The Sun.
London, England, 1864-06-13 00:00:00

MONTALEMBERT ON POLAND.

froellroewmianrgkaibs ae npeaaLljaygveserbi
na ttt'ihnattrnanobs llaet
pi oanpeorf
otbneTthmheeo
Polish Question by the Count de Montalem-
bert, upon which paper we took occasion to com-
ment at some length in The Sun of Thursday, the
2d instant, immediately after the appearance of the
Count's expostulation with all Christendom :
When in the night along some storm-beaten coast, a gun
which tells of a ship in danger bursts upon the startled ear,
in what Christian country do the inhabitants of the coast,
deaf to the cry of the sufferers, to the appeal of their fellow-
creatures, their brothers, remain at home to sleep in peace,
or keep awake only to hug themselves in the pleasant sense
of security which land and the fireside affords ? When in
the street or on the high road a cry of distress is heard
from some passer-by who is attacked or murdered, what are
we to think of those honest folk who, instead of running to
the victim's aid, only think of shutting themselves up in
their houses, and peep from behind the half-closed shutters
to see from afar how the crime is perpetrated ? Yet this is
what has been taking place in France, in Europe, during
the last 18 months, with this difference that, instead of a
ship, it is a whole nation that is being engulphed in a sea
of blood, and that it is not in the night, not in the midst of
a tempest, nor in the depths of a forest, that the catastrophe
is happening, but in a dead calm. It is not a lonely tra-
veller, nor a caravan of travellers—but a nation, a great
Christian nation, which is hemmed in, seized, garotted,
despoiled, outraged. and assassinated before our eyes.
Eighteen months ago this nation, which a century of un-
heard of wrongs and skilfully planned oppression could nei-
ther subdue nor exhaust, fell into the pit which her execu-
tioners had dug for her. One mighty cry she uttered;to remind
the world that she had been buried alive, and did not wish
to die. Then disarmed, alone, desperate,with the boldness of
despair, she engaged in the struggle which still continues.
The victim has exhausted every appeal for human aid. She
has invoked one by one, with the most solemn adjurations,
civilisation, humanity, the law of nations, modern right,
modern ideas, liberty, progress, honour, gratitude, pity,
public conscience. She has obtained nothing ;no response
has been made to this heart-rending appeal. Modern civi-
lisation so proud of its progress, of its universal empire, of
its marvellous inventions, its popular wonders, has remained
dumb and powerless before the monstrous spectacle exhi-
bited at its very door of the dispossession, mutilation, and
butchery of a nation effected, on a system of deliberate
hatred in the middle of the 19th century. Civilisation has
owned itself conquered by barbarism. Even in that country
where liberty flourishes the best, she has done nothing,
has availed nothing, has attempted nothing to save a people,
one of the first among modern races, whose liberty dates
as far back as that of any, and who asks of God and man
but the simplest, the most elementary kind of liberty,
liberty to live. Modern right, so continually invoked in
some countries, so strangely interpreted and so audaciously
applied in others; this right which, if we are to believe its
noisiest advocates, authorises a people to get rid of Kings
whom it dislikes, without a cause, as in Greece, or for chi-
merical reasons, as in Naples—this newfangled right
allows an empire more than half Asiatic to deny and to
violate with impunity every ancient right in the case of an
European and Christian people, which has fallen a prey
to the spoiler after one thousand years of national indepen-
dence. Humanity proves as helpless as liberty I Neither
philanthropy nor the increased gentleness of our manners
so fairly boast of) and of our penal laws,
n(whiortchhs:wtse may so
compassion which is daily called forth
by publicity, and expended on real or imaginary mis-
fortunes, has been of any avail against what seemed too
horrible to be aught but a nightmare, yet has proved
a fearful reality—a vampire sucking the life•blood of a
weeping victim. Public conscience, too, pity, and gratitude
have been forgetful and silent. In vain did Poland display
before our eyes the remembrance of her services and of her
claims, the eight of her wounds and her pans, ehe who hes