THE POLISH CAP TIVITY.*

THERE are marks of baste in this book, and the information is upon points disjointed, but it is incomparably the best which has yet appeared upon the present condition of Poland. Mr. Suther- land Edwards not only understands his subject, but, what is far more important and uncommon, his readers. With the unfailing instinct which springs up like a sixth sense in men who write much for the press, be tells his audience precisely the facts which they are desirous to know, and if he inserts now and then a chap- ter of surplusage, it is only in obedience to the English taste for handsome and heavy volumes. In the second volume there is not one such chapter, and if in the first one could have spared the repetition of the old stories "how Poland fell," the "last con- quest of Poland," and the "restoration of Poland," the extra labour thereby imposed on the reader is amply repaid by masses of new and trustworthy facts all related in that light but trench- ant style which seems so sketchy, and yet leaves so ineradicable an impression. There are two points in particular upon which Mr. Edwards throws a vivid and much needed light—the relation of the nobles to the people, and the attitude of both towards their Germanic rulers. We all know that the nobles are patriots, but there are few even among liberals who have not felt a lingering doubt whether "the Poles" did not mean after all the Polish nobles, and whether the national feeling could be as pronounced in the German as in the Russian provinces of the vast old king- dom. Europe bas of late years become learned in revolution, and suspicious that under movements nominally popular may lurk ideas of future benefit to a caste or a special dynasty.

There has not been for a hundred years a doubt on the feeling of Polish nobles. They have fought Russia with lip and sword, died with Kosciusko, swelled the armies of Napoleon the First, and have been in every community of Europe the sleepless lite- rary foes of the House of Romanoff. At this very moment the Czar has five hundred Lithuanian nobles under lock and key, arrested as a measure of precaution. They are not, as their local writers are always anxious to repeat, the offspring of a feudal system, but simply the proprietors of the land, who, doing all military service, and consequently possessing all political privi- leges, gradually usurped certain powers over the tillers of the soil. By their turbulent independence and "equality,"— the Poles five hundred years ago were, as they are now, misunderstood Frenchmen,---they brought down the throne; but they have since nobly redeemed their error. They have maintained for a hundred years an unceasing battle with their conquerors, have passed generation after generation to Siberia, and returned more resolved patriots than they went, have filled the ranks whenever a leader gave them a chance of sealing their devotion with their blood, and are at this moment quitting their homes in every capital of Europe to swarm to the horrible warfare which offers them no hope, except that of dying in arms for the country which cannot of her own will afford them even a grave. Their sentiments, whether, like the Czartoryskis, they belong to the seven families of • The Polish Captivity. By Sutherland Edwards. Allen and Co.

semi-royal descent, or to the unnoticed crowd of squires who in Poland call themselves noble, can never be doubtful ; but the middle class and the peasants? Mr. Edwards gives only a few anec- dotes; but they are sufficient for the first half of that question :

"In Warsaw the feeling against Russia is so strong that music-pub- lishers and librarians will not have any Russian music or books in their shops. In Cracow I bought an Austrian map, the Ethnological Chart of the Austrian Empire.' 'When it was sent home to me I unrolled it, and found a slip of paper wafered on to it, inscribed as follows :--‘ This map was made by a false German, who has German-coloured our Polish districts and towns.' "

Mr. Edwards remonstrated, but was informed that the trades- man, contrary to all rules of political economy, was quite deter- mined that no Englishman should be deceived as to which were Polish and which German towns.

"1 me 4 just such another fool in Warsaw, who would not sell me a history of Poland, on the ground that he could only procure the histories authorized by the Government, and that they were not true. Another imbecile of the same type was a circulating-library keeper, who, finding that I wad studying the modern history of Poland, gave me one day, without my having asked for it, a translation, which he had taken the trouble to make himself, of the speech to the Diet in which Alexander promised to extend the Constitution of 1815 to all the Polish provinces in the possession of Russia. This was no part of his business, and brought him no profit. In a commercial point of view he was therefore a fool ; but if there are many fools of the same kind, their folly mill one day make Poland a Sue country."

A wedding took place at an hotel while he was staying in Cracow, and he wondered how the company, waiters, innkeepers, small tradesmen, and the like, would amuse themselves. "They did nothing all the evening, and then sang the national hymn," thereby subjecting themselves, be it remembered, to penalties. Singing a hymn is not much, but then, on 8th of April, 1861, these same middle or trading classes died in hundreds rather than not sing it. Mr. Edwards arrived in Warsaw about a month after that horrible event, that scene which almost alone in history realized Shelley's idea of the Masque of Anarchy, and seems to have questioned and cross-questioned with a relentless curiosity. The result of his inquiries is a picture which will circulate through Europe, and which proves with the sort of proof which would satisfy a coroner's jury, that the accounts of that astounding scene published in London and Paris were not overdrawn. The crowd in Sigismund square was massed to such a point that it.

could not disperse ; but was perfectly good-tempered, laughing and throwing cigars to the soldiers, when the Russians, indignant at the " demoralizing " effect of such good temper, gave the order

to fire.

"The first rank fired. The second rank advanced and collected the killed and wounded. Then there was a pause until, after a certain in- terval, the crowd, not dispersing, the order to fire again was given. Per- sons who witnessed this bloody scene declare that instead of productug terror and dismay, the volleys of the Russians at first only excited the indignation of the Poles, and roused in them a species of enthusiasm which may be called the enthusiasm of martyrdom. Many went down on their knees, but not to their enemies. In some parts of the crowd the more timid were entreated in the name of their country to remain firm, and these appeals were not without effect. Afterwards, when num- bers had been shot down and brute force was beginning to triumph, the most determined and desperate among the crowd still cried out that there must be no retreating, and some were seen to join hands so as to pre. vent those before them from falling back. The reason assigned for the Russians having taken up the bodies at all is, that they feared they would be carried about the city to inflame the population, and that they would be photographed and the photographs circulated throughout Poland, as doubtless would have been the case, had it been possible."

Imagine for one moment the troops firing on the crowd at Ashton, when quietly and good-temperedly watching them, and that crowd, when shot down, joining bands to prevent an un- dignified retreat, and then estimate, if you can, the temper at which the English people would have arrived. Courage, except as a substratum, is not, perhaps, a very valuable national quality, —Sikhs are individually braver than Englishmen,—and contempt for life is often a positively bad quality, indicating a tendency to despair ; but resignation of this kind, resignation in which Christian fortitude, the sense of honour, and personal bravery are all commingled, indicates nobleness of the sort which makes a nation worthy to live. And the men and women who did this were of the middle classes, students and professional men, tradesmen and artisans, men of the sort who, in England, are half believed to be lost in the passion for physical comfort, and indifferent to anything save the rate of wages.

And the peasants'? Mr. Edwards evidently believes that

this is still, the doubtful question. There is no doubt that the peasants in Congress-Poland have been, except on a few estates, such as the Zamoyski's,. wretchedly situated. They were not slaves, liable to be sold; but they were serfs, and as such

bound to render labour to their lords. But, fortunately for ;hemselves, the nobles themselves had perceived the wrong

involved in this state of affairs; the best of them had enfrauchised their people, and the remainder had, through the Agricultural Society, agreed to a fair and able scheme of emancipation. That society proposed to free the serfs en_ masse and at once, and to give them their land in freehold, subject to a land-tax to the State. Compensation was to be made to the pro- prietors in bonds bearing interest, which interest was to

be paid out of this land-tax. This scheme satisfied peasants and proprietors, and was, therefore, rejected by the Govern- ment, which did not want to prove to Poland that the Agri- cultural Society was capable of sound legislation, or to Jose the credit with the peasants of devising a scheme so bene- ficial to their interests. The subject was allowed to drag till, by a strange irony of Providence, the Czar, on the 22nd of this month, was compelled by the spread of revolt in Lithuania, to sanction for that province this very scheme. In Posen the people are free, and in Galicia the Austrians freed them in 1848 in order to destroy the nobles, succeeded in creating an agrarian war, and now, when any movement appears imminent, tell the peasants that the nobility want to reclaim their lands. This scheme of the Agricultural Society is the one adopted by the Central Committee and confirmed by Langiewicz, but, as Mr. Edwards hints, bribery is a game which Governments play best. The Russian Government can cut the ground from under the Committee's feet by granting the land at once, without impair- ing its authority, and would do it at once, if it realized the neces- sity. The nobles are, therefore, reduced to the necessity of courting the peasants, give them banquets, praise them to the skies, abstain from demanding arrears of rent, and strive with all their vast social influence to keep them faithful to the national cause. Whether they will succeed Mr. Edwards thinks still doubtful, but in Lithuania he admits the Government has been compelled to prohibit the national dress ; and if the scythemen be not peasants, who are they ?

Upon the next point the author gives us new and somewhat startling information. He believes that, on the whole, the Poles, though bitterly wronged by Russia, will ally themselves with the Russians against Germany, which they hate still more. Prussia has broken the treaties of 1815, which stipulated for "national institutions " for the Poles, as much as Russia or Austria. 'There is nothing Polish in Posen," except, indeed—but that is a trifle—the Poles. Their language is prohibited, "there is not one Pole in the Government service of Posen, except in the tribunals ; " even the village mayors are Germans, "the clerks, conductors, even the stokers on the railways, are Germans ; " the history of Poland is a proscribed subject in the schools ; " a Polish professor in Posen who proposed, as a theme, the necessity of understanding one's native tongue, was in consequence dismissed from his place ;" and the Polish press, which cannot, under the constitutional law, be prohibited, is incessantly prosecuted. Finally, the Germans, on every possible occasion, insult the Poles, declare them uncivilized, refuse them the careers gladly opened to them in France, and on every trifling occasion show their contempt for their feelings. In Prussia the Government nominated a German prefect of police to represent a Polish constituency ; in Cracow the Austrians built a fort on Kosciusko's mound.

Mr. Edwards gives us also, for the first time, the key to the Austrian conduct with respect to Galicia. The province is a real danger. It has remained, in spite both of former brutality and present comparative leniency, thoroughly Polish, and the speciality of a Pole in foreign politics is this. He dreads the Rus- sians, but he detests the Germans. Russia governs as a strictly military power—by forts and cannon, with the sabre always bare and the soldiers always visible in the streets ; but she does not insult the people. The individual Russian rather looks up to the individual Pole, respects his literature, admires his genius, and feels no difficulty in an alliance with a man who is of his own race, and who, like himself, distrusts the West. The German contemns the Pole as half a savage.

"'1 do not pretend to like either Russians, Austrians, or Prussians,' a Pole said to me one day, who had lived upwards of twenty years in Russia; 'but at least the Russians do not despise us ; they take an inte- rest in our ideas, they study our literature, they respect the heroism of our soldiers, though it has been exhibited against themselves. Then, they are not pedants ; they are a young people, and there is more to he hoped from them than from any of the Germans, so strong in their own conceit. If the Russians find a Pole among them, they will often show him an amount of attention which he never could expect or in any way desire from Prussians or Austrians."

This feeling is so strong that were Russia to-morrow to declare war on Germany, she would only have to declare Poland restored as a kingdom, to fling Austria back to the Carpathians ; and as this fact is well known in Vienna, the Austrians would be only too glad to be rid in any decent manner of Galicia. Mr. Edwards does not doubt that they would welcome any solution which, while restoring the province to its independence, did not render it up. to Russia. That solution, did the Polish insurgents succeed, or did France march to their assistance, would be immediately found in an independent Poland, with an Austrian archduke for its. sovereign.

We have taken only some broad political facts too little known from Mr. Edwards, but "the Polish Captivity" is full of light, but suggestive sketches, pieces justifieatires of historic value, national songs and stories, descriptions of Polish towns, Polish notabilities,. and Polish women, and is, besides, what our sketch might not induce our readers to fancy, a hook an English lady might read with twice the ease of Mr. Trollope's latest novel.