is at home in
England, sir, and, therefore, I defy any man to get up a
jury, or to point out a court in all England, which would
find a verdict for Francis Joseph being a lawful sove-
reign of Hungary, or, I and my country owing him
allegiance !
Or, do I desire to be understood that I have, never
written anything like the contents of that apocryphal
document ! I, indeed, sir, never thought to have any
claim to the reputation of a classical authorship. Bad
as it is, sir, I hays written worse things in my life. I
may have written every sentence of it, some of them at
one time, some at another, on different occasions, pro-
bably when I was a prisoner at Kutahya, for different
exigencies, all past long, past years ago ; out of which
writing the present document might have been patched
up, without my knowledge, and used on the present oc-
casion without my consent.
. .

All this is not the question. The question, sir, is :
Have I addressed thit or whatsoever else, proclamation
from English soil for the purpose of engaging the Hun-
garian soldiers, or whomever else, in the late insurrec-
tion at Milan, or wherever else in Italy ?
That is the question. Answering to this question,
you disavowed the document as such, and pronounced
it to be a forgery. And you are perfectly right. I
neither invited, nor gave any authority to whomever to
invite the Hungarian soldiers to join in any insurrection
in Italy now. Nay, whenever I heard anything said
about the Lombardy patriots being incapable of endur-
ing longer their oppression, and that, perhaps, they
might feel inclined to break forth at any risk, I con-
demned the very idea of thinking now upon an insur-
rection in Italy,l declaring that, for the present, no
revolutionary movement would succeed in Lombardy,
but weld turn out to be but a deplorable emute, and I
for one:declared every emute, however valiantly fought,
could but injure the well-founded legitimate prospects of
the cause of liberty.
All this, sir, you have known, when you gave your
chivalric dementi to that purported proclamation of
mine. You have known more yet, you have seen a
letter from one of the most renowned of the Italian
patriots, dated on the 10th of February, from the field
of action, in which he categorically confesses that " I,
in my views, was perfectly right, and they have been
wrong," and in which he further, giving me the first
notice of my name having been used " clandestinely" at
Milan, gives me himself full evidence "that it was done
without my knowledge, without my consent."
You have known all this, sir, but one thing you may
not yet know, and that is :

I came to England about the end of June, 1852.
Since that time I am always on English soil, and since I
am on English soil I never addressed any proclamation
to the Hungarian soldiers in Italy.
But stop—yes ; I have addressed a proclamation to
them, a single one, dated February 15, a copy of which
I beg leave to send to you, and remain, with the highest
regard and sincere gratitude, dear sir,
Yours affectionately and obediently,
L. KOSSUTH.

To Capt. Mayne Reid, 30, Parkfield-street, Islington.
P.S.—You may make any public or private use of
this my letter, and of the annexed proclamation you may
;hink proper. KOSSUTH.