From The Spectator, 9 May. RUSSIA VS. COSMOPOLITAN REVOLUTION.

ing and misfortune." With these views Russia has kindly undertaken to teach France and England how they may best aid the cause of durable tranquillity and temperate freedom in Poland, and thinks they will do so best

THE Russian tactics are by no means either contemptible or obscure. Prince Gortschakoff has replied diplomatically, and General" by laboring to appease the moral and mateBerg appears to have replied practically, to the demands of the Western Powers in much the same sense, viz., " Help us to crush that Cosmopolitan Revolution' which is the eurse of our age,' and which rather avails itself of the restlessness of the Poles than originates in Poland, and we will then think of meeting your views; but without your help to throttle the spirit of revolution in the other European States we shall never quiet this Polish nation, spoilt and pampered with only too much freedom. That is virtually Prince Gortschakoff's very complacent reply,-conveyed somewhat roughly to England because, as he had observed to Lord Napier in the interview of the 9th of March, "the Polish insurrection was the result of a democratic and anti-social conspiracy deeply laid and widely organized in foreign capitals, from which he could not except London,"-conveyed in more complimentary language to France, partly, perhaps, because Prince Gortschakoff thinks France more likely to be active in the matter, still more because he does believe the Emperor of the French unfriendly to, and even afraid of, the " Cosmopolitan Revolution," while he knows that England has nothing to fear and much to hope from organic changes in the despotic European States. But the drift of his reply to both France and England is identical, and bordering on effrontery. He is painfully aware of the unfortunate results of the Polish disturbances to the peace of Europe, but he is still more painfully aware of the disastrous results of European opinion to the peace of Poland. He is only surprised that the emperor, his august master, has resisted the shock of that "Cosmopolitan RevIolution which is the curse of our age, so long and effectually in Poland. It was the French Revolutionaries of 1830 who fired the great Polish insurrection of that year. In 1848 Poland was so well cared for and looked after, as the Russian vice-chancellor rehearses with melancholy retrospective pride, that "while almost the whole of Europe was convulsed by the Revolution, the kingdom of Poland was able to preserve its tranquillity," -and if it has not been so in 1863, it is, as the Russian vice-chancellor explained carefully to Lord Napier, " in consequence of the countenance given to their absurd expectations by foreign Governments." "The Governments," Prince Gortschakoff mournfully added, "which afforded such countenance would hereafter regret the result of a policy which could only enlarge the circle of suffer

rial disorder which it is sought to propagate in Europe, and thus to exhaust the main source of the agitations at which their foresight is alarmed." That is the final conclusion of Prince Gortschakoff's reply to Lord Russell, and rather more courteously expressed, of his reply also to M. Drouyn de Lhuys. If we really want to assist Poland, the best thing we can do is, we suppose he means, to pass a conspiracy law, suspend the Habeas Corpus, apprehend all the suspicious foreigners in the neighborhood of Leicester Square, and, if it could only be made consistent with our morbid English ideas, to take M. de Bismark for our model, and send back to Russian executioners all the political suspects we could lay hands upon. If France and England would only embark heartily on this course of kidnapping the Revolution, instead of paralyzing all the praiseworthy efforts of Russia and Marquis Wielopolski in that direction, how soon might not Poland again be in that enviable state of tranquillity in which the Revolution of 1848, that convulsed almost all the rest of Europe, found her! But to complain of the fermentation and yet supply the yeast, why, that is scarcely decent, and certainly not practical, Such is the true point of the Russian reply on paper,-and the reply in deeds is still more distinct. England asks for the re-establishment of the constitution proclaimed by Alexander for the Duchy of Warsaw in 1815. The Russian Government, while not declining at some distant future period to think of and discuss such a point, for the present simply puts an end to the civil Government of Poland through Polish officials altogether, and empowers General Berg to install two Russian military rulers in every country, making a total of sixty-eight in the duchy, "superseding to all intents and purposes the civil administration of the law." This is meant as a home-thrust against Revolution in the Duchy of Warsaw. Remove the Poles en masse, extirpate all the local feeling in order to strike at this foreign revolutionary propagandism. The Polish mayors and magistrates and deputy-lieutenants are swept away at one stroke, and the country put under arbitrary Russian soldiers. The Polish Secret Committee reply on the theory of similia similibus curantur, by ordering all Polish civilians in all stations, however subordinate to the number of many thousands—to quit work entirely, and leave the Russians to carry out their plans in a foreign land, and in the midst

of a foreign tongue, without any mediating himself, probably, did not wish for this fuagencies. While Lord Russell is correspond- sion, and would have been quite content to ing with Lord Napier about satisfied national wear the crown of Poland with the diadem aspirations, amnesties, and restored constitu- of Russia. But this was so utterly opposed tions, Russia is hard at work eradicating the to all the hopes and wishes of the Russian "Cosmopolitan" Revolution in Poland by bureaucracy, that Alexander was personally the very unique process of making Poles feel overborne, and the tradition has since been that if they are citizens at all, they are citi- unbroken that anything may be yielded to zens of the world, not of Poland. It is not Poland short of encouraging a separate naearnest Polish feeling at all that Prince Gort- tional development. Prince Gortschakoff exschakoff says he fears, the peasantry are de- plains again and again to Lord Napier how voted, and the great nobility strongly favor- anxious the czar is to give freedom to Poland able, he thinks, to Russia. But, then, to in any shape that will not tend to cherish the cauterize this cancer of foreign origin, what dream of a distinct self-government-but as can be so effective as to excoriate the native for a separate budget, army, and parliament, Administration? When the Polish civilians such as Alexander professed to grant, why, are entirely out of work, they will go and re- they would mean a guarantee of national inside in London and Paris, and convert the dependence, and this nothing shall induce dangerous Cosmopolitan Revolution to more her to give willingly. It is the Hungarian Russian views of men and things. Poland question over again, complicated with the not being in any sense the centre of the disaf- difficulty that in Russian Poland there is a fection, our "anti-social and democratic "risk in losing a partly amalgamated strip of Reds will, of course, be easily convinced, by by personal intercourse with Poles, that they are wasting their energies on an ungrateful country, which is at bottom deeply attached to Russian rule.

The replies of Russia, and the practical course she is so eagerly taking in consequence of French and English counsel, will, however, teach our statesmen one thing,-that, alike for all parties concerned, the re-establishment of Congress-Poland and Alexander's Constitution is not a point worth aiming at. Russia resists it with all her force, because she knows it would be a permanent focus of Cosmopolitan Revolution, instead of a bulwark against it. She appeals to the treaty of 1815, not to justify Polish constitutionalism, but to disprove the right of Polish nationality. By those treaties Europe formally sanctioned, or rather insisted on prolonging the dismemberment of Poland, while trying to make a lame compromise with her. While we appeal to them on behalf of that compromise, Russia looks to them as giving her an absolute security against the revival of the national idea. She does not seriously object to our pleas for representative institutions, so long as they do not obstruct the deliberate policy of the Russification of Poland. The czar with his liberal ideas would promise any amount of local self-government to-morrow, if he could but bar out absolutely the dream of a separate national life. It was not the liberty of the subject and the press, per se, which offended Russia, in the working of Alexander's Constitution, it was the use made of these powerful instruments to revive the national hope of independence for the Polish nation. The Polish Diet and Polish army were found in fact inconsistent with any effectual fusion of the two races. Alexander

empire along with that which is wholly hostile to the Muscovite rule.

It is not the wish for self-government but the yearning for national self-subsistence which Prince Gortschakoff so oddly ascribes to a Cosmopolitan Revolution, and calmly requests France and England to help him in strangling. If we could wring from him the restoration of Alexander's national idea for Congress-Poland, we could wring from him quite as easily, if not more easily, the reconstitution of both Russian and Congress-Poland into a single independent State, under the hereditary crown of Russia, and inseparable from it. This measure, though in the end it would scarcely prove feasible, would probably satisfy the Cosmopolitan Revolution, while the other would only irritate it into pernicious activity. It is clear that Russia will oppose the one as long and angrily as the other, because she knows, indeed, that the one is but a preliminary step to the other, ensuring further agitation and imposing an absolute necessity of further concession. It would be more dignified and more statesman-like to take the two steps in one, than to take the one which is a mere license to Poland to extort the other. Indeed, the great crime of the recent conscription in open violation of the laws of 1859 was simply and purely a speculative attempt at denationalizing Poland-far less a conspiracy against freedom than a conspiracy against nationality. It was only the promise of Alexander to extend the Duchy of Warsaw to Russian Poland, and the reservation of power in the Treaty of Vienna to this effect, which kept the Poles quiet from 1815 to 1830. When that hope expired, and it became evident that the mention of a restored Poland was far more obnoxious to the Russian Gov

ernment than any pressure for increased rep-sential to any successful blockade the right resentative rights,-when it became certain to investigate freely the evidence as to any that the czar would rather have seen every ship's destination. Those who say that bePolish province really self-governed if absorbed in the Russian empire, than even despotically ruled by himself if bound together in one national destiny-the Poles broke out into revolution. And the present revolution is really due to this same yearning-expressed by Zamoyski on behalf of his countrymen in 1862 in most temperate words which were punished as treasonable, far more than to any democratic impulse.

cause the Peterhoff's papers were made out for Matomoras, it was certainly bound thither, say what they cannot prove, and what no belligerent would accept on that evidence. No doubt the right of search is very inconvenient for neutrals, as we now find; but if we ever wish to exercise it again as a belligerent, we must take care, even if led by no higher and nobler consideration, not to be led away by the advocates who are only When Russia reviles the Cosmopolitan pleading for our immediate wishes, not for Revolution of 1860-62, and points with tri- our permanent interests as a maritime, State. umph to the tranquillity of Poland in 1848,-Spectator, 9 May.

she knows what she means. The present movement is almost wholly one of nations THE Russian Government has replied to the asking for their natural unity,-the last was in great measure one of democrats dreaming of Chartists' governments, and, therefore, the present movement is far more dangerous to Russia than the last. But when she exhorts us to aid her in putting down this tendency by a spontaneous Anti-Nationalist alliance, she becomes herself the true apostle of Cosmopolitan Propagandism-the Propagandism which invites all men to crush the ties of national brotherhood so far as they tend to disturb the artificial order of obsolete treaties and an unholy alliance. In this appeal England, at least, will not aid, and France is likely to resist her,-for the Emperor of the French, though he has evidently lost all faith in liberty, still appears to believe in the solidarité of peoples, the resurrection of nationalities, and his own mission to the map of Europe.

Three Powers-to France in a very conciliatory spirit; to England at length, and not without severity of tone; to Austria with curt, good-natured indifference. To all three Prince Gortschakoff insists on the crimes of the "Cosmopolitan Revolution" which has lighted these fires in Poland. To all three he professes the ardent desire of his august master to give permanent peace and prosperity to Poland, and denies that this can be done till the revolutionary tendencies have been fairly beaten in Poland and smothered in the other European States. The reply to England is by far the most elaborate, though the least conciliatory, and is, in effect, when you have distilled away the fluid words, a refusal to re-establish Alexander's Constitution of 1815, or anything like it. It is said, that after the replies to the notes of the great powers had been sent, Prince Gortschakaff read a confidential note to the three ambassadors in St. Petersburg, explaining the programme of reforms intended to be carried out in Poland by the emperor. The introduction of these reforms would be made directly after the pacification of Poland. Long, then, may it be delayed!

"HISTORICUS" in another very able letter, has proved pretty clearly that Mr. Seward has not only acted temperately, but has waived a strict right, in forwarding the Peterhoff mail unopened to its destination. Lord Stowell's decisions show clearly that the mail-bag of the country was not regarded as sacred from the search of the belligerent, It is stated from St. Petersburg that the -indeed, that evidence of the destination and growing popularity of the Polish revolt in purposes of a vessel may be sought everywhere Sweden and in Finland is creating considerwithin her. It is clear that even in a much able alarm. The Governor-General of Finstronger case, when a neutral (Danish) con- land speaks of the growing restlessness of voy was taking a neutral ship to her destina- the people, and urges the Government to intion, we refused to consider the convoy any crease the Russian force there. The fear of guarantee that the ship was really going aid to the insurgents from Sweden is causing whither it asserted that it was going. Now the equipment of a fleet of twelve vessels at a ship of the royal navy is a much more trust- Cronstadt. The emperor is clearly contemworthy security for the destination of a ves-plating war as very probable. In answer to sel than any mail-bag can be, and yet we in- a loyal address from Moscow, he says, "I still sisted on our right to search that ship for have hopes that we may avoid a general war. evidence as to its real destination. It is clear If however, war should be our destiny, I am that, looking at our rights as a belligerent, it convinced we shall know how to defend the would be an extremely rash and silly proceed- boundaries of the empire and the countries ing to surrender now what is absolutely es- which are inseparably connected with it."

11. A Suggestion to the Publishers of The Living Age, National Intelligencer, 12. The Quarterlies,

526

Examiner,

527

13. Poland before the Insurrection,

POETRY.-The Search among the Slain, 482. Song of New England Spring Birds, 482. All's Well, 482.

SHORT ARTICLES.-Bishop Ken, 498. Sublime, 498. Knight of the sia's Reason, 506. Weather Prophecy, 506. The Untied States, 509. in England, 519. Anglo-Chinese Empire, 522. Colored Cotton, 522. Names in -ingham, 522.

Carpet, 503. Rus-
Female Education
Pronunciation of

PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY
CO.,

SON & &

CO., BOSTON.

LITTELL,

For Six Dollars a year, in advance, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded free of postage.

Complete sets of the First Series, in thirty-six volumes, and of the Second Series, in twenty volumes, handsomely bound, packed in neat boxes, and delivered in all the principal cities, free of expense of freight, are for sale at two dollars a volume.

ANY VOLUME may be had separately, at two dollars, bound, or a dollar and a half in numbers.

ANY NUMBER may be had for 13 cents; and it is well worth while for subscribers or purchasers to complete any broken volumes they may have, and thus greatly enhance their value.