On Sunday last the Governor of Galicia, Count Potocki, was
assassinated by a Ruthene student while giving public audiences. The assassin, Siczynski, appears to have been concerned in the remarkable affair of Ruthene students at Lemberg last year, when those who were imprisoned for rioting threatened to starve themselves to death as a protest. There is no doubt, we fear, that the Ruthenes have been a good deal oppressed by their fellow-Slays, the Galician Poles, and the young man Siczynski concentrated his rebellious hatred on the Governor, who is supposed to have approved of the imprison- ment of the students last year. Whatever may be the truth about that, Count Potocki has been more sympathetic towards the Ruthenes than, perhaps, any previous Governor. Siczynski belongs to the party of Ruthene Nationalists, who repudiate any connexion between themselves (the Little Russians, as they are frequently called) and the Great Russians ; and his animosity towards the Poles is even more bitter than that of the section of Ruthenes who acknowledge their racial kinship with Russia. He appears to have acted in a state of exalta- tion, but it is a cruel irony which caused him to take the life of a man rather well disposed towards his people. Political assassination is rare in the Emperor Francis Joseph's dominions, and it is to be hoped that the Ruthenes will not prove their kinship with the Great Russians in this practical way.
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