A conscription of seven men per 1,000 was to be
carried out in Poland on the 5th inst., the classes liable being all young men between twenty and twenty-four years of age. Three are drawn for every one taken, and as the lottery is one in which the stakes are lives, the horror excited throughout Poland may be imagined. Every conscript drawn is liable to fif- teen years' service in any corner of the empire, daring which he is almost unpaid, scantily fed, and wretchedly clothed, subjected to blows at the will of his officers, and regarded by his family as one dead. The conscription consequently is carried out by districts, strong bodies of Russian troops overawing resistance, and the garrisons on the frontier have been immensely increased. The Jews contrive to slip away in large numbers, and the Govern- ment has therefore passed an edict that whenever a member of a Jew family is found absent another member shall be taken, an order intended to set brother against brother and father against sons. The iharvel is that regiments thus formed do not take the first opportunity of mutinying, but discipline as carried out in the Russian service seems too strong even for human nature.
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