Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-11-19 00:00:00

POLISH MEETING ON INDIA.

On Tuesday, being the anniversary of the death of
Lord Dudley Stuart, a meeting of the Polish Historical
Society was held at. Sussex chambers, Duke-street, St.
James's, to commemorate the memory of the departed
champion of the Polish cause. In the absence from
London of Colonel L. Szyrma, president, the chair was
occupied by the vice-president, Major C. Szulczewski,
who thus addressed the meeting. Another year has
passed over our heads, and, as regards the world in
general, the veil of oblivion has been drawn-closer still
around our beloved fatherland. But we who know that
this veil covers not a dead nationality as Russia would
have the world believe, whose elements are being rapidly
transmuted into a second Russia, but a living body, still
instinct with the energy of patriotism and the love of
freedom and independence, we have met once more on
this anniversary of a most painful loss to give a proof of
this enduring national life, by expressing iu the name of
Poland her undying: remembrance of, and gratitude to,
Lord Dudley Stuart, the faithful friend who, for so many
years, had unfurled the standard of her independence,
seeking to rally around it the sympathies of Europe, and
who may be said to have died. as he had lived, for our
cause. When his memory shall have perished from among
us, then, indeed, we ma) say that all hope for Poland is
gone ; for a nation that forgets its benefactors, and par-
ticularly such as have exerted themselves in the interest
of its highest spiritual life, will soon lose its self-respect,
and with this all that renders it most worthy of indepen-
dence. As an unbiassed testimony to the feelings that
animate our countrymen at home, I may mention that
an Englishman very recently returned from Poland, after
a long residence there. and on being asked the other day,
by one who was inclined to believe in the rumours so
diligently spread by Russian agents, whether it was true
that there were no Polish patriots except among the
emigrants, exclaimel with flashing eyes : " True nay,
nothing can be more false. On the contrary, there is not
a Pole who is not a'patriot !" It was from the love of his
own happy country and from his appreciation of its free
and ennobling institutions that sprung, in the first in.
stance, Lord Dudley Stuart's sympathy with the wrongs
of Poland, and I may. therefore, be permitted, in connec-
tion with his name, to say a few words in allusion to the
terrific
.struggle in which this country is at present en-
gaged, and for • its successful issue, for which it has the
warmest wishes of every lover of mankind. Some few,
indeed, there are, whose feelings outstripping their judg_
ment, seem to place the Indian mutiny in the same cate.
gory as the rising of the oppressed nationalities in Europe.
and who maintain that the Bindoos have the same claim
to support and sympathy as Poles, and Hungarians,
and Italians. But, supposing even that this was
not a national movement in India, which, there is,
however, not reason for believing—shall we allow the
noble efforts of civilised nations to throw off the yoke
of foreign despots, who are endeavouring to stifle
every exertion of this national life, to be con-
founded with the purposeless rising of barbarian
hordes against a government, which, though it be of
foreign, race, and though it may have been sometimes
mistaken as regards administrative measures, has ever
evinced a sincere desire to rule them with justice and
mildness, and has carried its respect for their national
peculiarities and religion so far, as even to have this
tolerance held up against it, as a matter for scorn and
reproach ? Shall we allow the sacred cause of national
liberty and independence, and the open and honourable
warfare of chivalrous ana highly principled patriots, to be
confounded with the cause of a set of eowardly and
treacherous ruffians, whose only deeds of valour consist in
the butchery. and worse than butchery, of helpless
infants and defenceless women, and whose sole aim seems
plunder? Nay, every manly feeling revolts against the
idea of such an identification of causes, and I am sure, I
may say, in the name of all Polish patriots at least, that
our sincerest wishes are for the success of the nation,
which has for so many years afforded us generous
hospitality, and of the country that is the chief represen•
tatiee of liberty, true order, and independence in the
world.

Major Gielgud proposed the following resolution :
" That this mooting deeply sympathises with the disasters
which have befallen England in her Indian empire-; and,
grateful for the generous hospitality which she long
afforded to the Poles, begs to testify its feolings by con-
tributing, as far as the means of the refugees allow, to
the fund which is now being raised for the relief of the
sufferers from the Indian mutiny."
Colonel B. Wiercinski seconded the resolution, and
said that he felt horrified at the deeds of Nena Sahib—.
for, supposing the movement in India were even a
national one, such deeds as were committed by that
Monster would, certainly, in the_ opinion of every man,
soil for ever the cause of so unscrupulous an assassin.
Thi3 recalled to his (Colonel's) memory the acts of the
late Emperor Nicholas, in 1831, during the late Polish war
'of indepenclenes, when the Cossacks, whose Hetman or
Chief was the present 'Emperor, cut off the breasts or all
Polish women at Oszaniena. .• The present Emperor
begged his father, on his knees, to bestow a medal of
honour on the regiment which had committed such a
barbarous atrocity on that unotronding cla s. Yet none
of the foreign prints had the boldness of informintz the
English ptiblic of that fact. Now AtexAndux and Nena
Sahib may pass to posterity as brothers in crime com-
mitted upon the weaker class •of humanity, whom every
aw, human and divine, confides to get;eral protection.
several U4IJcC 6,1413 I.laCal
separated after a vote of thanks to the chairman.
A sum 'of 45 5s was :-übscribrd, chieflir in amounts
from Gd to a few shillings; which will be duly forwarded
to the Indian Relief Fund.-