16 MAY 1846, Page 1

Poland has her revenge of her wrongers, for nothing that

they do in the injured country fails to be absurd and discreditable. Even measures in themselves creditable assume an inverted mean- ing, and become quite otherwise. Austria is about to enfranchise the peasantry of Galicia : a very desirable measure, but it is now offered as a boon to the peasants who murdered their lords ! Let us suppose that the Repealers of Ireland had proceeded to actual revolt—that Government had instigated the peasantry of some part to rise against the landowners—that the peasantry had mas- sacred those landowners—and that now Sir Robert Peel, after cool deliberation, proposed to grant "fixity of tenure" to the peasants : what should we say in London ? Yet such is, sub- stantially, the way in which Prince Metternich contrives to put his imitation of King Frederick William's laudable reform of land- tenures in Prussia. Those who are familiar with Poland doubt whether the new scheme will work to any real purpose. To us it is most impressive as a lesson in that political truth, of which we should never lose sight, that when once governments enter upon a career of arbitrary oppression, they draw upon themselves con- sequences which they cannot foresee, and find even their best measures become sources of danger and discredit. Austria is about to pay a tribute to liberty: she does so in the shape of a subsidy to servile war ; teaching the nobles of her dependencies not to trust, the peasant:* not to respect, the lawa which it is the function of every gov'ersment to enforce.