THE 



MONTHLY MAGAZINE 



OF 



POLITICS, LITERATURE, AND THE BELLES LETTRES. 



Vol. XII.] AUGUST, 1831. [No. 68. 



THE STATE OF EUROPE. 



The eyes of the continent are henceforth to be fixed on Poland. 

 That country has nobly redeemed her pledge. She has been now 

 six months in arras, and she has not merely defended herself, but she 

 has struck deep and desperate blows at the supremacy of Russia. No 

 war within the memory of man has stirred so strong an interest in every 

 breast capable of a sentiment of honour. Or, if it is to find a rival, the 

 discovery must be made in her own history ; the patriotic heroism of 

 her living warriors can be compared only with that of the patriot armies 

 which defied Catherine ; and her generals at tliis hour are the only 

 men who can share the laurel with Kosciusko. 



It is cheering to our consciousness of the noble powers which may be 

 latent in man, until the occasion calls them forth, that Poland has fought 

 her battles alone, and yet has baffled the armies of the tyrant. Had she 

 been assisted by the strength of indignant Europe, had every man 

 whose bosom burned at the spectacle of Russian tyranny been seen 

 rushing into her ranks, the contest might have been sooner decided, but 

 it would have wanted those features of grandeur ; that Roman fortitude 

 which now invests it with dignity, and makes Poland an example to 

 all future nations, trampled on by a severe and barbarian master. Why 

 shall we endure the chain an hour longer ? will be the cry of the patriot 

 from his cottage or his dungeon. True, the oppressor is mighty and the 

 victim weak ; but was not Russia the military sovereign of the con- 

 tinent, dreaded or flattered by every power from the channel to the 

 Euxine? and was not Poland a broken and dismantled power, scarcely 

 to be called a power, a nation swept from the list of kingdoms, and at 

 best only a province of Russia, with a Russian governor, Russian 

 guards, Russian ministers, every office of public life, and almost every 

 emolument and enjoyment of private, monopolized by Russians ? Yet 

 against this immeasurable weight of hostile and jealous authority Poland 

 rose. She drove out the foreign governors and established native ; she 

 fought the foreign army, and gave an immortal attestation to the truth 

 of her cause, by the magnanimous valour of her resistance ; and, 

 finally, she took the sting from insurrection, and shewed that the most 

 daring intrepidity might be consistent with the utmost prudence, by 

 forming a constitution from which anarcliy was ex{)elled, and whose 

 M.M. New Series.— Vol. XII. No.(J8. Q 



