The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864

Continuing his imputations, the accuser says he only learned afterward why seven thousand Parisian workmen, registered at M. d'Harcourt's committee, 'were not sent forth.' The probable purport of this reproach is: 'They were not sent for fear of the introduction of liberal elements—and the proletariat—into Poland.' As to the latter, we may at once confidently answer that, were Poland free to-day, the condition of the laboring class in Western Europe need not be dreaded for a hundred years to come. As to the liberal element, does the author indeed think that Poland has had no Liberalists similar to Voltaire, La Mennais, Victor Hugo, L. Blanc, Mazzini, or Hertzen? Does he fancy that Modzewski (in the sixteenth century), Skarga (a Catholic preacher in the seventeenth), Morsztyn, Jezierski, Andrew Zamoyski, Hugo Kollontay, Loyko (in the eighteenth), Staszye, Lelewel, Mochnacki, Ostrowski, Czynski, Mieroslawski, and a host of others, contented with the private good they did, and forced to shun the jealous watchfulness of suspicious rulers—does he, we say, fancy that all these needed to be inspired by the liberality of Parisian workmen, or even that all the aforesaid workmen would apply themselves to the dissemination of liberal opinions? It is indeed a great disadvantage to Polish Liberalists, philosophers, and poets, that they speak and write in a tongue unknown to the noble philanthropists of the West. A greater amount of knowledge would have saved hasty tourists, veracious lecturers, and all-knowing diplomatists many errors in statement and conception, and much aversion toward a noble people, who, if vanquished, will not be crushed, and will always reserve the right of protest.

At all events, this last conclusion of our correspondent leads us to suspect that he may perchance never have been in Poland—perhaps never even in Paris—since this non-sending forth of seven thousand Parisians was better understood by every gamin du faubourg than apparently by the sincere narrator of 'Tardy Truths.'

The writer says further, that he expected to find in Kracow 'activity and infinite means.' Now, the author and the confidence of the Poles must have been quite strangers to one another, or his imagination must have misled him farther than was becoming in a man of knowledge and reflection. He does not mention the date of his journey, but we know about the period referred to. It is true that at that time Kracow had not yet been declared in a state of siege by M. Pouilly de Mensdorf, but, as a personal friend of the Czar, he had then held Galicia and Kracow during the past year under a more uncertain condition than even the declaration of a state of siege would have produced. Twenty thousand chosen officers and soldiers, with discretionary and greatly enlarged powers, and almost as many policemen and spies, with early fed and increasing covetousness for rewards, promotions, and orders, kept constant watch over the ancient capital of Poland, the last remnant of Polish nationality which had been engulfed in the European peace of 1846.

We may then safely assert that our author has given us sketches from his whims and fancies, rather than the mature results of his judgment, and that he has also neglected to direct his researches into the history of the past. It is doubtless true that he was not desired as a volunteer, and that he found danger only, and not fortune, which, indeed, we think his own sagacity might have taught him from the first.

We would be forced to doubt that any one understood the policy of the Polish Committee in Warsaw who should apply the epithet 'mercenary' to the Polish soldiers. We would not ask our author how much he gave per diem to those under his own command: we have no wish to rival the wit of a Russian proclamation which appeared last winter in Warsaw, in which the Poles in general, including those who fought at Orsza, Wielikie Luki, Kirchholm, Chocim, Smolensk, Vienna, Zurich, Hohenlinden, Samocierros, Pultusk, Grochow, Iganie, Zyzyny, Opatow, etc., etc., were stigmatized as poltroons and cowards!

It is certainly true that the battles of late have not represented a file of twenty thousand men, but to call them on that account frontier demonstrations, is to add subtle calumny to ungenerous irony; it is a deviation even from the very 'tardy truths.' It is an assertion not made in an impartial spirit, but calculated in favor of, and determinately stated with the intention of sustaining those who are exerting themselves to prove that Minsk, Grodno, Mohilew, Wolhynia, Podole, Plock, Augustow, Lithuania, Samogitia, Liefland, etc., were ancient dependencies of Russia, before she had herself an existence either in name or fact! If the originator of the term frontier demonstrations would take the trouble to study the map, he would not be able to cherish the delusion that his intelligent readers could believe that battles fought near Kowno, Oszmiana, Upita, Poniewiez, Lida, Ihumen, Dubno, Pinsk, Mscislaw, etc., were really frontier demonstrations!

This declaration of the letter from Paris to America would not be of much service to The Journal of St. Petersburg or The Invalid, of Moscow, or increase their exhilaration over the extermination of the Polish race, the destruction of Polish principles. There is nothing more natural than that a rebuke to the Siècle, Opinion Nationale, Patrie, and perhaps even others, should follow such statements—their views undoubtedly stand in complete opposition to those held by M. de Girardin, and advocated in La Presse.

The assertion that the Polish National Government had no object in view but to excite and await the intervention of France; that Galicia was the principal focus of the rebellion, and that the unknown Government had no actual existence, is, on the one hand, an unskilful attempt to justify the Governments of Russia and Austria, and, on the other, by the ignoring of all the reports of the Polish National Government—all its obvious facts, its printed documents, its acts everywhere known and seen, its seizures of papers and documents—and to portray it as a fraud, a myth, a dream of the imagination, a wild hallucination of a disordered brain, it suggests to us the thought that the tardy and present truths here given us of Poland may perhaps have the same origin as that famous description in one of the St. Petersburg papers, of 'the at last truly discovered leader of the Polish insurrection,' which was but a portraiture of a certain, not mentioned but easily guessed, personage in Paris.

We have no reply to make to this reproach (we can only wonder that under the circumstances they should ever have been made) that the Polish volunteers were badly armed and illy managed—possibly they might have been better even in a partisan war. But as to the want of skill in the officers, including such as Skarzynski, Bosak, Padlewski, we wonder that the writer or his friend F. could not succeed in making their talents known and valued, and become at least leaders among the blind. Of course he had to contend with cross-eyed jealousy. Yet if, as a foreigner, and a learned one too, he was, as he himself informs us, intimately admitted into various chateaux, it seems almost impossible he should have had no opportunity to become major, colonel, or even general, since it is well known, and every foreigner will bear witness to the fact, that in these chateaux there has always been too much attention and too great preference shown to foreigners—a preference, however, in which the lower classes do not participate.

As to the easy chateau life led in Galicia, as in Russia, we have a remark to offer. In a country exposed during five or six centuries to incessant struggle against Asiatic craving for European allurements, or, to speak more definitely, after ninety-four Mongolian incursions, in which twenty millions of Polish people were carried off, and thousands of towns, bourgs, and villages were destroyed; after numberless wars, plunders, and devastations by Jazygs, Turks, Muscovites, Crusaders, Wallachians, Transylvanians, Swedes, Brandenburgians, etc., etc.; after a hundred years of the so-called paternal spoliation of Russia, Prussia, and Austria—there could have been no opportunity, even under Graff Pouilly de Mensdorf, to build comfortable chateaux on the mouldering ruins, or for the accumulation of means for an easy life under the oppressions of an Austrian tariff, which exacted that goods manufactured in Lemberg should be sent for inspection to the Vienna custom house before being exposed to sale. There are, however, a few very splendid chateaux, like oases in the Desert of Sahara; they can be counted readily on one's fingers; among them few patriots; no conspirator, much less an insurgent or crippled invalid, ever called to ask hospitality.

The calumny so often repeated, so urgently insisted upon, that the aim of the Polish insurrection was inconsistent, foolish, and wicked, might not perhaps astonish the reader more than the report of the want of zeal and faith in the convictions of the Poles, a fact first revealed to the world in 'Tardy Truths.' This warning with regard to the true character of the struggle on the shores of the Vistula might prove of service in aiding the discrimination of the American people, and be useful in confusing the judgment of the liberal men and newspapers, which, whether in Germany, Belgium, France, or England, are not too much inclined to favor the cause of Polish independence; nay, it would spare France the useless demonstration in the Chambers, made in consequence of the speech of November 5th. The late efforts of the Poles are also shown to have been inspired and incited by, and carried on for the benefit of, the Catholic clergy, stimulated by fanaticism against the liberal, civilizing, enlightened, Rosso-Greek Church, a view which might and has proved very useful to modern lecturers and letter writers. The warning therein given might also serve to degrade the Polish revolution to the level of some of the slave-holders' rebellion. Let us reflect but for one single moment on the parallel attempted to be drawn, particularly in the New York papers, after the unfortunate Mexican imbroglio and subsequent visit of the Russian fleet, between things so utterly unlike. The Poles fought for everything most dear to the heart of man, for every right which he can justly claim, for independence, national existence, the right to use his own language, for the integrity of his country;—the States of the South had all these in full possession, nay, even the right to pass the law binding the North. These things might be shown to be essentially dissimilar in every respect, but this short statement is deemed sufficient to show the futility of the comparison.

Let us now proceed to say a few words with regard to the plausible arguments so generally set forth for the glorification of the Czar, in respect to the emancipation of the Polish serfs. The Czar gave in 1864 what had already been given by the Poles themselves in 1863; less the soil, which indeed never belonged to him, but for which he exacts payment. Besides, he has confiscated, without regulations or laws, the income from forests, rents, fields, and fisheries, belonging to old men, women, and children, whose only crime was that they had been born Poles, or whom it pleased the hungry throng of unscrupulous, greedy, and fanatical officials, unbounded in their zeal as in their power, to denounce, accuse, or dislike. We could fully prove the fact that the greater part of the peasants are now forced by bayonets to work for the exacted pay, and most of them venture to doubt entirely the propriety of the pretended Russian gift. This one circumstance makes this gift in the greater part of Poland and even, of Russia more burdensome than the old state of regulated labor; for how is a peasant to procure money in provinces distant from markets, rivers, and towns? Under what conditions would it be possible to obtain it? And even in cases where the peasant may be able to make a sale, the value received for eight bushels of potatoes will not be sufficient to buy him a common axe. How many calves, cows, sheep, horses, and hogs are brought back from market from the impossibility of finding purchasers, even at the lowest prices? Now, by the decree of January 22d, the Polish National Government gave freedom, and land relieved from all claims, thus executing what was in accordance with the spirit and wishes of the Poles, without losing sight of the difficulties to be encountered. It was their imperative duty to satisfy and adjust the exigencies of the national political economy. Fortunately, it was found possible to harmonize the requirements of the country with the personal interests of the proprietors. The amount of land held by them was in general so large, that even after endowing the peasant with the allotted portion, considerable would still remain in their hands. Diminished in extent and value during the transitional phase, the remaining land would necessarily rise rapidly in value, because the emancipated peasant would now have the right to own and buy land. The calculation might be sustained that it would quintuple in value in the course of fifty years. Small farms from their possessions would soon be in the market, farms within the range of small purses and limited means, and the proprietors did not fail to see the advantage which would accrue to them in the almost unlimited increase of purchasers which would soon be found among the enfranchised laborers. The peasants gained freedom, land, and many advantages, nor were the proprietors ruined in their advancement. Hence the National Government effected what the Rossian never intended to do or ever will achieve: gain and loss were equalized in the national duty of sustaining the country in its progressive course, stimulating all to labor simultaneously to support its public burdens, to aid in the general advancement. The real freedom thus gained, in accordance with the far-sighted policy of the Polish National Government, opened wide the door to liberty, trade, commerce, and exchange; a policy which czarism, even in its most liberal mood, can never admit, because it would condemn itself, and give the death blow to its own existence. There is another specialty peculiar to the Rossian Government, never forgotten by those who live under its rule, viz.: the late emancipation was begun about three years ago by an ukase of no very decided purport, which was followed by many others of like uncertain character, according with the varying views of those by whom they were dictated, by the partisans of emancipation or by those standing in opposition to it. These ukases are ranged in their appropriate numerical titles, and there are at least five hundred thousand of them—whether imperial or senatorial, all legally binding. What memory could stand such a burden, or what might legal cavil not find therein?

It is an easy thing to 'speak for Buncombe,' as we say in America; it is an easy thing to proclaim measures when we take no thought of how they may be carried out; it is easy to excite the enthusiasm of the popular lecturer, always in search of novelty with which to feed his hearers; it may be pleasant to furnish venom to wounded self-esteem or disappointed and petty ambition—but it will be found an exceedingly difficult task to reconcile absolutism with freedom, czarism with liberalism, the division of men into appointed castes and classes with the existence of liberty and political equality. We are assured, not only by the writer of the letter in question, but by the sages of New York, that the Polish peasants were not willing to fight for Poland, that they called their countrymen now in arms against Rossia 'dogs of nobles,' and 'that it was really their duty to rise against and denounce their former masters to Rossia and Austria!'

If these assertions are true, who then filled the ranks of the Polish insurgents? Who furnished food to those who lived for months in the depths of forests, the haunts of mountain gorges? How was it possible that without the connivance of the peasants the insurgents should pass to and fro, or lie hidden in woods and fields? It was stated authoritatively that the insurgents, were composed principally of Hungarian refugees, about ten Frenchmen, a few strangers from other nations, but of the number of the lesser nobility, men, in short, in search of shelter and fortune. A strange fortune, a marvellous shelter indeed to reward the greed of the ambitious—exile, death, and torture! Were the testimony of such witnesses to be relied upon, we might well exclaim: 'Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.' Yet how is it that we find among the seven hundred patriots who were hung so many Poles, less than a half of whom were Catholics, many of whom were Jews, Protestants, and even Rosso-Greeks of various classes? Among the forty thousand known deported, torn ruthlessly away from their native homes for centuries, we find nearly five thousand Israelites, ten thousand peasants (known), and from four to six thousand of Greek and other creeds. The two villages near Lida, two in the government of Grodno, the hundreds of villages and thousands of huts near Dwina, Rzezyca, Mohilew, Witebsk, burned, razed to the ground by an excited and hired rabble of Muscovite Muziks, who had sought and found hospitality in Poland for hundreds of years—certainly all these villages and huts were not inhabited even by the 'lesser nobility.' And it is also certain that the dwellers were not so cruelly punished for denouncing the 'dogs of nobles'—an expression, if we are not mistaken, taken from the vocabulary of the corporal or subaltern officials, and which has never reached the fourteenth class—from which the Rossian begins to reckon humanity.

The allegation of the existence of unrooted feudalism in Poland, because such a system was known to the whole of Middle Europe, must be accounted for by the evident ignorance of Polish history; and we assure both teachers and readers, notwithstanding the evident wish to find it in Poland, that it was unknown to her, nor could it subsist in the presence of Polish institutions, habits, customs, and geography.

We can scarcely suppose it possible that our author means to insinuate that thousands of noble families bought and transported arms for the purpose of speculation. Notwithstanding the evidence he had of one such bad business transaction for the purpose of sustaining and upholding the insurrection, his frequent intimations of the incorrigible and unruly character of the few Poles left, would almost authorize us in believing that such was the intention of the writer when speaking of the aforesaid arms.

Oh, in the name of common sense, for the sake of the men whose country has been torn from them, who may not speak their mothers' tongue in the land of their fathers, who are forbidden to worship in accordance with the dictates of their conscience, whose sacred homes are desecrated by the presence of privileged spies, who cannot sit down in peace in the holy quiet of evening, because they know that the morrow may see them dragged off to unknown and inaccessible dungeons, or summoned before brutal judges without defenders, where they will find accusers, but will be allowed to cite no witnesses; subjected to witness the horrible anxiety endured every spring and fall by Polish fathers and mothers lest the sons of their love should be unexpectedly seized in the night and hurried off over the Caucasus, the Ural, or to the mouth of the Amour, to serve in the army of the oppressor for life, or longer than home memories in such young bosoms could be expected to last, with no prospect of reward save such as may be reckoned in the number of palkis and pletnis (whips and lashes); sons, whether rich or poor, to be exposed to cavil, cunning, and vindictiveness, to the practices of gambling judges and a profligate soldiery, to a venal police, to fraudulent employés, themselves badly paid for service, but whose extortions and abuses always meet with approval, a single complaint against whom would expose the complainant to be sent through that hopeless gate always open on the route to Siberia;—oh, for the sake of common humanity, say not that men placed in such situations have, in spite of their glorious history, no rights, no claims on human sympathy, no cause to sacrifice life even when it has become a haunting horror!

Believe not that such complaints are inventions: the facts are known to everybody who will look upon them. They are no slanderous stories, but occurrences renewed with every morning, taking place under all circumstances and with every transaction patent to the world. They were appreciated and described in Prussia, and even in Austria verified, not long before the last campaign. Under such circumstances, what must be thought of the discoveries and conclusions of writers who assert that 'the Polish nation is a mere chimera'? As no individual, mighty as he may be, can by a blasphemous word suppress the existence of the Eternal Father, so neither passion nor love, favor nor animosity, interest nor purpose of the most talented or ambitious, can erase at pleasure a nationality which has a history of over a thousand years of existence, a nationality proved by the last hundred years of incessant struggle for independence with three giants. This nation has marked its boundaries with graveyards toward the Dniester, Dnieper, Niemen, and Dwina, where rest the beaten hordes of Batu or Nogays. Can the record be erased of the power that broke the sword of the Osmanlis, and was it a chimera that preserved Western Europe from such sights as Polowce and Pietschiniegs, etc.? You may perhaps to-day designate as a chimera the Vienna saved in 1683, that very Vienna which in 1815 first conceived the idea of sowing the seeds of distrust between Galicians and Lodomerians—an idea soon after adopted, perfected, and publicly propagated by Rossians, who applied the practice to Lithuanians, Volhynians, Podolans, Polans, Radymicians, etc.—an idea now held in the fierce grasp of Muraview, Anienkow, and probably at no very distant period to be recalled to the mind of the originator.

The gentleman's knowledge of Russians (the true name is Rossians, the other being assumed to effect a certain purpose in Western Europe), Prussians, and Austrians, to the exclusion of Poles, proves only that his geographic and ethnographic researches in Poland went no farther than those of the 'reliable gentleman' who described the Bunker Hill monument under President Lafayette.

In addition to the above, let us consult simply the sound of the names of places, and we can form some idea of the extent of races and nationalities. Nowgorod, Kaluga, Pskow—are Rossian; Telsze, Szawle, Rosienie—Lithuanian; Winszpilis, Gielgawa, Libosie—Courland; Lublin, Ostrolenka, Plock—Polish; Wlodrimirz, Zytomirz, Berdyczev—Volhynian. In Austria, are the inhabitants of Venice, Prague, and Buda, Austrian? The name of Prussia is an old one of Slavonians living at the mouth of the Vistula, and has no etymology in the Teutonic language. Those of Galicia and Lodomeria are unskilfully disfigured from Halitsh (Halicz) and Wlodzimir. The name of Prussia was assumed by Frederic II., margrave of Brandenburg, when he took the title of king, at the same time giving solemn oaths never to pretend to the sovereignty of Dantzick (Gdansk), Thorn (Torun), etc.

The present empire of Alexander is not of Russia, but of Rossia, and the name of Russia is imposed on Polans near Kiow, on Radymicians near Nowogrodek, on Drewlans south of the river Pripec, etc.; and we must remember that Catharine II., in 1764, had solemnly declared by her ambassadors, Kayserling and Repnin, that she had no right to Russias or Ruthenias in Poland: 'Declaramus suam Imperatoriam Majestatem Dominam nostram clementissimam ex usu tituli totius Rossiæ, nec sibi, nec successoribus suis neque Imperio suo jus ullum in ditiones et terræ quæ sub nomine Russiæ a Regno Poloniæ magnoque ducatu Lithuaniæ possiduntur,' etc.

The prediction of the reëstablishment of serfdom as a result aimed at in the present Polish struggle, is not only rash but preposterous, and has no foundation except in a fixed purpose to direct all sympathy toward Rossia.

The true bondage that tied man in Poland to the soil, began with the introduction of police, passports, censors or skaski, recruiting, conscription, and taxation, introduced by Prussia, Austria, and Rossia, as so-called improvements. Poland had more free peasants, called Ziemianin, Kmiec, Kozak, than there were in France during the régime of the Gabeles or Leibeigenschaft in Germany. That they entirely disappeared after the fall of Poland was surely not her fault. The peasants on the estates attached to the clergy of all denominations, to public schools, to the crown, and to the nation, were in a much better condition, materially and morally, than are at present those in some parts of Hainault and Thuringen. Individual abuses by an unconscientious lord were to be seen as well in Connaught as near Debretschyn, near the Saone as on the Necker. Times—contemporary with independent Poland, and hence not very far back—beheld these sins against humanity committed on a larger scale, and in lands in otherwise happier conditions. The phrase bonded labor is known under the best institutions. But this excuses no one. Poland, without any compulsive cause, in 1764 and 1768, took these questions into consideration; in 1791, was even more explicit; and in 1792, Kosciuszko distinctly settled the condition of the Polish peasant, and that without opposition from the Polish nobility—a measure immediately overruled and suppressed by Prussia and Rossia, both accusing Poland of being a dangerous nest of Jacobinism. In 1807, in the grand duchy of Warsaw, after it was retaken from Prussia, the condition of the peasantry was far more clear and protected than even now promised by the Czar Alexander II., and was probably better preserved than it can be under the crowd of employés and magistrates, nominally elected by the peasants, but in fact imported from Saratow, Kazan, Penza, etc., for the purpose of teaching liberty and Siberian civilization in Warsaw and Wilna.

Common sense and the ordinary rules of logic force upon us the conviction that writings of the above stamp are gotten up to produce certain effects. Can any be found simple enough to believe that a whole people would be aroused, armed, and taught to what end and how to use the given arms, as was done by the manifesto of the Polish National Government, January 22d, 1863, only to be deceived and in the end deprived of that for which they had fought? By what right can bad faith be imputed to land owners whom experience, a sense of justice, and even interest, had already impelled to get rid of a useless and burdensome relation? These land owners, even under the Rossian Government (in 1818), had solemnly begged the uncle of the present czar, Alexander I., to allow them to be freed from the onerous responsibilities caused by serfdom under Rossian surveillance and severity.

The letter from Paris further states, on what authority we know not, that the condition of the peasant or serf in Poland was dreadful until the seventeenth century. This is going very far back, and probably at that period, if facts could be found to sustain the writer's allegation, the condition of bondmen—vilains regardants—boors, Lebeigenschaft, manans, etc., was not better elsewhere. But here again we must differ in opinion, and beg leave to state, not only to the author of the letter, but to all other self-constituted authorities, whose knowledge of Poland is derived from The London Times, Chambers's Magazine, M. Hilperding, Kattow, or M. Morny, etc., that, with all due respect to their social positions, we must deny them the title of well-informed historians and profound judges of Poland and the Slavonic races. Up to the seventeenth century, the peasantry (Kmiec, Ziemiamin) had its representatives in the diet, and could find entrance into the ranks of the nobility, which had no divisions into classes or titular distinctions. Said nobility had the right to serve their country during war, and a peasant providing himself with a horse and suitable arms, was not excluded from that class. They could also take orders among the clergy, and hence rise to high dignities in the church. Public schools in Poland were never shut to the peasants, nor were any distinctions therein authorized in favor of one or other class of pupils. In schools then they enjoyed all privileges in common, and these were great—a separate jurisdiction, and the facilities of reaching higher ranks. Kromer, Janicki, Poniatowski, great names in Polish history, can show no other origin than one nearer to the Ziemianin than to any other class.

If the current of fashion did not warp all judgments in favor of Rossia, the writers of 'Tardy Truths' from Paris and elsewhere would have reflected a little longer, and would soon have discovered that the ignorance and poverty of the Polish peasantry were not due solely to the Poles themselves. Polish schools were formerly all completely free, and each school even had funds for the poor, called purses, foundations, etc. Rossia, in the last fifty years, charged as high as $625 for inscription alone in the higher classes, and about $25 for elementary beginners. How could a poor family rise in prosperity if this school was often the first cause of losing the favorite son; if they did send the child to school they might lose him as a recruit for the army or navy, as designated by the whim of the treacherous teacher and recruiting officer; and this did not exempt from public burdens, as they were still obliged to pay taxes for him during ten years, and contribute to all public services, as stations (stoyki), wagons and teams (rozgony), repairing and making public and private roads, extra post service, besides innumerable services imposed for his own personal benefit by a spravnik, straptschy, zasiedatel, sotnik, etc. Add to this the thwarting of intercourse and commerce by every imaginable means under the system of the famous M. Kankrin.

Could the peasant or the master become wealthy when a measure called a ton, weighing about eight hundred and forty pounds, of wheat brought the enormous sum of $4.25? a load of hay, drawn by one horse, seventy-five cents when well paid, and nothing when wanted by ulans or hussars garrisoned in the neighborhood? A hen, with a dozen and a half well-grown chickens, hardly brought enough to pay the value of the commonest apron.

Such things as these were never known in ancient Poland, now so unanimously accused and condemned by fashionable philanthropy. Even eighty years ago such abuses would have been vainly looked for. We remember, in our younger days, when conversing with an old sowietnik (counsellor), to have heard him relate his bewildered astonishment at the comfort and well-being in Poland when sent under an escort of Cossacks to introduce Rossian improvements. 'What has become of them?' we asked innocently. 'Ha!' was his naïve reply; 'St. Petersburg has since then grown into a splendid city!'

Let us call the attention of Russo-maniacs to the fact that eighty years ago, soon after the second partition of Poland, flax in Riga brought eight hundred and seventy florins, while in 1845 it hardly brought two hundred and forty florins; and the famous wheat of Sandomir sold, at the first-named period, at sixty, while in 1856 it brought barely thirty-five. Yet money now is cheaper than before 1800.

Did the Polish nobleman, selfish and wicked as now seems the fashion to describe him, force the peasant of Samogitia to servile work, when the latter had an opportunity of drawing a good profit from the results of his labor in the neighboring marts of Memel, Liban, Riga, Mittau, Venden, etc.? No, must we answer to our readers. There might have been seen a boor's wife dressed in sky blue lined with fox fur, and drawn to church in a comfortable kolaska, by two excellent, plump, Samogitian ponies; and neither did the father of the family exhaust his strength in night watches or day labor, as he had twenty teams to dispose of, and could offer to an unexpected visitor a broiled chicken with milk sauce, and a couple of bottles of brown stout from Barclay, Perkins & Co., of London. Such prosperity, although then declining, was still to be found in 1830. Why does it not exist to-day? Let this question be answered by civilizers and democrats from Tambow, Saratow, or Penza, and their jealous apologists.

Our writer seems to think he has made a wonderful discovery when he exultingly exclaims: 'How surprised these pretended liberals would be to see that their efforts only tend toward reconstituting a monarchical Poland (was Poland really monarchical?—we may doubt) under the protection of a feudal and Catholic Church!' Such charges were also made in the eighteenth century, and were suggested by similar motives. I do not feel called upon to defend the Catholics of Poland. I would simply retort upon the authors of such suggestions, by referring to certain distinguished rabbis, as Heilprin, Meintzel, Jastrow, etc.; to Protestants, as Konarski, Potworowski, Kasaius, Krolikowski, Czynski, and hosts of others; and also to Mohammedans, as Baranowski, Mucha, Bielak, etc. I cannot condemn a man because he is a Catholic, because I have everywhere, and in every religious community, found both patriots and traitors to their country, to their origin, to principle, and to their religion. But this I must say, that of whatever denomination or sect be the minister or priest, he has a right to be a faithful son to his fatherland and race. It happened that in Poland the Catholic priest stood opposed to the Rossian pope. If the latter can be a Rossian patriot, why should a like sentiment render guilty a Polish priest? This animosity in certain circles proceeds from a partiality to the Rosso-Greek Church, which, some years ago, during the visit of the emperor Nicholas to England, certain ignorant or du. By way of parenthesis, we may add that the Rosso-Greek Church separated long ago from the Eastern Greek Church, preserving, however, all its outward forms. Peter I. abolished the patriarchate, introduced his own classes and reforms, and made himself head of the church. He gave the name of synod to a permanent council, nominated, appointed, dismissed, controlled, rewarded, and punished by himself, according to his own judgment, passion, or will. The Græco-Rossian Church is kept under the same discipline as the army, and an offending pope is sent, with the rank of private, to some remote regiment.

The author of the letter from Paris somewhat contradictorily asserts that the women, being superior in Poland, govern the men, but are themselves governed entirely by the priests. This scarcely tallies with strict logic; but, for the sake of truth and of a just respect for our mothers, who taught us to love our country and freedom, who gave us strength in exile, and faith through persecution, and who instructed us how to think, and inspired us with those noble sentiments, seemingly denied to the mothers of the 'fashionable civilization' (of St. Petersburg), among whom there is not one lady writer—we will thank this writer for the refutation offered by him to an impudent slander, emanating from a contributor to Chambers' Magazine, of January last. We repeat that we thank him for his just tribute to Polish women, however inimical he may be to the Polish cause, and however much he may depreciate our sex. Yet it seems strange that, while accusing Polish women of being entirely under the control of the priests, and hence to have been chiefly instrumental in fomenting the last insurrection, the author did not notice, or is purposely silent regarding, a fact which, as he appears to have been longer in a Galician chateau than elsewhere, must have fallen under his notice, namely, that in Galicia, the Polish priest was the most decided opponent to any insurrection. How, then, could the active Polish women-patriots be instruments of the action condemned by the apologists of the absolute government of Rossia?

The admonition to France, on the ground that, after the revolution of 1789, she is committing a contradictory error by showing sympathy toward a revolution gotten up by priests, is but a consequence of the first judgment, and we may leave to France and her sense of her own interests to do what she may think right and profitable. We will simply mention that, for French glory, and for this error, as the author calls it, two hundred thousand Poles were slain in Egypt, Italy, San Domingo, Spain, Germany, Holland, and on the plains of Mozajsk, Kraslaw, Boryssow, Eylau, Friedland, etc. The monument seen from the balcony of the Tuileries has the names upon it, which we scarcely can suppose to have been inscribed for the sole purpose of filling space.

The friends of Poland believe that they serve the cause of progress by aiding in the reëstablishment of the Polish nation. We presume there are plenty of men in France who know that during the last thirty years Rossia has spread her dominion in Asia over twice the area of Germany and France together, that she is only eighty miles from Peking, and as far from India as Vienna is from the Black Sea. Moreover, Asiatic people, always dreaming of plunder in Europe, once armed with European Minié rifles and rifled cannon, may repeat anew the incursions of Attila, Tamerlane, Battu, etc. The end to be gained and the booty will create the temptation, and offer superior inducements.

The effort to palliate Rossian cruelty, skilful as it is, by the alleged necessities of war, by denials, or by asserting it to be mere revenge for similar atrocities committed by Poles, must be appreciated according to the sources whence it emanates. What the letter writer or similar twelve-hour visitors saw in Poland, particularly in Kracow, of people sharpening knives or preparing deadly poisons, need here be merely referred to by saying that in times of general confusion we have no means to foresee or to control personal revenge, and also that we will not here cite the reports of Polish papers or accounts of Germans. We will take our data from the Moscow Invalid, the czar's Universal Journal at Warsaw, and the Journal de Petersbourg. From these we find it stated that the number of men hanged in three hundred and sixty-five days of insurrection was eight hundred and fifty, besides many others whose names were not given because it was simpler and more profitable to ignore their origin, class, and religion.

From Kiow alone Anienkow sent away fourteen thousand men, chiefly of Greek or other non-Roman-Catholic religion, over whom the Catholic priest had neither control or influence. From Warsaw, every Saturday during fifty-two weeks, an average of four hundred men, women, and children were deported, all separated from their natural guides and protectors. From Liefland, north of the Dwina, were sent off, in one month, thirty-five hundred of the better educated and comfortable class of people. A Government paper rejoices that Polish and Catholic principles, growing there during five centuries, were in a fair way of extinction, since, as it itself admits, forty-five thousand men had been transferred to the governments of Samara, Orenburg, Kazan, and similar localities. To burn the villages of Ibanie, Szarki, Hrodki, Smoloy, Zabolocie, etc., to destroy the furniture, horses, cattle, and all other property, to send the inhabitants on foot, only allowing for the aged and young children a few small wagons, far away into a cold, strange, savage country, without tools, means, etc.—was all this done merely as a military necessity, and was it excusable, or, at most, merely blamable?

Now, certain correspondents and lecturers, with other gentlemen, deny the use of the lash or whip on the backs of women and ladies, because the American people cannot countenance such barbarism. To say the least of such a denial—it is gratuitous. Austria daily publishes similar judgments as the result of police court trials. In Rossia, they are not published, because the administration of lash, whip, and scourge is left to the paternal discretion of every sergeant, lieutenant, police commissary, and district constable, and is enjoyed by them to their hearts' content. It is the method employed for ages by Rossia, and considered as an indispensable appendage to patriarchal czarism and its lieutenants. We cannot wonder at such denials, for their authors have ordinarily been brought up under a better state of things, and never learned in their youth the possibility of resort to such practices: the less also can we wonder when we know that they met only similar denials in the higher Rossian society, and when we consider that such denials came from a source one is naturally inclined to respect, when the man denying seems respectable. How can we fancy a lie told by a gentleman in golden uniform, or a lady in a lace dress? But if the defenders of the civilization of Rossia and of the noble manners of its aristocracy knew all the cruel judgments of Rossian masters, the lewdness, recklessness, indecency, and shallowness often concealed beneath their artificial good breeding and apparent courtesy, they would learn that laces may cover coarse tissues, and gold hide corroded brass. The gaudy dress and uniform serve but to permit more daring deeds; the more they glitter, the more impunity they confer. Under every Government, and more especially under a despotism, subaltern officers may be sure of impunity to abuse, provided it is done under the guise of zeal and devotion.

During the past year we have heard and read in lectures, newspapers, correspondences, etc., many flattering statements of the beauty of the Rossian Government, and the czar's liberality—and as many accusations and imputations detrimental to the Polish cause. Why the same views were not held and advocated during the Crimean war we will not ask, but merely hint at. These statements come from organs whose purpose is readily divined. If we turn to the paper that has opened its columns to the Paris letter, we find close at hand the advertisement and recommendation of a programme for our own great country, and the pointing out of a new Garibaldi for the American Union. Now, neither said platform nor Garibaldi would be consistent with the condemnation, irony, and ridicule flung upon the champions for one thousand years of the growing progress, prosperity, and Christianity of Western Europe.

We of this generation are grown fixedly into our ancient habits of thought, and now can make no change; but our successors, perchance, may possibly be reduced to undersign the manifesto of Rossian Liberalism, published about a year ago in Moscow, and, in return for false promises and deceptions, consent to make common cause against Germany and the whole of Western Europe. What American liberties would gain by such an eventuality, is not for us, nor for to-day, to say.

APHORISMS.—NO. XI

'A man who has no wants has attained great freedom, and firmness, and even dignity.'—Burke.

'Mad wants and mean endeavors,' as Carlyle expresses it, 'are among the signal characteristics and great follies of our nature.'

But how can we attain to the freedom, firmness, and dignity of having no wants? Answer: By learning what our real necessities are, and limiting our sense of want by such knowledge. Otherwise there is little hope for us; for, as soon as we admit imaginary and factitious needs, we become the slaves of mere fancy, the sport of mere human opinion, and devoid of all true dignity.

How sublime, as compared with the ordinary condition of men, is the possibility suggested by Burke! Freedom, instead of such slavery as the love of pleasure occasions, or such as ambition entails upon men! Firmness, such as he has who does not feel compelled to ask how his conduct may affect the supply of his wants from day to day! Dignity, such as we see in every man who studies the great interests of his being, regardless of any harm that may thereby accrue to his earthly estate! So free, and firm, and dignified may each be that will.

But no such good is possible for men who allow their sense of want to be ruled by the common opinions of men. If the good at which we aim can be secured only by the possession of this world's favors, as they are dispensed by the wealthy or the powerful, or the suffrages of the multitude (votes for office, and the like), then each one becomes the servant of his fellow men—a servant just as really as if he were hired to perform any menial office. The party politician, for example, is just as fully bound by the will of others as a coachman or foot servant. For him neither freedom, firmness, or dignity is possible. He can do only as others bid him: he can resist no solicitations to evil on the part of those whom he would make his constituents: he has no dignity above that of a tool, in the hands, it may be, of a very unworthy master.

So in all cases where we allow ourselves to be dependent in such form and measure that in order to compass our own ends we must look to the will and behests of others.

AN ARMY: ITS ORGANIZATION AND MOVEMENTS

THIRD PAPER

Cavalry! At this word whose mind does not involuntarily recall pictures of mailed knights rushing upon each other with levelled lances, and of the charging squadrons of Austerlitz, of Jena, of Marengo, of the Peninsula, and of Waterloo? Whose blood is not stirred with a throng of memories connected with the noble achievements of the war horse and his rider? Who does not imagine a panorama of all that is gay and glorious in warfare—prancing coursers, gilded trappings, burnished sabres, waving pennons, and glittering helmets—rank after rank of gallant riders—anon the blast of bugles, the drawing of sabres, the mighty rushing of a thousand steeds, the clash of steel, the shout, the victory? The chief romance of war attaches itself to the deeds accomplished by the assistance of the power and endurance of man's noblest servant. Every one has read so much poetry about valiant youths, mounted on fiery yet docile steeds, doing deeds of miraculous prowess in the ranks of their enemies—our literature is so full of tapestried representations of knightly retinues and charging squadrons—the towering form of Murat is so conspicuous in the narratives of the Napoleonic wars—and history has so often repeated the deeds of those horsemen who performed such illustrious feats in the combats of half a century ago, that we associate with the cavalry only ideas of splendor and glory, of wild freedom and dashing gallantry. But the cavalry service is far different from such vague and fanciful imaginations. Instead of ease, there is constant labor; instead of freedom, there is a difficult system of discipline and tactics; and instead of frequent opportunities for glorious charges, there is a constant routine of toilsome duty in scouting and picketing, with rarely an opportunity for assisting prominently in the decision of a great battle, or of winning renown in overthrowing the ranks of an enemy by the impetuous rush of a mass of horses against serried bayonets.

In many respects cavalry is the most difficult branch of military service to maintain and to operate. It is exceedingly costly, on account of the great loss of horses by the carelessness of the men, by overwork, by disease, and by the fatalities of battle. The report of General Halleck, for the year 1863, stated that from May to October there were from ten thousand to fourteen thousand cavalry in the Army of the Potomac, while the number of horses furnished them for the same period was thirty-five thousand; adding to these the horses taken by capture and used for mounting men, the number would be sufficient to give each man a horse every two months. There were two hundred and twenty-three regiments of cavalry in the service, which, at the same rate, would require four hundred and thirty-five thousand horses. This is an immense expenditure of animals, and is attributable in part to the peculiarities of the volunteer service—such as the lack of care and knowledge on the part of the officers, and the disposition of the men to break down their horses by improper riding, and sometimes out of mere wantonness, for the purpose of getting rid of animals they do not like, for the chance of obtaining better. A measure has recently been adopted to remedy these evils, by putting into the infantry cavalry officers and men who show themselves incompetent to take proper care of their animals, and who neglect other essentials of cavalry service. The provision and transportation of forage for cavalry horses also constitute items of great cost.