AUSTRIA v. UNITED STATES.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, 12 May 1852, Page 3

AUSTRIA v. UNITED STATES.

The following is the reply of the Austrian Ambassador to the United States Government, on "American interference in Hungary : — •'The undersigned, Charge d' Affaires of his Majesty the Emperor of Austria, having submitted to the Emperor your Excellency's despatch, bearing date Dec. 21, 1850, has been instructed to make the following reply : — " The conduct of the United States,- of which the undersigned had heretofore complained, in sending an agent to Hungary to open a communication with the rebels there in arms then against his Majesty the Emperor, a} pears to be justified in the said despatch on the ground that the United States are the ' representatives of purely popular principles of Government/ principles on which the Governments of those States are 'themselves wholly founded ;' whence a just and rightful sympathy on the part of the people and Government of the United States, on behalf of all movements, wherever and by whomsoever made, in behalf of liberty and equality. " Whether, if such truly were the foundaiion of the American Governments, it would justify the course of couduct of which the Emperor complain?, it is not necessary now to ii-quire, since this assumption on the part of the Ameri- 1 can Government 'to be wholly founded upon,* and 'to be the representatives of purely popular

principles o f government, 1 does not seem -to the Emperor to rest upon any sufficient foundation. 11 Your Excellency can hardly fail to be aware that in two of the United States, to wif, South Coroliua and Missisippi, the majority of the inhabitants are kept in a state of degrading personal servitude, with total prohibition of political -and social rights, utterly unknown in any portion of the Austrian dominions : that in 14 out of the 31 States, the same is the case with a very large proportion of the native-born inhabitants ; that even those Slates in which this system does not exist are pledged to support it in the others; for which purpose the General Government is the instrument and agent — a function without the perpetual discharge of which, as no one knows better than your Excellency, especially in the scrupnlpus return of all refugees from servitude, the Union could not continue to exist. " Your Excellency has been pleased to quote the Laybach Circular of May-, 1841, as if to illustrate so.ne marked distinction between the principles of the Austrian and the American Governments. The following is the passage quoted :—: — " 'Useful and necessary changes in legislation and administration ought only to emanate from the free will and intelligent conviction of whom God has rendefed responsible for power. All that deviates from this level leads to disorder, commotions, and evils Jar more insufferable than those which they pretend to remedy.' And can your Excellency say that there is any doctrine here laid down not perfectly consistent with the principle and practice of the American Government? Does your Excellency admit any right on the part of the slaves — that is to say, the large majority of the native population of South Carolina— to rise aguinst and overturn the rule of their white masters ? Is not the Government of the United States pledged to put down any such insurrection ? Do not the slaveholders of South .Carolina, and of the other States claim to hold their power directly from God, and to be responsible to him alone for its exercise ? And do they not rely on the Bible to prove it? The undersigned begs leave to entertain the opinion, and he boldly appeals to the civilized world for the justice of it, that the right of the Emperor of Austria to decide alone and exclusively upon the political changes necessary to be made in Hungary is at least as good as the title of 100,000 American slaveholders to keep in sole dependence upon their will and pleasure upwards of 3,000,000 of their fellow-countrymen, while they reduce the remaining 20,000,000 of nominal freemen to the hardly more enviable condition of slave-drivers and slavehunters. 11 As to the exercise of this power, claimed in both cases to be of divine origin, the Emperor of- Austria has not yet found it necessary to prohibit under severe penalties, the teaching any portion of his subjects to read and write. On the other hand, all Austrian parents are required by law to send their children to school to be instructed in these necessary accomplishments. "" The Emperor of Austria is no enemy to popular right. He reigns over the people of Austria for their good, not for his own. He is willing to receive light in the discharge of his august duties from every quarter. Bnt -he does not look for information 'on the great ideas of responsibility and purely popular principles of government, 1 to the representatives of an 'aristocracy of slave owners, very similar in one respect to that insurgent aristocracy lately suppressed in Hungary, — that *>f preaching democracy with their tongues, while their wliole lives consist in the daily exercise over their fellow-men of arbi-

trary power in the most repugnant forms. " But although the Emperor cannot in anywise admit the pretensions of the United States to be 4 the representatives of purely popular principles of Government,' he has no objection that the relations of the two Governments should stand upon that basis of mutual interference with the internal concerns of each other on which the American Government seems disposed to place it. In common with the rest of Christendom, he has long regarded with hearty commiseration the degraded servitude, as it seems to him, disgraceful to Christianity, in which so large a portion of the common people are kept; and he cannot doubt that the uprising before loiig of some Black Kossuth will furnish him with an opportunity of carrying these new principles into practice, and thereby serving the course of human happiness, ever dear to the Emperor's heart. : " Having thus communicated the sentiments of his Majesty on your late despatch, 1 embrace this opportunity to renew to your Excellency assurances of my high consideration. " HULSEMAN. •• To his Excellency D. Webster, •' Secretary of State, United Slates."