LITHUANIA AND ITS PEOPLE. Ill 



he can to relieve the irksomeness of his exile. But the 

 question which I cannot help asking myself, and to 

 which I have not yet been able to find a satisfactory 

 answer is, Why is such a man in exile at all? If he had 

 been really guilty of doing anything, directly or indi- 

 rectly, to promote the work of revolution, is it to be 

 supposed, that, in the present temper of the Russian 

 Government, his life or property would not have been 

 immediately forfeited ? The mere fact that his life and 

 property are spared is proof incontrovertible that the 

 charges attempted to be brought against him are false ; 

 and that the Government knows them to be false. But, 

 if false, why not admit their falsehood ? Why not punish, 

 as they deserve, the perjured witnesses that dared to 

 slander him? Why not fully reinstate the Count in the 

 property of which he is the rightful owner, and to the 

 improvement of which he is ready to devote his fortune 

 and the best energies of his noble nature ? There is, 

 indeed, one answer, and only one, but who can call it a 

 satisfactory answer ? to be returned to these and other 

 like questions, namely, that the unsparing rigour of 

 Mouravieff's government forbids the display, I will not 

 say, of mercy, but of any approach to equity or fair 

 dealing towards any Pole, whose name has been in 

 the slightest degree associated it matters not how 

 wrongly with the insurgent cause. The fate of 

 Count Bisping is but the fate of hundreds and 

 thousands of others who, like him, are, or were, landed 

 proprietors in Lithuania and the adjoining provinces. 

 The system pursued has been simply a system of 

 indiscriminate proscription ; and, even whilst these sheets 

 are passing through the press, I observe a proclama- 

 tion, lately issued by Mouravieff and now making the 

 circuit of every journal in Europe in which he regards 

 with wondrous self-complacency the work done by his 

 hands within the last few months, and prides himself in 

 the belief that there is no longer left, throughout the 

 extensive districts entrusted to his charge, a single 



