"
Mr. Webster delivered a speech in Boston in the month of November,
1849, when it was apprehended that Russia might assume the task of
demanding of Turkey the surrender of Kossuth and others, and of
executing them for crimes against Austria. On that occasion Mr.
Webster claimed that the Emperor of Russia was "bound by the law of
nations"; and to that declaration Kossuth often referred. The full
text of Mr. Webster's speech leaves upon the mind the impression that
what he then called "the law of nations" was only that general judgment
of the civilized nations before which the Czar of Russia "would stand
as a criminal and malefactor in the view of the public law of the
world." Having this declaration in mind, Kossuth said: "It was a
beautiful word of a distinguished son of Massachusetts (Mr. Webster),
which I like to repeat, that every nation has precisely the same
interest in international law that a private individual has in the laws
of his country." Mr. Webster's speech did not justify the inference
which Kossuth drew from it; but the speech itself was much less
reserved than that which Mr. Webster delivered in 1852, when he held
the office of Secretary of state, and spoke for the administration,
at a banquet given in the city of Washington in Kossuth's honor.
When Kossuth had abandoned the hope, which his intense interest in the
fate of his country had inspired, that the United States might act in
behalf of Hungary, he yet returned again and again to the subject.
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