LAST WEEK.
Thirty years of the sternest tyranny and oppression which the brains of Russian statesmen could conceive, and the arms of Russian soldiers carry out in practice, have been insufficient to destroy the national spirit of the Poles. We have been sympathising of late with the miseries of the Hungarians and Italians, but every one seemed to hold the opinion that the designs against the national life of Poland had succeeded only too well, and that she had become actually absorbed into the huge bulk of the Russian Empire. The nobles and leaders of the country had fallen on the battle-field, or had paid upon the scaffold the price of their patriotism: the middle classes had fared no better, though, as being more numerous, they had supplied a greater number of victims to the firing parties and to the executioner; all interest in the soil, where it was possible (and a good deal has been possible to the Russians in Poland for the last thirty years), had been transferred into the hands of Russian holders; the Polish language had been proscribed; the literature of the country condemned as dangerous—to sing a Polish song in Poland was an overt act of treason! Poland was gorged with Russian troops, and covered with police spies. The commonest intercourse of domestic life afforded matter for suspicion. To speak implied guilt, and silence was pregnant proof of a plotting mind. For thirty years this system has been continued. Another generation, and yet another, has grown up since “order was restored at Warsaw,” and these had been brought up after the strictest fashion of the Moscovite. So it happened that we had all arrived at the conclusion that there had been a death in the great family of European nations—that the grass was growing thick and rank over the grave of what once was Poland. Men mentioned her name with a shudder, and a nameless feeling, that years ago a terrible crime had been worked out down by Warsaw, and they went about their business, thinking that all this sorrow and misery were of the past.
This is not so. Of Poland we may say, “She is not dead, but sleepeth.” All the shedding of innocent blood, the banishments, the scourgings, the hangings, the proscription of the national language, the confiscation of the soil, have proved of no effect. The Russian soldiers and Russian spies—although they did their work thoroughly enough to all appearance—have made but a half job of it after all. A nation which still reaches the number of 15,000,000 of souls requires a great deal of killing before the land is disencumbered of the human lumber. Cholera could do more than a field-marshal, but even cholera would fail to accomplish such a task as this in six campaigns. It turns out that the pulse of Poland beats strong as ever. Now, when the military system of Russia has been shrewdly shaken by the results of the Crimean campaign; and the young Emperor is settling accounts with his serfs throughout the empire; and the Slavonic populations of the East of Europe, whatever may be the national name they bear, are beginning to arise against their oppressors; and the political conditions of the time are such that France is armed to the teeth, and ready to make her profit of the greatest or of the smallest blunder of Russia, of Austria, or of Prussia; and when the sympathies of England are warmly with the nations, which have been so long and so cruelly trampled under foot,—Poland in the fulness of time again stands forth to ask account of Russia for all the sufferings she has undergone, and for the blood of her murdered children. Where the great secret of “nationality” has been so long preserved, and in the teeth of such appalling dangers and difficulties, we may be sure that the sentiment of patriotism is no sickly shrub. No one has marked its growth, but it stands revealed at once a stately tree. Not the dew of Heaven, but the heart’s blood of Poland’s best and bravest sons has refreshed its leaves—the soil into which it has struck its roots so firmly has been fertilised with all that was mortal of the remains of three generations of unyielding men. It will not be withered up with the first chill blast from the north, nor yield readily to the blows of the Russian axe, no matter how strong may be the arms which poise the blow. We must not, however, in such a case as this be carried away overmuch by feeling. Save in the case of foreign intervention—and this means French intervention—any attempt at a national insurrection would again be quenched in blood. The heart of Poland beats as firmly, and the arm of Poland is as strong as ever; but without arsenals, magazines, artillery, organised forces, and, above all, financial credit, what could the Poles hope to accomplish against the Russian regiments, even thinned as they have been by the events of the Crimean War? If, indeed, the serious complications, which many persons anticipate, were to take place in Hungary; if the Russians, by some consummate blunder, were to expose themselves to such a catastrophe as Europe has already witnessed some half century ago, there might come a moment when a great enterprise might be attempted which would, if successful, undo that work of the cruel Triumvirate, which is known as the Partition of Poland. Otherwise the favourable chances are small. As many of us as remember the fatal days of Warsaw, which followed upon the French Revolution of 1830, would be slow to indulge in expressions of sympathy which might raise hopes which we could not fulfil. We left Hungary to her fate, and Italy too, in 1849, notwithstanding that the great bulk of the British nation sympathised most heartily with the cause of the Italians and the Hungarians. Even more recently the moral support afforded by Great Britain to the Italian Revolution has been of most efficient aid; but we should not have gone to war for the sake of the Italian Peninsula, and Europe knows it! Were the Poles so ill advised as to rely upon British enthusiasm for more than a good subscription, they would find themselves grievously mistaken, and their last condition would be worse than their first. It was good news, as far as it went, which was published in London on Friday last, to the effect that the party in Poland which was for open insurrection, was but small. The Poles, generally, were convinced that any such