This: that in order to maintain a supremacy, which is always precarious, and always contested (because lawful wishes have not been responded to), Russia is obliged to compromise her whole policy. At every turn, in each combination or alliance, she is tied and bound, because evermore between her and those who might be her allies, there rises the phantom of Poland. But not only is her external policy hampered and entangled, but her internal rule is affected by the necessity for incessant tyranny. The great Lord Chatham once said, ‘If the English government subjects America to a despotic rule, so surely will England herself be obliged to submit to it.’ And herein exactly lies the bond which connects Polish agitation with those liberal aspirations which at the present time appear in Russia. It is no longer a secret that throughout all classes of Russian society sentiments of sympathy with Poland are being rapidly propagated, and that Russians begin to foresee, without disturbing themselves, that a separation of the two countries is really possible. A newspaper, which is published secretly in St. Petersburg, theWelicorus, expressed this very distinctly not long ago. ‘In order to maintain our rule in Poland, we are obliged to keep there a supplementary force of 200,000 men, and annually to disburse 40,000,000 of our moneyover and above those revenues which we draw from Poland. Now, our finances will never be better as long as we squander our resources in this way.... We must let Poland go, in order to save ourselves from destruction.... We can no longer conquer Poland, as in the time of Paskievitch, because there are now no internal discords in Poland; and in spite of the efforts of our government to sow division between the two classes, her patriots have consented to deprive themselves of a part of their own estates, and have settled them on the peasants.... For us Russians, it is a question whether we are to wait till we are ignominiously expelled from Poland, which, self-emancipated, will be our enemy, or whether we will be wise enough voluntarily to renounce a ruinous ascendency, and thus make the Poles faithful friends of Russia.’ Such is in very truth the question now in agitation; and Europe looks on attentively.
And as regards Europe herself, we must say, that this question of the relations of Russia with Poland, after the terrible drama of last year, is by no means an indifferent matter. The western world is at present passing through one of those crises, during which everything is experienced, where everything is renewed, and everything alters in appearance. That which forty years ago was called the order of Europe no longer exists; nor have the peoples alone violated it. The governments themselves have so far lent a hand tothe work, that, piece by piece, the fabric has fallen away.
The public order of 1815 is on the eve of disappearing, and what may be the new order which shall be brought forth by the labours of to-day assuredly no one can tell; but simply because we live at a time in which everything is recast, and re-elaborated, it is our first and best interest to watch the elements of this vast and universal movement, and carefully to consider every serious manifestation of the conscience of the nations. We must notice what dies and what lives. Russia, it has been said, ‘has a certain fear of the opinions of Europe.’ This opinion, most surely, has nothing in it hostile to Russia. On the contrary, Europe cannot but feel an interest in such labours as the emancipation of the serfs, of which the initiative was taken by the Emperor Alexander II., as also in that liberal work which is at present, day by day, evidently pursued in the heart of the Russian nation; but not the less, at the same time, is the eye of Europe upon that black spot at Warsaw. She sees and weighs both faults and misfortunes, and she says to herself, that, if faults have consequences, which follow them inevitably, there is not the less a fixed limit to a people’s misfortunes, and to a nation’s pangs.
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