The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864

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The calumny so often repeated, so urgently insisted upon, that the aim
of the Polish insurrection was inconsistent, foolish, and wicked, might
not perhaps astonish the reader more than the report of the want of zeal
and faith in the convictions of the Poles, a fact first revealed to the
world in 'Tardy Truths.' This warning with regard to the true character
of the struggle on the shores of the Vistula might prove of service in
aiding the discrimination of the American people, and be useful in
confusing the judgment of the liberal men and newspapers, which, whether
in Germany, Belgium, France, or England, are not too much inclined to
favor the cause of Polish independence; nay, it would spare France the
useless demonstration in the Chambers, made in consequence of the speech
of November 5th. The late efforts of the Poles are also shown to have
been inspired and incited by, and carried on for the benefit of, the
Catholic clergy, stimulated by fanaticism against the liberal,
civilizing, enlightened, Rosso-Greek Church, a view which might and has
proved very useful to modern lecturers and letter writers. The warning
therein given might also serve to degrade the Polish revolution to the
level of some of the slave-holders' rebellion. Let us reflect but for
one single moment on the parallel attempted to be drawn, particularly in
the New York papers, after the unfortunate Mexican imbroglio and
subsequent visit of the Russian fleet, between things so utterly unlike.
The Poles fought for everything most dear to the heart of man, for every
right which he can justly claim, for independence, national existence,
the right to use his own language, for the integrity of his
country;--the States of the South had all these in full possession, nay,
even the right to pass the law binding the North. These things might be
shown to be essentially dissimilar in _every_ respect, but this short
statement is deemed sufficient to show the futility of the comparison.

Let us now proceed to say a few words with regard to the plausible
arguments so generally set forth for the glorification of the Czar, in
respect to the emancipation of the Polish serfs. The Czar gave in 1864
what had already been given by the Poles themselves in 1863; less the
soil, which indeed never belonged to him, but for which he exacts
payment. Besides, he has confiscated, without regulations or laws, the
income from forests, rents, fields, and fisheries, belonging to old men,
women, and children, whose only crime was that they had been born Poles,
or whom it pleased the hungry throng of unscrupulous, greedy, and
fanatical officials, unbounded in their zeal as in their power, to
denounce, accuse, or dislike. We could fully prove the fact that the
greater part of the peasants are now forced by bayonets to work for the
exacted pay, and most of them venture to doubt entirely the propriety of
the pretended Russian gift. This one circumstance makes this gift in the
greater part of Poland and even, of Russia more burdensome than the old
state of regulated labor; for how is a peasant to procure money in
provinces distant from markets, rivers, and towns? Under what conditions
would it be possible to obtain it? And even in cases where the peasant
may be able to make a sale, the value received for eight bushels of
potatoes will not be sufficient to buy him a common axe. How many
calves, cows, sheep, horses, and hogs are brought back from market from
the impossibility of finding purchasers, even at the lowest prices? Now,
by the decree of January 22d, the Polish National Government gave
freedom, and land relieved from all claims, thus executing what was in
accordance with the spirit and wishes of the Poles, without losing sight
of the difficulties to be encountered. It was their imperative duty to
satisfy and adjust the exigencies of the national political economy.
Fortunately, it was found possible to harmonize the requirements of the
country with the personal interests of the proprietors. The amount of
land held by them was in general so large, that even after endowing the
peasant with the allotted portion, considerable would still remain in
their hands. Diminished in extent and value during the transitional
phase, the remaining land would necessarily rise rapidly in value,
because the emancipated peasant _would_ now _have_ the right to own and
buy land. The calculation might be sustained that it would quintuple in
value in the course of fifty years. Small farms from their possessions
would soon be in the market, farms within the range of small purses and
limited means, and the proprietors did not fail to see the advantage
which would accrue to them in the almost unlimited increase of
purchasers which would soon be found among the enfranchised laborers.
The peasants gained freedom, land, and many advantages, nor were the
proprietors ruined in their advancement. Hence the National Government
effected what the Rossian never intended to do or ever will achieve:
gain and loss were equalized in the national duty of sustaining the
country in its progressive course, stimulating all to labor
simultaneously to support its public burdens, to aid in the general
advancement. The real freedom thus gained, in accordance with the
far-sighted policy of the Polish National Government, opened wide the
door to liberty, trade, commerce, and exchange; a policy which czarism,
even in its most liberal mood, can never admit, because it would condemn
itself, and give the death blow to its own existence. There is another
specialty peculiar to the Rossian Government, never forgotten by those
who live under its rule, viz.: the late emancipation was begun about
three years ago by an ukase of no very decided purport, which was
followed by many others of like uncertain character, according with the
varying views of those by whom they were dictated, by the partisans of
emancipation or by those standing in opposition to it. These ukases are
ranged in their appropriate numerical titles, and there are at least
five hundred thousand of them--whether imperial or senatorial, all
legally binding. What memory could stand such a burden, or what might
legal cavil not find therein?

It is an easy thing to 'speak for Buncombe,' as we say in America; it is
an easy thing to proclaim measures when we take no thought of how they
may be carried out; it is easy to excite the enthusiasm of the popular
lecturer, always in search of novelty with which to feed his hearers; it
may be pleasant to furnish venom to wounded self-esteem or disappointed
and petty ambition--but it will be found an exceedingly difficult task
to reconcile absolutism with freedom, czarism with liberalism, the
division of men into appointed castes and classes with the existence of
liberty and political equality. We are assured, not only by the writer
of the letter in question, but by the sages of New York, that the Polish
peasants were not willing to fight for Poland, that they called their
countrymen now in arms against Rossia 'dogs of nobles,' and 'that it was
really their duty to rise against and denounce their former _masters_ to
Rossia and Austria!'

If these assertions are true, who then filled the ranks of the Polish
insurgents? Who furnished food to those who lived for months in the
depths of forests, the haunts of mountain gorges? How was it possible
that without the connivance of the peasants the insurgents should pass
to and fro, or lie hidden in woods and fields? It was stated
authoritatively that the insurgents, were composed principally of
Hungarian refugees, about ten Frenchmen, a few strangers from other
nations, but of the number of the lesser nobility, men, in short, in
search of shelter and fortune. A strange fortune, a marvellous shelter
indeed to reward the greed of the ambitious--exile, death, and torture!
Were the testimony of such witnesses to be relied upon, we might well
exclaim: 'Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.' Yet how is it that we
find among the seven hundred patriots who were hung so many Poles, less
than a half of whom were Catholics, many of whom were Jews, Protestants,
and even Rosso-Greeks of various classes? Among the forty thousand known
deported, torn ruthlessly away from their native homes for centuries, we
find nearly five thousand Israelites, ten thousand peasants (known), and
from four to six thousand of Greek and other creeds. The two villages
near Lida, two in the government of Grodno, the hundreds of villages and
thousands of huts near Dwina, Rzezyca, Mohilew, Witebsk, burned, razed
to the ground by an excited and hired rabble of Muscovite Muziks, who
had sought and found hospitality in Poland for hundreds of
years--certainly all these villages and huts were not inhabited even by
the 'lesser nobility.' And it is also certain that the dwellers were not
so cruelly punished for denouncing the 'dogs of nobles'--an expression,
if we are not mistaken, taken from the vocabulary of the corporal or
subaltern officials, and which has never reached the fourteenth
class--from which the Rossian begins to reckon humanity.

The allegation of the existence of unrooted feudalism in Poland, because
such a system was known to the whole of Middle Europe, must be accounted
for by the evident ignorance of Polish history; and we assure both
teachers and readers, notwithstanding the evident wish to find it in
Poland, that it was unknown to her, nor could it subsist in the presence
of Polish institutions, habits, customs, and geography.

We can scarcely suppose it possible that our author means to insinuate
that thousands of noble families bought and transported arms for the
purpose of speculation. Notwithstanding the evidence he had of one such
bad business transaction for the purpose of sustaining and upholding the
insurrection, his frequent intimations of the incorrigible and unruly
character of the few Poles left, would almost authorize us in believing
that such was the intention of the writer when speaking of the aforesaid
arms.

Oh, in the name of common sense, for the sake of the men whose country
has been torn from them, who may not speak their mothers' tongue in the
land of their fathers, who are forbidden to worship in accordance with
the dictates of their conscience, whose sacred homes are desecrated by
the presence of privileged spies, who cannot sit down in peace in the
holy quiet of evening, because they know that the morrow may see them
dragged off to unknown and inaccessible dungeons, or summoned before
brutal judges without defenders, where they will find accusers, but will
be allowed to cite no witnesses; subjected to witness the horrible
anxiety endured every spring and fall by Polish fathers and mothers lest
the sons of their love should be unexpectedly seized in the night and
hurried off over the Caucasus, the Ural, or to the mouth of the Amour,
to serve in the army of the oppressor for life, or longer than home
memories in such young bosoms could be expected to last, with no
prospect of reward save such as may be reckoned in the number of
_palkis_ and _pletnis_ (whips and lashes); sons, whether rich or poor,
to be exposed to cavil, cunning, and vindictiveness, to the practices of
gambling judges and a profligate soldiery, to a venal police, to
fraudulent employes, themselves badly paid for service, but whose
extortions and abuses always meet with approval, a single complaint
against whom would expose the complainant to be sent through that
hopeless gate always open on the route to Siberia;--oh, for the sake of
common humanity, say not that men placed in such situations have, in
spite of their glorious history, no rights, no claims on human sympathy,
no cause to sacrifice life even when it has become a haunting horror!

Believe not that such complaints are inventions: the facts are known to
everybody who will look upon them. They are no slanderous stories, but
occurrences renewed with every morning, taking place under all
circumstances and with every transaction patent to the world. They were
appreciated and described in Prussia, and even in Austria verified, not
long before the last campaign. Under such circumstances, what must be
thought of the discoveries and conclusions of writers who assert that
'the Polish nation is a mere chimera'? As no individual, mighty as he
may be, can by a blasphemous word suppress the existence of the Eternal
Father, so neither passion nor love, favor nor animosity, interest nor
purpose of the most talented or ambitious, can erase at pleasure a
nationality which has a history of over a thousand years of existence, a
nationality proved by the last hundred years of incessant struggle for
independence with three giants. This nation has marked its boundaries
with graveyards toward the Dniester, Dnieper, Niemen, and Dwina, where
rest the beaten hordes of Batu or Nogays. Can the record be erased of
the power that broke the sword of the Osmanlis, and was it a _chimera_
that preserved Western Europe from such sights as Polowce and
Pietschiniegs, etc.? You may perhaps to-day designate as a _chimera_ the
Vienna saved in 1683, that very Vienna which in 1815 first conceived the
idea of sowing the seeds of distrust between Galicians and
Lodomerians--an idea soon after adopted, perfected, and publicly
propagated by Rossians, who applied the practice to Lithuanians,
Volhynians, Podolans, Polans, Radymicians, etc.--an idea now held in the
fierce grasp of Muraview, Anienkow, and probably at no very distant
period to be recalled to the mind of the originator.

The gentleman's knowledge of Russians (the true name is Rossians, the
other being assumed to effect a certain purpose in Western Europe),
Prussians, and Austrians, to the exclusion of Poles, proves only that
his geographic and ethnographic researches in Poland went no farther
than those of the 'reliable gentleman' who described the Bunker Hill
monument under President Lafayette.

In addition to the above, let us consult simply the sound of the names
of places, and we can form some idea of the extent of races and
nationalities. Nowgorod, Kaluga, Pskow--are _Rossian_; Telsze, Szawle,
Rosienie--_Lithuanian_; Winszpilis, Gielgawa, Libosie--_Courland_;
Lublin, Ostrolenka, Plock--_Polish_; Wlodrimirz, Zytomirz,
Berdyczev--_Volhynian_. In Austria, are the inhabitants of Venice,
Prague, and Buda, Austrian? The name of Prussia is an old one of
Slavonians living at the mouth of the Vistula, and has no etymology in
the Teutonic language. Those of Galicia and Lodomeria are unskilfully
disfigured from Halitsh (Halicz) and Wlodzimir. The name of Prussia was
assumed by Frederic II., margrave of Brandenburg, when he took the title
of king, at the same time giving solemn oaths never to pretend to the
sovereignty of Dantzick (Gdansk), Thorn (Torun), etc.

The present empire of Alexander is not of _Russia_, but of _Rossia_, and
the name of Russia is imposed on Polans near Kiow, on Radymicians near
Nowogrodek, on Drewlans south of the river Pripec, etc.; and we must
remember that Catharine II., in 1764, had solemnly declared by her
ambassadors, Kayserling and Repnin, that she had no right to Russias or
Ruthenias in Poland: 'Declaramus suam Imperatoriam Majestatem Dominam
nostram clementissimam ex usu _tituli totius Rossiae_, nec sibi, nec
successoribus suis neque Imperio suo _jus ullum_ in ditiones et terrae
quae _sub nomine Russiae_ a Regno Poloniae magnoque ducatu Lithuaniae
possiduntur,' etc.

The prediction of the reestablishment of serfdom as a result aimed at in
the present Polish struggle, is not only rash but preposterous, and has
no foundation except in a fixed purpose to direct all sympathy toward
Rossia.

The true bondage that tied man in Poland to the soil, began with the
introduction of police, passports, censors or _skaski_, recruiting,
conscription, and taxation, introduced by Prussia, Austria, and Rossia,
as so-called _improvements_. Poland had more free peasants, called
Ziemianin, Kmiec, Kozak, than there were in France during the _regime_
of the Gabeles or Leibeigenschaft in Germany. That they entirely
disappeared after the fall of Poland was surely not her fault. The
peasants on the estates attached to the clergy of all denominations, to
public schools, to the crown, and to the nation, were in a much better
condition, materially and morally, than are at present those in some
parts of Hainault and Thuringen. Individual abuses by an unconscientious
lord were to be seen as well in Connaught as near Debretschyn, near the
Saone as on the Necker. Times--contemporary with independent Poland, and
hence not very far back--beheld these sins against humanity committed on
a larger scale, and in lands in otherwise happier conditions. The phrase
_bonded labor_ is known under the best institutions. But this excuses no
one. Poland, without any compulsive cause, in 1764 and 1768, took these
questions into consideration; in 1791, was even more explicit; and in
1792, Kosciuszko distinctly settled the condition of the Polish peasant,
and that without opposition from the Polish nobility--a measure
immediately overruled and suppressed by Prussia and Rossia, both
accusing Poland of being a _dangerous_ nest of Jacobinism. In 1807, in
the grand duchy of Warsaw, after it was retaken from Prussia, the
condition of the peasantry was far more clear and protected than even
now promised by the Czar Alexander II., and was probably better
preserved than it can be under the crowd of employes and magistrates,
nominally elected by the peasants, but in fact imported from Saratow,
Kazan, Penza, etc., for the purpose of teaching liberty and Siberian
civilization in Warsaw and Wilna.

Common sense and the ordinary rules of logic force upon us the
conviction that writings of the above stamp are gotten up to produce
certain effects. Can any be found simple enough to believe that a whole
people would be aroused, armed, and taught to what end and how to use
the given arms, as was done by the manifesto of the Polish National
Government, January 22d, 1863, only to be deceived and in the end
deprived of that for which they had fought? By what right can bad faith
be imputed to land owners whom experience, a sense of justice, and even
interest, had already impelled to get rid of a useless and burdensome
relation? These land owners, even under the Rossian Government (in
1818), had solemnly begged the uncle of the present czar, Alexander I.,
to allow them to be freed from the onerous responsibilities caused by
serfdom under Rossian surveillance and severity.

The letter from Paris further states, on what authority we know not,
that the condition of the peasant or serf in Poland was dreadful until
the seventeenth century. This is going very far back, and probably at
that period, if facts could be found to sustain the writer's allegation,
the condition of bondmen--_vilains regardants_--boors, _Lebeigenschaft_,
_manans_, etc., was not better elsewhere. But here again we must differ
in opinion, and beg leave to state, not only to the author of the
letter, but to all other self-constituted authorities, whose knowledge
of Poland is derived from _The London Times_, _Chambers's Magazine_, M.
Hilperding, Kattow, or M. Morny, etc., that, with all due respect to
their social positions, we must deny them the title of well-informed
historians and profound judges of Poland and the Slavonic races. Up to
the seventeenth century, the peasantry (Kmiec, Ziemiamin) had its
_representatives in the diet_, and could find entrance into the ranks of
the nobility, which had no divisions into classes or titular
distinctions. Said nobility had the right to serve their country during
war, and a peasant providing himself with a horse and suitable arms, was
not excluded from that class. They could also take orders among the
clergy, and hence rise to high dignities in the church. Public schools
in Poland were never shut to the peasants, nor were any distinctions
therein authorized in favor of one or other class of pupils. In schools
then they enjoyed all privileges in common, and these were great--a
separate jurisdiction, and the facilities of reaching higher ranks.
Kromer, Janicki, Poniatowski, great names in Polish history, can show no
other origin than one nearer to the Ziemianin than to any other class.

If the current of fashion did not warp all judgments in favor of Rossia,
the writers of 'Tardy Truths' from Paris and elsewhere would have
reflected a little longer, and would soon have discovered that the
ignorance and poverty of the Polish peasantry were not due solely to the
Poles themselves. Polish schools were formerly all completely free, and
each school even had funds for the poor, called _purses_, foundations,
etc. Rossia, in the last fifty years, charged as high as $625 for
inscription alone in the higher classes, and about $25 for elementary
beginners. How could a poor family rise in prosperity if this school was
often the first cause of losing the favorite son; if they did send the
child to school they might lose him as a recruit for the army or navy,
as designated by the whim of the treacherous teacher and recruiting
officer; and this did not exempt from public burdens, as they were still
obliged to pay taxes for him during ten years, and contribute to all
public services, as stations (stoyki), wagons and teams (rozgony),
repairing and making public and private roads, extra post service,
besides innumerable services imposed for his own personal benefit by a
spravnik, straptschy, zasiedatel, sotnik, etc. Add to this the thwarting
of intercourse and commerce by every imaginable means under the system
of the famous M. Kankrin.

Could the peasant or the master become wealthy when a measure called _a
ton_, weighing about eight hundred and forty pounds, of wheat brought
the enormous sum of $4.25? a load of hay, drawn by one horse,
seventy-five cents when well paid, and _nothing_ when wanted by ulans or
hussars garrisoned in the neighborhood? A hen, with a dozen and a half
well-grown chickens, hardly brought enough to pay the value of the
commonest apron.

Such things as these were never known in ancient Poland, now so
unanimously accused and condemned by fashionable philanthropy. Even
eighty years ago such abuses would have been vainly looked for. We
remember, in our younger days, when conversing with an old sowietnik
(counsellor), to have heard him relate his bewildered astonishment at
the comfort and well-being in Poland when sent under an escort of
Cossacks to introduce Rossian _improvements_. 'What has become of them?'
we asked innocently. 'Ha!' was his naive reply; 'St. Petersburg has
since then grown into a splendid city!'

Let us call the attention of Russo-maniacs to the fact that eighty years
ago, soon after the second partition of Poland, flax in Riga brought
eight hundred and seventy florins, while in 1845 it hardly brought two
hundred and forty florins; and the famous wheat of Sandomir sold, at the
first-named period, at sixty, while in 1856 it brought barely
thirty-five. Yet money now is cheaper than before 1800.

Did the Polish nobleman, selfish and wicked as now seems the fashion to
describe him, force the peasant of Samogitia to servile work, when the
latter had an opportunity of drawing a good profit from the results of
his labor in the neighboring marts of Memel, Liban, Riga, Mittau,
Venden, etc.? No, must we answer to our readers. _There_ might have been
seen a boor's wife dressed in sky blue lined with fox fur, and drawn to
church in a comfortable kolaska, by two excellent, plump, Samogitian
ponies; and neither did the father of the family exhaust his strength in
night watches or day labor, as he had twenty teams to dispose of, and
could offer to an unexpected visitor a broiled chicken with milk sauce,
and a couple of bottles of brown stout from Barclay, Perkins & Co., of
London. Such prosperity, although then declining, was still to be found
in 1830. Why does it not exist to-day? Let this question be answered by
civilizers and democrats from Tambow, Saratow, or Penza, and their
jealous apologists.

Our writer seems to think he has made a wonderful discovery when he
exultingly exclaims: 'How surprised these pretended _liberals_ would be
to see that their efforts only tend toward reconstituting a monarchical
Poland (was Poland really monarchical?--we may doubt) under the
protection of a _feudal_ and Catholic Church!' Such charges were also
made in the eighteenth century, and were suggested by similar motives. I
do not feel called upon to defend the Catholics of Poland. I would
simply retort upon the authors of such suggestions, by referring to
certain distinguished rabbis, as Heilprin, Meintzel, Jastrow, etc.; to
Protestants, as Konarski, Potworowski, Kasaius, Krolikowski, Czynski,
and hosts of others; and also to Mohammedans, as Baranowski, Mucha,
Bielak, etc. I cannot condemn a man because he is a Catholic, because I
have everywhere, and in every religious community, found both patriots
and traitors to their country, to their origin, to principle, and to
their religion. But this I must say, that of whatever denomination or
sect be the minister or priest, he has a right to be a faithful son to
his fatherland and race. It happened that in Poland the Catholic priest
stood opposed to the Rossian pope. If the latter can be a Rossian
patriot, why should a like sentiment render guilty a Polish priest? This
animosity in certain circles proceeds from a partiality to the
Rosso-Greek Church, which, some years ago, during the visit of the
emperor Nicholas to England, certain ignorant or du. By way of
parenthesis, we may add that the Rosso-Greek Church separated long ago
from the Eastern Greek Church, preserving, however, all its outward
forms. Peter I. abolished the patriarchate, introduced his own classes
and reforms, and made himself head of the church. He gave the name of
synod to a permanent council, nominated, appointed, dismissed,
controlled, rewarded, and punished by himself, according to his own
judgment, passion, or will. The Graeco-Rossian Church is kept under the
same discipline as the army, and an offending pope is sent, with the
rank of private, to some remote regiment.

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