The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-17 00:00:00

4'
kV:* • f • wit.
Zit 45, rim.%
, *444

LONDON, THURSDAY, SEPT. 17, 1863.

An Old East India Company's officer, travelling
recently over the desolated and ensanguined battle-
fields of this protracted insurrection in Russian
Poland, has, naturally enough, deduced from the
mere fact of its long continuance, of this inter-

minable lengthening out of the insurrection—one

alternative. This alternative he has to-day very

lucidly put, through the medium of a very manly,

outspoken communication to our contemporary the

Morning Post. Either, he insists, the insurrection

of the Poles is much more powerful, is much more

popular than it is said to be—Or the Russian army,

now opposed to the insurgents, has fearfully dege-
nerated since the days of the Crimean War ! Those

are the horns of the dilemma, between which, this
intelligent, travelling Englishman, himself a
veteran of the Old East India Company's
service, has placed every apologist of the

Russian Autocracy, every believerin the integrity of

the Muscovite power, every vindicator of the policy
maintained, under various phases or aspects, at the
point of the sword, at the thongs of the knout, at
the muzzle of the rifle, by the Despotic House of

ROMANOFF. And the one fllgrant and undeniable
fact to which this Old Officer directs attention, we

do certainly think, speaks quite plainly for itself—

speaks not only quite plainly, but trumpet-tongued.
A people unarmed, trodden under foot, as it were,

during the chief part of ono whole century, holds

its own, unaided in any way externally, excepting

by tho sympathy expressed by various remote

nationalities—holds its own, thus unaided, month

after month, against the legions of a despotic rule
of Co,ooo,ooo—those legions armed to the
teeth and highly disciplined ! No wonder the

gallant Englishman who is travelling there, out in
the actual seat of war, observing the facts we are

here alluding to, with his own eyes, no wonder, we
say, that we find him hesitating not to assert—" I

am convinced now that not only the insurrection is

much more powerful than we seem to think, but

that the Russian army is no more to be compared
to that of Alma, Inkermaa, and Sebastopol, than
their army of 1854 to the half-savage and irresis-
tibly steady fanatics led by SUWAIiOFF." In saying
this, the writer frankly acknowledges that before
he had goue out there from England into the very

scenes of this deplorable conflict in Russian.

Poland, he had formed an entirely different opinion

of the state of things, than the one he has since been

compelled to arrive at, the one we have seen him

just now indicat!ug in words so very emphatic
and 80 wholly unmistakeable in their drift.

Instead, he says, of finding Poland, as he had been
led to believe he should find it—namely, a Martyr

nation, or as he himself expresses it, " a sheepish
ngglomeraticn of fanatics ready to be slaughtered
but unable to conquer"—ho found it—what ? Let
his own words indicate what it was he really did
find it to, be--" A powerful nation, confident in its
strength, and
unshaken in its determination never
more to submit to the Muscovite rule !" 7Aat is
what he found
that," we should rather say, is
what he finds: far he writes from the midst
of the region of this
revelation to him—
his communication to the Post being dated
as recently as last Saturday, the 12th in-
stant, this " Old E.1.e.0p
"hailing" our con-
temporary from Tarnow! so firm does he find
this determination, on the Part of the insurgent
Poles to be, the determination, . that is, never more
to submit to the Muscovite rule if they can help it,
that the 12th - ' that he writes now,instant, from Tar-
now, "I cannot but feel sure that Russian dominion
in Poland is at an end, and that even all the efforts of
our diplomacy will never succeed in restoring Rua_
siun dominion in Poland, unless we aid them by
arms to destroy all the Poles and then re-colonise
the country with Dan Cossacks." In this opinion,
of course, he may be altogether nits
• taken. But, at
any rate, it is a very noticeable circumstance
that such is the opinion of a di;passionate and
intelligent eye-witness, writing from ;the midst of
the occurrences now transpiring in Russian Poland.
The conviction thus avowed by this travelling
Englishman, himself a man of military experience,
is, for all the world, a matter of es much

---
import and significance, as any argument
put forth in the fore of the most elabo-
rately concocted document prepared by the most
skilled and practised diplomatist, writing,
not from the seat of war, or we suppose we ought to
say more correctly, the Beat :of the insurrec-
tion, but from the foreign offices of London and
Paris, of Vienna, or of St. Petersburg. And the
view taken thus —upon the spot and from the life--
by " An Old E.1.C.0.," comes to us, we cannot bat
think, all the more impressively, seeing that it
appears—n pt in any organ supposed to express the