586 The State of Europe. [JUNE, 



into exile ; it has filled no dungeons, it has erected no scaffolds. It has 

 summoned the strength of the country to rise in a generous attempt; and 

 if ever oppression and treachery justified such a rising, it was then, against 

 a power which had no right of possession but the sword, and no hold on 

 allegiance but the chain. 



Poland has succeeded miraculously ; for, three months ago, when it 

 was announced that the Russian armies were marching upon Warsaw, 

 the cause was universally declared to be lost ; military men declared on 

 all hands, that the first conflict must shatter the Polish levies to pieces ; 

 and politicians looked for no hope of saving the people from massacre, 

 but in the immediate submission and final servitude of the country. Yet 

 the ruin which was to have swept Poland from the list of nations in 

 December, has not yet fallen in June. 



The struggle is still sustained, and if some of her detached armies 

 have been driven off the field by the force of an empire which boasts of 

 half a million of men under arms, the main body still continues entire, 

 the government is unshaken, the capital is unattacked, and the spirit 

 of the country is as resolute as ever. 



But the Poles have wisely not been insensible to the aspect which 

 their contest must assume in the eyes of foreign states. They have sent 

 deputies to the principal powers, and have seconded their representa- 

 tions by natural and manly addresses. In an appeal to Europe by the 

 Secretary of State at Warsaw ; after declaring that the capital and the 

 whole right bank of the Vistula had been cleared from the enemy, he 

 claims the recognition of the rights of Poland, in language full of the 

 eloquence of reason. (t If," he says, " Belgium, which never ranked 

 among states, if Greece, whose political existence has been annihilated 

 for ages, have obtained, among all the uncertainty of war, the recogni- 

 tion of their independence, I ask if Poland have not stronger grounds for 

 her pretensions, that Poland, whose national existence, extinguished for 

 a moment, revives with so much vigour, sustains itself with so much 

 energy, and at the price of so many sacrifices, that Poland, which, alone 

 and without aid., has dared to combat with the Giant of the North, and 

 has already overthrown the illusion of his power." The argument has 

 received a noble confirmation from the swords of the people. One of 

 the comments upon this is equal to the original. " If," says the Polish 

 Statesman, " it may be urged in the forceful language of the secretary, 

 in opposition to this, that Russia, that power so redoubtable to all Eu- 

 rope, can, even after a desperate contest, reduce us to submission, and 

 pacify, by exterminating us ; the peace of slavery the peace of the 

 tomba peace of such a nature as to excite a terrible war on the first 

 favourable opportunity can such a peace meet the noble and dignified 

 intentions of the European "Powers ?" 



It can never be the policy of England, nor of any wise and honest 

 nation, to interfere in every petty quarrel of foreigners. But if ever 

 there was a ground for intervention, it is here. We see a nation of brave 

 men, rising against a sullen slavery, and defying it with a vigour in the 

 field, utterly disproportioned to its resources, and matched by nothing 

 but its determination to be free from the unrighteous yoke of a barbarian 

 oppressor. On this sight it is impossible for any being who has a heart 

 in his bosom to look without the strongest sympathy. Hitherto this 

 sympathy has been inert ; it has limited itself to words, and neither the 

 remonstrances of England nor the menaces of France will check Russia 



