14 Poland, Pasi and Present. [JAN. 



the author of the indignity, drove him out, and rushed to the quarters 

 of a regiment of the native guards, calling on them to rise against the 

 oppressors. The troops immediately followed the call, the spirit spread, 

 the Russian soldiery were everywhere gallantly and instantly attacked 

 and routed. The Grand Duke Constantine, the chief object of popular 

 hatred, was assaulted in his palace at night by the troops, was wounded 

 in the head, and escaped with difficulty to the suburb of Praga, at the 

 opposite side of the river, where a Russian detachment had its quarters. 

 A great deal of confused and, as its appears, sanguinary, fighting took 

 place in Warsaw during the night, and an extraordinary number of 

 Russian officers of high rank had fallen, probably surprised in 

 their quarters, or exposing themselves in this desperate state of their 

 affairs. By morning the citizens were masters of Warsaw, the Russians 

 were either expelled or captured ; Constantine had declared his intention 

 of offering no immediate resistance to the public proceedings, a burgher 

 guard had been formed, a provisional government of the first nobles of 

 the country installed, a general appointed, and a national call made to 

 all Poles serving in the Russian, Prussian, and other foreign armies, to 

 join their countrymen. Deputations had been also sent through the 

 provinces, and to St. Petersburgh. And, with the winter to impede the 

 advance of the Russian army, and with the spirit existing in Europe, the 

 Poles contemplated a triumph over their long degradation. 



We are no lovers of revolutions. We know their almost necessary 

 evil, their fearful summoning of the fiercer passions of our nature, the 

 sullen, civil hatred by which brother is armed against brother, the long 

 ordeal of furious licence, giddy anarchy, and promiscuous slaughter ! 

 Of all this we are fully aware. The crime of the man who lets loose 

 the revolutionary plague, for revenge, love of gain, or love of power, is 

 beyond all measure and all atonement. 



The first revolution of France, in 1789, was an abhorred effort of an 

 ambition which nothing could satiate, and nothing could purify. The 

 late revolution was a thing of strong necessity, less an assault on the 

 privileges of royalty, than a vindication of human nature. The people 

 who could have succumbed under so base and insolent a violation of 

 kingly promises, would have virtually declared themselves slaves, and 

 fit for nothing but slaves. The Polish revolution is justified by every 

 feeling which makes freedom of religion, person, and property dear to 

 man. Poland owes no allegiance to Russia. The bayonet gave, and the 

 bayonet will take away. So perish the triumph that scorns justice, and 

 so rise the holy claim of man, to enjoy unfettered the being that God has 

 given him. 



Nothing in history is equal in guilty and ostentatious defiance of all 

 principle to the three Partitions of Poland. The pretences for the seizure 

 of the Polish provinces were instantly the open ridicule of all Europe. 

 But Russia, Prussia, and Austria had the power ; they scorned to wait 

 for the right ; they as profligately scorned to think of the torrents of 

 blood that must be poured out in the struggle by the indignant Poles. 

 Thousands of gallant lives sacrificed in the field ; tens of thousands de- 

 stroyed by the more bitter death of poverty, exile, the dungeon, and the 

 broken heart ; the whole productive power of a mighty kingdom ex- 

 tinguished for half a century ; fifteen millions of human beings with- 

 drawn from the general stock of European cultivation, and branded into 

 hewers of wood and drawers of water, the helots of the modern world ! 



