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Title: Open Letter to Kossuth Author: Josiah Warren Date: February 17, 1864 Language: en Topics: letter, authoritarianism, Hungary, revolution 1848 Source: Retrieved on 30th August 2021 from https://web.archive.org/web/20111007011807/http://www.crispinsartwell.com/warrenkossuth.htm
This remarkable letter, published in the Boston Investigator (XXXIII, 41
(Feb. 17, 1864)), was located by Shawn Wilbur. For Kossuth, see the note
to the previous selection. Kossuth had gone from resistance fighter to
ruler, a success that Warren regarded as no less a danger than complete
failure. He adduces the great revolutionaries of France, and history has
since provided many examples of noble fighters of oppression who mutated
into oppressors: Mao and Lenin, of course, come particularly to mind.
---
For the Boston Investigator.
A Letter to Louis Kossuth
Governor of Hungary
Boston, Feb. 1, 1864
Beloved and Honored Man:
When you visited this country years ago, and put forth those
heart-stirring appeal in behalf of your bleeding country, my sympathies
went out towards you with more than a brother¹s yearning, with an
intensity that no other man in the political sphere ever commanded from
me. This almost idolatry, however, was mixed with a tinge of sadness
from the fear of your ultimate disappointment from a cause apparently
too subtle for ready detection. This was, that in resisting tyranny,
your national policy might include the mistake which would convert
itself into a tyranny. My fears are already confirmed at the very first
step taken by your committee in their report of the 24^(th) December.
They say, on your responsibility, that they ³will know how, and are
determined to secure obedience to its (their) orders and the
accomplishment of the measures which it (they) must take.² Here is,
again, the whole issue between the freedom to differ, (or the right of
individuality,) and the demand for conformity; the latter being the very
essence of tyranny, against which you would array your countrymen, and
ask for the sympathies of the civilized world.
That you, with your great heart and deep humanity yearnings should fall
into this common error, confirms, more than anything else ever did, my
standing excuse for Robespierre, Marat, Danton, and despots and tyrants
all over the world, and through all the ages. It is simply a mistake‹a
fatal oversight.[1] The mistake is inventing well meant systems or
theories, and then endeavoring to enforce obedience thereto, by treating
involuntary dissent as a crime.
Opinions and preferences are as involuntary in their action as the
circulation of the blood; and to threaten dissenters with the ³fate of
traitors,² as your Committee have done, is to proclaim that your cause
is, for the present, already lost. Remember that the freedom of dissent
in subordinates might have saved Gorgey¹s army‹obedience to Gorgey¹s
³orders² lost it, and perhaps defeated your cause at that time.[2]
Look, my brother, at this distracted and already desolate country
(America) and behold the consequences of this same fatal error. The
people here, in 1776, arrayed themselves against despotism, and resolved
on having ³Free Institutions;² but no sooner are these institutions put
into words on paper than it is found that no two persons understand them
alike. In order to have them administered at all, they must be
administered by some one person, according to his particular
interpretation of them, which is a return to despotism; and which, as
usual, threatens the ³fate of traitors² to all who remain faithful to
the original idea of American freedom! Are we never to see a prospective
end to the blind imitation of barbarian precedents?
You and your committee will soon find grave subjects arising, upon which
you will find it impossible to agree, and no external power on earth can
make any two persons agree when their mental capacities make them to
differ. Difference is inevitable. It grows our of the inherent and
inalienable individuality of every person and every thing; and the true
statesman, instead of making war upon this diversity, will foster and
cherish difference of opinion and preferences as the very balance wheel
of society; and will provide for this diversity and its full exercise to
the greatest practical extent; and instead of threatening dissenters
from political creeds with ³the fate of traitors,² the true statesman
will see that when two parties differ, one is as much a dissenter or
traitor (in the vulgar sense in which the latter word is commonly used)
as the other.
This word ³traitor,² so flippantly and ignorantly used in this country
just now, against some of its very best and wisest citizens (because
they dissent from the policy of our centralized government) has, as it
appears to me, no proper application to any person who has not
voluntarily accepted some specific, definite trust, and betrayed that
trust; and in this sense, it is applicable to those who being entrusted
with power in order to promote public peace and prosperity, defeat these
very ends, and bring on war and destruction instead; but, as this may
happen through incompetency, I do not use the offensive word traitor
even towards them.
I entreat you to hesitate in forming any institutions. You cannot form
any that will work successfully any more than you can form fruit upon a
tree. To be successful they must be allowed to grow, like fashions,
customs, or the use of the railroad, according to their demonstrated
utility, or the preferences felt for them.
A child may lead where a god cannot govern; and Kossuth should be the
counsellor — not the governor — of Hungary.
With most respectful and fraternal regard, I give you my particular
address.
JOSIAH WARREN
Counsellor in Equity
15 Scollay¹s Building
Boston, Mass., America.
[1] Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794, Jean-Paul Marat (1743–1793),
Georges Danton (1759–1794): radical leaders in the French Revolution.
[2] Artúr Görgey (1818–1916), Hungarian military man, who had a long and
stormy relation with Kossuth.