The Sun.
London, England, 1864-06-02 00:00:00

LONDON, THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 1864.

Montalembert on Poland,

The Count DE MONTALEMBERT, denied access to
the tribune of the Imperial Legislature of France,
has still his own tribune in the pages of Le Cor-res-
pondant. It is a tribune that he ascends only oc-
casionally, never lightly, always impressively.
From it, his voice bas just now again become audi-
ble. He has lifted it, that most eloquent voice, yet
once more in behalf of Poland, of the Polish
nationality, of that great Christian nation which Ole
cries aloud in accents of anguish) has been snared,
seized, strangled, outraged, despoiled, assassinated
under our eyes 1 Never has this widely-recog-
nized Champion at once of Liberalism and of
Religion, never, we hesitate not to assert
it, to reiterate it, to insist upon it, never before
this has he spoken—even in his happiest moments
of inspiration as an orator, as a man of letters, as a
man of genius—more effectively, or more affectingly,
than he has here spoken in behalf, yet once more, of
Poland and of the Poles. Spoken, we say advisedly,
rather than simply written, for it seems almost as
though one heard the tones of his voice, his
argument throughout is so impassioned, so im-
pulsive, so impetuous. The very preamble of
the oration, here, is so eminently befitting the sad-
ness of the theme, that it seems to hush one into
attention upon the instant, and into an attention
not simply breathless but awe-stricken.
When upon a coast beaten by the tempest,
he says, the signal guns of alarm are heard re-
sounding in the night, announcing that some
vessel is in imminent peril of shipwreck —in
what Christian land, he asks, do we behold the sea-
faring inhabitants deaf to the cries of the mariners
thus threatened with destruction, deaf to the
appeal of their fellows, of their brethren, shut-
ting themselves thereupon in-doors either to sleep
in peace or only to sit up watching merely for the
sake of exulting amongst themselves, in the chim-
ney corner, over the sweet security of the
shore and the domestic hearth ? Without pausing
to apply this startliog inquiry—the application
of which, indeed, is only too frightfully ap-
parent—MONTALEMBERT puts to us, one and all,
yet another interrogation. When, he says, there
suddenly arises in the street or upon the high-
road the cry of some passer by who is being
either assailed or assassinated, what should be
thought of those worthy people who, instead of
running instantly to afford aid to the victim, should
dream only of hurriedly barricading their own
house, scarcely leaving open a chink through which
to reconnoitre, so as to see, from a safe distance, how
the crime is being accomplished ? Then it is that
the double apologue is applied. Then it is that the
Count de MONTALEMB ERT exclaims—Yet it is this,
precisely this, which has been taking place in
France, in Europe, during these last eighteen
months,. Only—he adds—it is not a ship simply,
it is a whole people that is being submerged under
our gaze in a sea of blood. It is not under the
shadow of the night, it is not in the bosom of the
tempest or in the depth of the woods—it is in the
broad light of day and in the midst of a profound
calm that the catastrophe is being accomplished.
In all of which— what man is there amongst us
who will venture to assert that there is one particle
of exaggeration ? It is the simple statement of a
fact—a fact net only undeniable, but glaring and
notorious.