COPY OF A LETTER TO LOUIS KOSSUTH ON THE PROSPECTS OF HUNGARY.

M. Louis Kossuth, late Governor of Hungary, Excellent Sir:

I have taken the liberty of causing to be presented to you a copy of a work intitled “Elpis Israel,” which, it is presumed, cannot fail of being interesting to you seeing that it treats in part of the things which have, and are yet destined to, come upon old and decrepit Europe, and your own unfortunate and suffering country. It is a work reprinted in New York a few weeks since from the London edition, which was almost entirely sold in a month after publication there without the aid of advertisement or review. A copy was sent to Lord Palmerston, who, as you will see on page 26, pronounces the book to be “a very interesting work.”

I would also take this opportunity of remarking to you that I have read your eloquent addresses to the peoples of Britain and of these United States, with that deep feeling of sympathy for the oppressed and hatred of oppression which is an instinct of my nature. But while my soul was melted in its mood, my judgment approved the necessity of the visitation which hath fallen so vengefully on your fatherland. In your address to the people of the United States you inquire, “Was it not manifest that Austria—who had always, through the help of Hungary, strength enough to oppose Russia—would, when she destroyed Hungary with Russian bayonets, no longer be an independent power, but merely the avant garde of the Moscovite?” Again you say, “Had England and France permitted a few ships to come to Ossore, laden with arms for the noble patriots who had asked in vain for weapons, the Hungarians would now have stood a more impregnable barrier against Russia, than all the arts of a miserable and expensive diplomacy.” To this you add, “I hesitate not to avow before God, that we alone—that my own Hungary—could have saved Europe from Russian domination.” Yes, Excellent Sir, in these averments is the philosophy of your national overthrow. Hungary was the strength of Austria, and she could have saved both it and Europe from Russian domination. God, whose administration of human affairs you acknowledge, and to whom “the powers that be” are subjected, saw this distinctly. It was necessary, therefore, that Hungary should be “plucked up by the roots” by “the little” Austro-imperial “horn” of the west, that the execution of his decree, long since revealed in the writings of Israel’s prophets, might not be frustrated. Hungary’s offence before High Heaven hath been this very devotion to the treacherous and blood-stained House of Hapsburg, of which, Excellent Sir, you speak so complacently. The “Holy Roman Empire”—holy indeed! —hath been for over a thousand years the savage destroyer of God’s witnesses upon the earth. Its secular dynastic horn hath been the pillar and support of the Papacy—the blind, infatuated, patron of that cruel, and liberty-hating superstition whose Pontifex Maximus—the spiritual dynastic horn of the empire—is the Pope of Rome. The time hath come for the Almighty to make inquisition for blood, and therefore to pour out upon the House of Hapsburg and its papal prophet, and their conjoint dominion, that righteous retribution which their unparalleled “blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in the heaven”—Revelation 13: 6; and their crimes against humanity, demand. So long as Hungary remained strong and independent, “an impregnable barrier” existed against that inundation from the north which is destined to overshadow the independence of the Austro-papal imperiality of the west. Whom God wills to destroy he first infatuates. This is pre-eminently the case with the Emperor and the Pope. The House of Hapsburg in cursing with the decree of extermination, and, by Russian aid, in “plucking it up by the roots,” (Daniel 7: 8, 24.) hath thrust a dagger into his own vitals, wounding itself with an incurable and deadly wound. It hath bound itself hand and foot, and become helplessly subject to the will of the Autocrat of the north—the Russo-Assyrian of the age. —Isaiah 30: 25, 30-31.

The Bible—the politician’s best manual—reveals, as you find explained in Elpis Israel from page 377 to 388, that the almighty disposer of human events (Daniel 2: 21; 4: 25, 35) hath decreed the subjugation of Europe to the Russian power, whose chief is to become “Emperor of Germany” (“Gogue of the land of Magogue,”) as well as Autocrat of All the Russias, (or “Prince of Ros, Mosc, and Tobl.”) See Ezekiel 38 and 39. All things since February 1848 are rapidly tending to that consummation. France, symbolised in the scriptures by “Frogs,” the old arms of the Franks, (Revelation 16: 13; and Elpis Israel, page 339,) is to complicate every thing. Events soon to happen there will convert papal Germany, &c., and Italy, into “a lake of fire and brimstone”—destructive battle-fields—which will be the wreck of the dominion of Hapsburg and the Pope, and the establishment of the Cossack on the Theiss, the Danube, the Rhine, the Seine, and the Po. Thus the house of Hapsburg will have destroyed itself in destroying Hungary, and Russia will have become your avenger.

Still, however, Hungary and Poland will exist no more. The resuscitation of their dominions and that of Italy is hopeless. The populations of earth are not to be for ever cursed by such governments as the world hath hitherto experienced in all lands. The Bible, to which you appeal, comforts us with the assurance that “all nations shall be blessed in Abraham and his Seed,” (Genesis 12: 2-3; 22: 18; Galatians 3: 8, 16,) and that when this blessedness shall become a fact, “the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of Jehovah, and of his Christ; and He (the Christ) shall reign for ever”—Revelation 11: 15. —Yea, Excellent Sir, and not “the kingdoms” only, but all republics too. The accomplishment of this ancient promise made of God 3500 years ago, will be good news, or gospel, to Hungary and the oppressed of all countries; for it implies the overthrow of Russia, and the fall of all thrones, principalities, and powers that now afflict the world.

Well, Excellent Sir, your “own Hungary” exists no more, and the God of justice wills it, not for the behoof of Austria and its Camarilla, but as a condition necessary to the ultimate benefit of humanity at large. Vain, yet pleasing to those who know not the Divine purpose revealed in the Bible, is the hope you express that “Hungary, free, surrounded by free nations, will be great, glorious, and independent.” Excellent Sir, independent Hungary, the chief of a confederacy of free nations, is an illusion sketched by the fond fancy of its unfortunate children. Providence hath a more exalted blessedness for the peoples than this. Bloody indeed will be the coming combat between the populations and the tyrants; but “the haughty despots,” as you truly style them, will prove too strong for them. Neither Hungary nor her exiled sons can change the current of events that have placed them on these hospitable shores. The freedom of Hungary will be peace, spiritual enlightenment, prosperity, and security, under a Divine Code and Administration. This is the impending freedom and blessedness of all nations, which belong not to this age, but to that which is to come, when all existing governments, the obstacles to their manifestation, shall have been utterly destroyed after the example and by the like agency to that which delivered Israel from Egypt, and planted them in Palestine as in the days of old. The restoration of liberty, then, to Hungary being incompatible with the revealed purpose of the Almighty, there remains no obstacle to the fulfilment of your prediction, which happens to be in harmony with the things noted in the scriptures of truth, as I have already stated them. —“I predict,” saith your Excellency, “and the eternal God hears my prediction—that there can be no freedom for the Continent of Europe, and that the Cossacks from the shores of the Don will water their steeds in the Rhine, unless liberty be restored to Hungary. It is only with Hungarian freedom that the European nations can be free; and the smaller nationalities especially can have no future without us.” Yes, Sir, Poland and Hungary, the ramparts of the west against the embattled north, being levelled with the dust, Europe is unmasked and opened to the invader when he wills to “enter into the countries to overflow, and to pass over”—Daniel 11: 40. Imbecility and folly characterise the diplomacy of 1830, 1848, and 1849. Had not the rulers been judicially blinded, they would have seen that the guarantee of their own independence of Russian domination was the preservation of Poland and Hungary as sovereign states. But God has blinded their eyes that they might not see until it is “too late” to retrieve the errors of the past.

But, Excellent Sir, when you shall have perused Elpis Israel you will perhaps discern the relation of things more clearly than can be exhibited within the limits of this epistle. Allow me to refer you to my letters to the Autocrat and his ambassador in London, on pages 19 and 22, for some additional light upon the subjects before us. The part which France is playing in the great political drama of the age, and that which awaits Britain and the United States, her ally by the force of circumstances, are set forth on pages indicated by inserted slips; as well as other topics interesting to you as one of the actors in the scenes that need not be mentioned here.

In conclusion. Though I cannot pray God to prosper your wish for “universal freedom” in the popular sense because subversive of his Kingdom, which we are taught to pray may come that “his will may be done on earth as it is in heaven;” yet I do pray that he may prosper your mission to this country in committing its government to the taking of a decided stand with other liberal powers in the approaching conflict with the imperial oppressors of the Continent. And may God preserve you in safety in the midst of that terrible tempest with which he declares he will visit the nations before he blesses them in Abraham and his Seed. That you may prosper in all your lawful undertakings, and live to see the end of the House of Hapsburg, the overthrow of the Autocrat, and the establishment of the kingdom of God, which “shall break in pieces and consume” all the kingdoms of the Roman earth—Daniel 2: 44.

I subscribe myself, Excellent Sir,

Very respectfully yours,

JOHN THOMAS, M.D.

Author of Elpis Israel.