Polishing

“ They had Hats upon their Heads, with high Crowns like Sugar-Loaves: This sable Company was follow’d by other Men, and by little Boys, stark naked from the Head to the Waist, whose Bodies were twin’d about with Straw-Bands, and their Arms tied to a Piece of Wood, which oblig’d them to hold them extended, as if they had been fasten’d to a Cross: There was also a Company of Flagellant Friars, but they did not presume to come in Sight of the King, and therefore they stay’d and join’d in the Procession, as it came back from Buen Retiro. ”

“ I thought my self bound in Interest to wait for his Return, in order to treat about my Affairs; and I spent this time at Warsaw in the most agreeable manner that could be. I was soon known by all242 the Polish Nobility, who were as civil to me as could be imagin'd. Every thing I beheld made me fancy I was at Paris, there being every where the same Politeness, and a certain easy Deportment which the French think none are Masters of but themselves. The Polish Ladies are very amiable, witty, and have a good deal of Sprightliness. ”

“ The last moment of Poland, her supreme cause, salvation or eternal ruin and shame, personal freedom and national independence, or a terrible slavery and the groaning of millions of men ... the destruction of the Polish name, or her glorious place in the ranks of nations: these are the considerations that must take hold of the Polish nation, of you, citizens of Lithuania. ... Poles, now is the moment for the amendment of eternal errors. ”

“ In the garrison of our town, there were about ten Poles incorporated into our army after the revolution of 1831. Will you believe it, Sir, these Poles excited our soldiers, persuaded them that they were very unhappy, that the Tzar was the cause of it, and that his authority was not lawful? Now what was the consequence of all this? They only made their own case worse, and they drew upon themselves all the severities of the Russian law. These Poles never reflected that every nation has, and ought to have, a government suited to its nature. ”

“ A dreadful dilemma presents itself to the Polish intelligence: it seems condemned either to choose progress, with the danger of playing into the hands of its own worst enemy, and the worst enemy of all progress, or to choose stagnation, with the danger that the nationality which is thereby preserved, and of which its sons were and are so proud, should drop behind in the culture of Europe, becoming antiquated and outstripped. ”

“ Rulhiere, and other more or less voluminous authorities, might be quoted; but, not to try the patience of the reader too much, I shall confine myself to transcribing a clenching remark of a Polish nobleman, who told our old friend, the English traveller, that although the name of Poland still remained, the nation no longer existed. "An universal corruption and venality pervades all ranks of the people. Many of the first nobility do not blush to receive pensions from foreign courts: one professes himself publicly an Austrian, a second a Prussian, a third a Frenchman, and a fourth a Russian." ”

“ And is it possible, that a Man can be pitied, because ’tis not in his Power to make Millions of People miserable? For my part, I think that the English, who do not stand up for their Laws and Liberties, are altogether as criminal, as they who oppose the Will of their Sovereign in a State where Arbitrary Power is once established.
What I admire in the English, is not only the Firmness with which they plead for their Rights, but their Manner of doing it. In other Nations we see Deputies from Parliaments or States makeing Remonstrances to their Sovereign, which are studied and concerted. ”

“ The deliverance of Poland from the foreign soldier, the restoration and safeguarding of the integrity of her boundaries, the extirpation of all oppression and usurpation, whether foreign or domestic, the firm foundation of national freedom and of the independence of the Republic:—such is the holy aim of our Rising. ”

“ Most of them prefer the Civil to Military Employments, and a private Life to Posts in the Army or at Court. They are so us'd to be absolute Masters at their Estates where the Peasants are their Slaves, and to be homag'd like Petty Sovereigns by the Burghers at Prague, that they don't care to reside at Vienna, and to be oblig'd like other Subjects to pay their Court to the Sovereign and the Ministers. As soon as a Gentleman of Bohemia comes of Age, he is oblig'd to take an Oath of Fidelity to the Emperor as his King; which is a Law as much binding on the Nobility as the Gentry ”

“ Fortunately for the Poles, Posen was the oldest part of the national body, the cradle of the Polish Kingdom, with the Polish civilisation deeply rooted in the mass of the population, with the national character most developed and tenacious. They rapidly learned German methods of work and adopted them in defence of their nationality, of their ideals and of their mother language, as well as in the economic struggle, in the defence of Polish landed property, and in industrial and commercial competition. ”

“ The existence of the Polis, that astonishing ideal of the State as statue, was in truth nothing more nor less than a refuge from the wide world of the sea-peoples—and that though the Classical, alone of all the Cultures so far, had a ring of coasts about a sea of islands, and not a continental expanse, as its motherland. ”

“ Like academic people among ourselves, they are fond of repeating that they demand evolution, not revolution, but their opposition to the Government is nevertheless sincere, and many of them were in prison. The gradual nationalization of the land, with compensation but compulsory sale where an owner possesses over a certain maximum, is a great point in their programme, and their aims in general are rather social than political, though they, too, demand a Polish Parliament and a military system under which Polish recruits shall remain in Poland. ”

“ You who love your country and liberty equally with the valorous nations of the south, you who have been compelled to suffer far more than others oppression and disdain; Poles, who, penetrated with the love of honour and of virtue, can endure no longer the contempt and destruction of the Polish name, who have so courageously risen against despotism and oppression, I conjure you grow not cold ”

“ The nobility of France, keeping the most oppressive social and personal privileges, had been shorn of all political and even administrative power; the tyrants of the people were the slaves of the king. In Poland sixty thousand gentlemen, rich and poor, famous andPoland. obscure, but all alike gentlemen, rode out to choose a king by a unanimous vote, and to bind him when chosen by such conditions as they thought good. Those sixty thousand, like the populus of Rome, formed a narrow oligarchy as regarded the rest of the nation, but a wild democracy among themselves. ”

“ Polish history proved it day by day.
It was not that these nobles were especially barbarous,—it was not that they were effeminate. It was simply that they maintained one caste above another—allowing a distinction in civil and political rights. The system gave its usual luxuriant fruitage of curses.
First in the material condition. Labor and trade were despised. If, in the useful class, a genius arose, the first exercise of his genius was to get himself out of the useful class. Labor was left to serfs; trade was left to Jews. Cities were contemptible in all that does a city honor. ”

“ Nothing is more foreign than what in the literary world is called Sclavonism, to the Polish temperament with its tradition of self-government, its chivalrous view of moral restraints and an exaggerated respect for individual rights: not to mention the important fact that the whole Polish mentality, Western in complexion, had received its training from Italy and France and, historically, had always remained, even in religious matters, in sympathy with the most liberal currents of European thought. ”

“ He, too, like Sigismund I, wished to rule peaceably over the goats as well as over the sheep.
When we turn from the kings to the nation, we meet with the same broad-minded liberality and tolerance. The Polish nation of the sixteenth century loved liberty no less than at any other period of its history. Liberty constituted the foundation and was an essential characteristic of all its institutions, political and social. The Polish nobility worked and fought strenuously for its political rights and privileges, and having secured them, guarded them jealously. ”

“ Devotion to the Polis lost its reality when the Polis, with all that it represented of rights and laws and ideals of Life, lay at the mercy of a military despot, who might, of course, be a hero, but might equally well be a vulgar sot or a corrupt adventurer.
What the succeeding ages built upon the ruins of the Polis is not our immediate concern. In the realm of thought, on the whole, the Polis triumphed. Aristotle based his social theory on the Polis, not the nation. Dicaearchus, Didymus, and Posidonius followed him, and we still use his language. ”

“ We live by our emotions, the beasts by their appetites—a material distinction. Now, the condition of the Poles was perfectly adapted to the quickening of the emotional parts. Shorten time, you make love a precious ecstasy; restrict liberty, freedom is a lust—none the worse for being lawful. No Pole knows how long he may have to live: Russia or phthisis will have him late or soon. What he pursues, then, must be fleeting—imagine with what rapture he takes it to his breast! ”

“ Your name is Error and for that reason the resultant force of your activities will be contrary to you presuppositions. By pulling the strings of strikes you lead the people to naught else than to debility and wretchedness and from feeble beggars you are not able to build a powerful Poland. ”

“ The Polish nation, under which I comprehend merely [Pg 81] the Polish nobility, is of a very mixed kind. Only the very few have an opportunity of culture by means of upbringing, instruction, and well-directed travels, by which they can best promote at once their own welfare and that of their tenantry. Most of them, on the other hand, spend their lives in ignorance and immorality, and become the sport of their extravagant passions, which are ruinous to their tenants. ”

“ It will not be wondered at, then, if, in the midst of this bitter distress, the grand scheme for the relief of the Poles, which was turning the town mad with excitement, did not find universal favour. The workmen, in particular, persisted in cherishing all sorts of obstinate notions about it. Why should them there foreign Poles be thought of and relieved, while they were starving? Would the Polish clergy and the grand folks, over there, think of them, the Westerbury workmen, and get up a concert for 'em, and send 'em the proceeds? ”

“ Only those who have lived as I have and seen what I have, can realize what the suppression of the Poles really means. The power we are contending with is so great, so secret, so terrible—why, even here I am probably watched by their spies. ”

“ Just as poverty-stricken and ruined were the border districts with a Polish population. But the Polish peasant in all his poverty and disorder at least kept the greater vivacity of his race. Even on the estates of the higher nobility, of the starosts, and of the crown, all the farm buildings were dilapidated and useless. Any one who wished to send a letter must employ a special messenger, for there was no post in the country. To be sure, no need was felt of one in the villages, for most of the nobility knew no more of reading and writing than the peasants. ”

“ Such a power of resistance creates a moral obligation which it would be unsafe to neglect. There is always a risk in throwing away a tool of proved temper.
In this profound conviction of the practical and ideal worth of Polonism one approaches the problem of its preservation with a very vivid sense of the practical difficulties derived from the grouping of the Powers. The uncertainty of the extent and of the actual form of victory for the Allies will increase the difficulty of formulating a plan of Polish regeneration at the present moment. ”

“ For an illustration from more modern history, take the greatest international crime of the last five hundred years, with one exception— the partition of Poland. It is true the Polish nobles were a nuisance to their neighbors, ever quarreling among themselves, with no central authority powerful enough to restrain them, but that did not justify the action taken. Three nations, or rather the autocratic sovereigns of those nations, powerful enough to accomplish the crime, agreed to partition Poland among themselves. ”

“ It is an awful contemplation, and in sitting down in my now solitary chamber to its retrospection, I find that nearly half a century has passed since its transactions swept over Europe like a desolating blast. Then I wrote my little chronicle when the birthright independence of Poland was no more; when she lay in her ashes, and her mighty men were trodden into the dust; when the pall of death overspread the country, and her widows and her orphans wandered afar into the trackless wilderness of a barren world. ”

“ The present King not taking a fancy to it, all runs to ruin; the Gardens, which were the finest in Germany, are not kept in order; the great Vessels of Porcellane; which were not to be match'd in Europe, the late King having procur'd the choicest Rarities of that Ware, that were in the Magazines of Holland; all these fine things, I say, are pass'd into the hands of the King of Poland, at Dresden. The Gallery and the Salon of Oranjebourg, which were furnish'd with them, and which were reckoned among the Beauties of Germany, are of no account now but for the Richness of their Cielings. ”