The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1894-05-03
KOsSI I'll,

KOssUTu,
There are two especially note
worthy features in the career OF .
Louis Kossuth, who died recently
at the age Of %. The first is the
great part he played in revolution
AIRY history was due mainly, if not
wholly, to his extraordinary gift Of
oratory. The second is that he
builded far better than he knew,
for he never seemed able to recog-
nize that the present seli-govern
ment of Hungary is directly trace
able to the splendid demonstration
of the national resources, which he
evoked in IS4S.
A careful review Of Kossuth's
public life does not disclose the
possession Of any remarkable apti-
tude for craftsmanship, much less
of any striking military talent.
! Neither had he any hereditary
claim to the exercise of influence i'll
Hungary. Although belonging to
the class of the minor nobility, he
was poor and owed his education
and early advancement to the
patronage of those who discerned
in him the germs of great abilities.
He was not even of Magyar origin,
but came from those southwestern
Slavs who have always bitterly
resented their subsection to the
Hungarians. 1t is an interesting
coincidence that the most fam
Gus of Hungarian patriots should
have been by descent a Croat Just
as the most illustrlous representa-
tive of France was a Corsican. How
did it happen that an alien by birth,
backed neither by wealth nor by a
powerful family connection, had
scarcely entered the Hungarian
Diet in I847 before he acquired an
absolute mastery of that body? His
qualifications were that his fellow
members beheld in him the incarna-
ton of the national impulses and of
, the revolutionary spirit of the time,
and that, beyond any of his coun-
trymen, or, perhaps, any of his
contemporaries, he had the power
of moulding the beliefs and arous-
ing the passions ofmen by eloquence.
Those who yielded to his irresistible
appeals to the brain and the heart
at Buda-Pe or who heard him
plead the cause of Hungary i'll a
foreign country and i'll a foreign
language, felt themselves in pres
ence of an orator capable of such
amazing exploits as had been per
formed by Demosthenes in Athens,
or by Mirabeau in the French
States General. The parallel is
reasonably exact, for the most
, memorable services rendered by
Kossuth to the Magyars were ac-
complished with the spoken word
not with the pen, as i'll the
instance of Mazzini, nor with the
| sword, as in the case of Garibaldi.
Considered as an organizer of
military forces, he was scarcely
superior to Gambetta; as a states
man, he ranked beneath Cavour;
it was only in the senate house or
on the platform that Kossuth stood
: forth prominent.
To some fundamental shortcom-
ings in his capacity for statesman
ship, must be ascribed the irrecon-
cilable attitude which he has
> maintained during the last twenty
: years of his life, and his vehement
refusal to acknowledge that the
dual system of Austria Hungary,
secured and made operative by
Deak and Andrassy, had gained
= for the Magyars the full measure
of national autonomy at which he
himself had Originally aimed Had
the Austrian Emperor carried out
in good faith his concession of local
self-government to the Hungarians,
Kossuth would not have resorted to
the desperate expedient of declaring
the independence of his country.
The actual Constitution of Hungary
embodies larger rights than those
the violation of which drove Kos
suth into rebellion, During the
last quarter Of century, not only
have the Magyars eXersised an
absolute control over their own local
affairs, and those of the people
associated with them in the Trans
Lothian kingdom, but Hungarian
statesmen have been preponderant
in the imperial councils charged
with the management Of the collec-
tive interests Of the dual monarchy
That Kossuth should stubbornly
have shut his eyes to the fulflment
of Magyar aspirations was the more
surprizing because, but for him and
the proofs of national vitality and
indestructibility which he had
caused his countrymen to give, the
Hapsburg Government would not
subsequently have broken with its
age-long traditions, with the whole
programme of Capitalization, and
made of Hungary virtually indie
pendent State, united with the CT
Lothian kingdom only by dynastic
and federative ties. What he could