Kingdom of Poland

“ How indeed should such a limited population resist their preponderance? Then how can we forget our brethren who are under the Russian sceptre? Is it possible that our hearts should not suffer from their not being united with us? We had the emperor’s sacred word that this union should take place. The Kingdom of Poland would then have consisted of 10 or 11 millions of souls, and like the Kingdom of Hungary, it would have had its own constitution and its own laws, though united with the empire of Russia. ”

“ Such a new reign of clemency awakened hope in Poland that it too might share these benefits. First it was a Constitution such as had been given to Hungary for which they prayed. Then, as Italy was emancipating herself, they grew bolder, and, incited by societies of Polish exiles, all over Europe, demanded more: that they be given independence. Again the hope of a Polo-Lithuanian alliance, and a recovery of the lost Polish provinces in the Ukraine, and the reestablishment of an independent kingdom of Poland, dared to assert itself, and to invite a more complete destruction. ”

“ The partition of the Polish kingdom is nearly a hundred years old. But it will not allow the three powers that accomplished it to be at peace. Even now it demands great efforts to establish it as just and right. It is not enough that they have caused the history of the world to be written as if all the blame were on the side of this old Poland. It is not enough that what among other people is counted as virtue or duty—love of one's country, its memories and language, hatred for its enemies and detractors—is branded and punished when professed by a Pole. ”

“ In the same way, they contend, there are certain provinces in Germany, Austria and{35} Russia, which for historical and ethnographical reasons must be united and restored to form an independent Kingdom of Poland. They are inhabited by a Polish population, which is quite distinct from the various nations who have partitioned its territories among themselves, and the fact that Poland has suffered so long under this wrongful appropriation which was finally confirmed more than a century ago does not abrogate or dilute the justice of the claim. ”

“ The truth is, that Poland has never yet surrendered her rightful claim to be considdrerd an independet nation. The partition of the old kingdom of Poland in 1772 was a crime which the conscience of Europe has never condoned ”

“ For over a hundred years Poland had been a dismembered kingdom, part of which belonged to the Tsar, part to the German, part to the Austrian Empire, and yet the course of the war has caused all the allied countries in turn to demand and to reiterate their demand for the independence of Poland. ”

“ Southwest of the tsardom of Muscovy and east of the Holy Roman Empire was the kingdom of Poland, to which Lithuanians as well as Poles owed allegiance. Despite wide territories and a succession of able rulers, Poland was a weak monarchy. Lack of natural boundaries made national defense difficult. Civil war between the two peoples who composed the state and foreign war with the neighboring Germans worked havoc and distress. An obstructive parliament of great lords rendered effective administration impossible. The nobles possessed the property and controlled politics ”

“ Fourthly:—All these stipulations were obligatory upon Russia not only as they regarded the Poles, but the other contracting powers, who had desisted from the re-establishment of Poland upon these conditions. Not being able to interpose between themselves and Russia the barrier of an independent kingdom of Poland, under a dynasty of its own, they had at least secured what independent Polish provinces, with a representation and national institutions of their own, could afford. ”

“ We find a free town, the last remaining image of former independence. We find the name of one common country consecrated by treaty, and resting upon the kingdom newly called into being. We see our right to a nationality made superior to all territorial demarcations. We read, in the first place, of the autonomy of the different provinces that have been dealt out to new masters, and that the map of old Poland is to be adopted and acted upon in material life; and we have a sort of Zollverein of commerce and navigation, serving as the sketch for a confederacy. ”

“ No kingdom in Europe has been subjected to so many Calamities of Poland. misfortunes and changes, considering its former greatness, as the Polish monarchy. Most of the European states have retained their ancient limits, for several centuries, without material changes, but Poland has been conquered, dismembered, and plundered. Its ancient constitution has been completely subverted, and its extensive provinces are now annexed to the territories of Russia, Austria, and Prussia. ”

“ Most of their domains in Poland were given up, Prussia getting new territory in West Germany and Austria in Italy. Their provinces in Poland were ceded to Alexander of Russia, who added to them some of his own Polish dominions, and formed a new kingdom of Poland, he being its king. So in a shadowy way Poland was brought to life again. England got for her share in the spoils a number of French and Dutch colonies, including Malta and the Cape Colony in Africa. Thus each of the great powers repaid itself for its losses. ”

“ No power can more effectually guarantee the universal repose of Europe, and the pacific feelings of its kingdoms towards one another, than that principle of cohesion, which arises from the attachment of a people for their native land, and from their consciousness of well-being. That such were the bonds by which his Imperial Highness hoped to attach to his Empire, the Poles who should be placed under his government. ”

“ It in fact made every individual of the nobility and gentry a distinct element in the organism; or to vary the expression, made him an estate of the kingdom. And yet this government lasted in this form more than two centuries, embracing the period of Poland's greatest power and renown. ”

“ During the wise reign of this prince (1547-1572) , whose tolerant policy in the matter of the great religious controversy then agitating Europe is not his least title to credit, Poland lost nothing of her prosperity or her greatness; and one of its last transactions was the consummation of the union between the two nations of Poland and Lithuania by their formal incorporation into one kingdom at the Diet of Lublin (July 1, 1569) . ”

“ The Russian money becomes the current coin of Poland. The metamorphosis descends from the most important offices to the most minute. Even the weights and measures of Poland are henceforth to be Russian: even the year is not undisturbed, and the Poles are obliged to abandon the new style, and return to the old, because it has been persevered in in Russia—a petty annoyance, which will remind them of their yoke every day. It is a complete system of fusion—a settled intention of effacing the Polish nationality, the Polish religion, the Polish language, of leaving not a trace behind ”

“ Poland was a country of feudal nobles, whose inability to group under a dynasty for the formation of a modern state, made the disappearance of the kingdom an inexorable necessity in the economic evolution of Europe, and of ignorant peasants, who were indifferent concerning the political status of the land in which they lived. ”

“ Districts lying contiguous to each other and to the once-Russian Kingdom of Poland will be united to form this free and reconstructed realm, which will have in round figures a purely Polish population of about twenty-one million people. ”

“ A stock of the Western Slavonic family, originally dwelling between the Vistula and the Oder. In the tenth century Poland became an independent European Power, and remained an elective kingdom down to its partition in the eighteenth century between Russia, Austria and Prussia. The Polish peasantry have always been industrious and successful agriculturists, whilst the nobility were turbulent and warlike. The Poles who live under Austrian and German rule are fairly contented, but those of Russian Poland have carried on a long and often bloody series of struggles for liberty. ”

“ The Polish provinces incorporated in the Russian empire, were refused the enjoyment of those institutions which had been established in the new kingdom, because, by being extended, those institutions would have been strengthened, whereas it was intended that they should become a prey to despotism, supported by forces infinitely superior. ”

“ It is hard to conceive that Poland was at one time perhaps the most powerful kingdom of Europe, with a population numbering twenty millions and extending from the Baltic to the Carpathians and the Black Sea, including in its territory the basins of the Warta, Vistula, Dwina, Dnieper and Upper Dniester, and that it had under its dominion besides Poles proper and the Baltic Slavs, the Lithuanians, the White Russians and the Little Russians or Ruthenians. ”

“ The university of Cracow was founded, and Poland was the great resort of the Jews, to whom were committed the trade and commerce of the land. But the rigors of the feudal system, and the vast preponderance of the aristocracy, proved unfortunate for the prosperity of the kingdom. What in England was the foundation of constitutional liberty, proved in Poland to be subversive of all order and good government. In England, the representative of the nation was made an instrument in the hands of the king of humbling the great nobility. Absolutism was established upon the ruins of feudalism. ”

“ But brute violence only provokes resistance and gives permanence to the feelings it intends to destroy. Oppress a people, and you keep them together—banish a man, and you make him love his country—do as Russia is now doing with Poland, and Polish nationality can never perish. In the due course of time the present emperor will be gathered to his fathers. Another sovereign may ascend that throne of a less severe and unrelenting temper. He, perhaps, may deem another line of policy towards Poland at once expedient and just. ”

“ Sympathy and interest we did feel, of course, for a gallant nation, struggling for its independence, and for gallant men suffering all the pains and privations consequent on an ineffectual struggle in such a cause— but such feelings as these would not justify us for calling the attention of the British Parliament to the question now before them. That question is, whether the nationality of Poland, its distinct existence, was not made by the Congress of Vienna, a matter of European diplomacy—a part of the statute law of Europe ”

“ Up to the year 1772 when the first partition of Poland occurred it was a state of great extent with a sea-board on the Baltic, and a united realm, embracing not only what is now known as the Kingdom of Poland in Russia, but stretching eastwards as far as the Dnieper, and including the north-west and south-west provinces of Russia, i.e., the governments of Kovno, Vilna, Grodno, Minsk, Mohileff, Vitebsk, Volhynia, Podolia, Kieff. ”

“ The throne of the Czars may be filled by a person less respectful of the interests of foreign nations, less prudent in his estimate of other powers, less temperate in his schemes of conquest and desires of ambition than the Emperor Nicholas. Again may the multitudes of the south be covetous of the wealth and luxuries of the southern and western kingdoms, and as the armies of Sobieski formed the barrier against Turkish invasion, so may the Polish nation still show itself the frontier guardian of the common liberties and common civilization of Europe. ”

“ If this charter did not confer liberties as extensive as are enjoyed in this country, it, at least, gave important pledges to the Poles and to Europe, it, at least, gave the Poles a government of their own, a distinct administration. The poblic offices were only to be exercised by Poles, The Polish language was to be employed in all public acts, and the nationality of the Polish nation was preserved. But it may be said, for it has been said, that the insurrection of 1830 sufficiently accounts for any alterations that may have been made. ”

“ Count Nesselrode announced at the Congress of Vienna, that eight million Poles were resolved to defend their national independence. In the same spirit, the Emperor of Russia, in his general proposals to the Austrian and English plenipotentiaries, in 1814, intercedes (Article 8) with the Emperor of Austria, and the King of Prussia, in favour of their Polish subjects, to obtain for them Provincial institutions which may preserve a due regard to their nationality, and admit them to share in the administration of their country. ”

“ The Polish inhabitants of the provinces engrossed by Russia, have been debarred of their rights, and have never obtained either national institutions or a national representation.
The policy of the Russian cabinet on this head is only too evident. The most brilliant promises were held out to the Poles, in critical times, such as the invasion of Russia by Napoleon; and again at the Congress of Vienna, when they served to facilitate the negociations, by which Russia obtained nearly the whole of the Duchy of Warsaw ”

“ The Polish constitution was as much guaranteed to the Powers who had signed the Treaty of Vienna as to Poland itself—and setting Poland aside, so long as treaties are binding, Russia had no right to abolish the Polish constitution, until she had previously obtained the consent of the contracting Powers to whom it had been conceded. ”

“ He was to be constitutional King of Poland, assisted by an Administrative Council. The kingdom to be governed by the House of Nuncios and the Senate. The Constitution recognised the emancipation of the peasants; declared that no one could be legally kept in arrest over three days without being brought to trial; proclaimed the press free from government censorship and the inviolability of the national representatives; that a Polish standing army should be maintained in the country, and that none but Poles were eligible to any appointment, civil or military. ”