On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
from this brave but unfortunate people , so that the expatriated in Europe may return to their families and homes . The palaces are stripped of all their royal possessions ; and the removal of the libraries ^ &c , at the university , had either taken place , or was about to take place ,
" when I left . By the bye , they had commenced to build the fortresses before I left ; and the poor Poles are compelled to raise these structures , the guns mounted on which are , some day or other , to fire upon them . The recruiting- system has long- since commenced , and all the Polish soldiers who have returned are oblisred to enter the Russian
ranks . All families , by order of the Emperor , must give , if they have two sons , one to his army . Russia keeps herself in ready preparation for war ; and the ambition of her repeated victories induces , her to hold the opinion , some day or other , to march and conquer Prance as her army is now in Poland . —p . 47—51 . Are these things to be , without a universal cry of disgust , horror , and reprobation ? Is a withdrawn motion or two in the
House of Commons sufficient to satisfy our national conscience ? Is all our justice , humanity , and Christianity evaporated by Hindoo suttees and negro slavery ? Why that slavery , to the poor wretches born in it , can scarcely be so bad as the change which Polish nobles , and even the Polish peasantry , have been in so many cases made to undergo ; and the suttee of the Hindoo widow is an immolation more tolerable than the agony of many a Polish mother . We would not write a syllable in palliation of
those enormities ; but let them not exhaust our sympathies ; let not the Polish question be postponed to them , simply for that reason which ought to ensure its precedence , because its importance is thereby tenfold enhanced , —that it is more directly a political question . It is so ; and therefore it involves our interests as well as our feelings . Nor is it a subject on which to talk of confidence in ministers . Their dilatory and timid policy is alike unsatisfactory , whether it be the result of their own views , or
forced upon them by uncontrollable circumstances . It may be that they need the alliance of such men in office as are believed on several occasions to have neutralized the liberal designs of the best portion of the Cabinet . It may be that they feel the necessity of compromising on some points with a Tory opposition . It may be that a Court , which ungraciously submitted to the compulsion of receiving them back , while in the very act of defiling the British name by its association with the Hanoverian adhesion
to Austrian liberticide , has ample means for the perversion of their foreign policy . Whatever supposition be made , no vindication can be established of a quiescent confidence . It is for the British people to form and express their opinion . Success to the labours of the Polish Literary Society in providing the means for both ! The constitution of this Society may be seen in the Magazine from which we have just been quoting . Its numbers are rapidly increasing , and its grotvth is a heartfelt solace and hope % X > * hfc patriot exiles , pf whom there are now so many in the
Untitled Article
W 4 Publications oflhe Polish Literary Society
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1832, page 594, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1820/page/18/
-