The Sun.
London, England, 1863-07-22 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, JULY 22, 1863.

NEW NOVEL.
On Friday, July 24, in 3 vols.,
THREE LIVES IN ONE.
A NOVEL.

Also now ready, in 3 vols.,
MARY LYNDSAY. By Lady EMILY PONSONBY.
Burst and Blackett, 13, Great Marlborough-street.

Now ready at all the Libraries, in 3 vols.,

VICISSITUDES OF A GENTLEWOMAN.
"A pleasant tale, naturally told. The fortunes of the
heroine will be eagerly followed by many sympathetic
readers."—Sun.
" There is all the interest of a story wholly original about
this work. It is full of pleasant and stirring incidents."—
John Bull.
Hurst and Blackett, 13, Great Marlborough-street.

Just published, price 7s. Gd., cloth Bvo.,
MEMORABLE EVENTS IN THE LIFE OF
A LONDON PHYSICIAN.

In Three Parts.
Virtue Brothers, 1, Amen Corner, and all the Libraries.

On July 27, will be published, in 3 vols. post Bvo.,
THE CREAM OF A LIFE. A NOVEL.
Richard Bentley, New Burlington-street

N. OT I CE.-OPPOSITE NEIGHBOURS.-
-L-N The new novel is NOW READY at all the Book-
sellers and Libraries.

Richard Bentley, New Burlington-street.

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having been gained by generals who at the time
were wounded or dead, of marches into the in-
terior of Russian Poland having been effected by
detachments which had already retired in con-
fusion to Galicia, and so on. I read the other
day in a Polish paper that 1,500 men had entered
Volbynia from Lithuania. Why should I believe
it ? Why should I Consider this statement more
trustworthy than the statements published a few
weeks ago to the effect that Little Russia was in
a state of revolt ; that there were 15,000 insurgents
in Volhynia ; that an insurrection had broken out
around Kaminiec-Podolski ; that the Volhynian
peasants (who cut out the eyes and run skewers
through the cheeks and lips of the Polish proprie-
tors suspected of insurrectionary tendencies) are
favourable to the Polish cause—in short, than a
dozen statements which, having taken them on trust
for a moment, I afterwards found to be either grossly
incorrect or wholly without foundation ? I will say
nothing about suppressions ; it would be too much
to expect the Poles to proclaim to the world how
many peasants the insurgents have found it advis-
able to hang by way of example and to "encourage
the others," or how many guilty and innocent per-
sons they have assassinated, not only in Warsaw,
but also in Cracow and Lemberg, as spies. It may be
necessary, from a military point of view, to intimi-
date the peasants, and deter them from giving infor-
mation and assistance to the Russians. At least,
however, it is a necessity of a very deplorable kind,
and one which the Poles may be excused for not en-
larging upon, for it is not and cannot be their object
to keep foreigners well informed as to the exact
position of affairs in Poland. Their aim is to place

themselves and all their actions in the most favour-
able light possible. They are standing on the de-
fensive, in a desperate contest, and the political Pole
will no more give evidence against himself than
would any private Pole who was being tried for
his life.

It is not from any wish to spoil the Polish game—
which, on the whole, is played with far greater fair•
ness by the Poles than by their adversaries—that I
call attention to its true character; but English
readers ought to be made to understand that it is
one in which, when fair play does not seem likely
to succeed, cheating is resorted to.
I doubt whether the Poles will do themselves
much good by deceiving foreigners for a littlewhile,
and then, a little while afterwards, losing their cha-
racter for veracity. Already the most respectable
of the French papers are beginning to complain that
their telegraphic correspondents in Poland are not
sufficiently careful in supplying them with news. I
do not know whether they are careful or not, but
they certainly forward a great deal of news which is
not true. The senders of telegrams, however, are
not the worst offenders in this respect. The tele-
grams are, for the most part, based on statements
contained in the Polish papers, and those who trans
mit them have to choose between doing so at once,
when the information is as fresh as it is astonishing,
or not at all. The telegraphic agents have often no
means of verifying statements sufficiently striking
to be worthy of being telegraphed, and the foreign
writers who base their articles en the Polish tele-
grams are in the same position. But if some
allowance may be made for persons who, on the
strength of false rumours published in journals
which are glad to adopt them, mislead the
public under pretence of giving it early informa-
tion, what are we to think of artists who, hearing
of occurrences which have really never happened,
resolve to depict them as though they had taken
place beneath their eyes ? When the newspaper
reader has a falsehood offered to him first in a tele-
gram, secondly in a commentary founded on the
telegram, and, thirdly, in a picture founded on the
telegram and the commentary together, he must be
as sceptical as though he had lived for several
months in Poland during au insurrection not to
swallow it at last. Accordingly, the subscribers to
the French Illustration cannot be blamed if, seeing
in the number for the 4th of July a representation
of a band of " Galician Volunteers" (who bear no
resemblance to Galician Volunteers) "encamped at
Druczkopol, in Volhynia " (which no " Gallician
Volunteers" or insurgents of any kind have
entered, and where there has been no rising), they
imagine that the story and picture of the Druczko-
pol insurrection are, somehow or other, not alto-
gether without foundation. The scene in question
must have been invented long before the ill-starred
Galician expedition had even reached the Volhy-
nian frontier, and it figures worthily in the same
number with another in which an imaginary rising
of the " Cossacks of the Ukraine" (so notorious for
their Polish sympathies) is depicted.
Let it not be imagined that the patriots who lead
the Polish insurrection in the field endeavour either
to conceal their defeats or to exaggerate the import-
ance of their victories. They may blind themselves
to many of the difficulties they have to encounter—
and had they not done so from the first the insur-
rection could not have lasted as it has until now—
but if they allow themselves to be deceived they are
not the men to attempt to mislead others. There
are plenty of persons, however, ready to do the
work for them, and the more the armed insurrec-
tion seems to decline, the more persistently is it
announced day after day that " the insurrection
goes on increasing," and that it extends " from the
Baltic to Bessarabia." One telegrapher—probably
the same who made poor Horodycki march rapidly
upon Dubno when he was lying dead at Radziwilow
—caused Rochebrun, the other day, to appear with
600 horsemen on the banks of the Pruth ; this tele-
gram, however, seems to have answered. At least
the French journals have not yet published any
articles headed "Rochebrun on the Pruth," and the
Illustration has hitherto abstained from presenting
its readers with caricatures of " Volunteers from
Moldavia entering Podolia."
However desirable it may be to keep up the in-
surrectionary spirit in Poland, and sympathy with
the insurrection in France and England, I do not
think it is fair to deceive the insurgents as to the
chances of a foreign intervention in their favour,
though it may be argued, on the other hand, that if
all hope of foreign aid were abandoned the very state
of things which first caused such aid to be looked
forward to as possible would soon come to an end.
The Poles are surrounded and tormented by difficul-
ties of all kinds, and a nation cut into three, know-
ing too well who are its enemies, but not knowing
where to find or by what arguments to procure a
single frieud, may be excused for not pursuing a
straightforward course, and for not looking in the
face dangers and obstacles which ere quite insur-
mountable. At least, if this be inexcusable, the in-
surrection itself must be condemned, or, at best,
viewed with pity as a movement of blind despair.
When the Poles began their present struggle,
wiihout arms, without money, without any prepa-
ration worth speaking of, and without the goodwill
of their peasants, they had, nevertheless, some slight
apparent chances in their favour. They believed
that in Russia, a country which they hate too much
to take the trouble of studying with attention even
its weak points, a political revolution was at hand,
or if not a political revolution, at least an insurrec-
tion of serfs. They even fancied that the Russians
would basely profit by a rising in Poland to over-
turn their own Government, whereas the effect of
the rising has been to rally all the moderate reform
party in Russia—all the landed proprietors v, ho a
year and a half ago were so urgent, and in some
places FO peremptory, in their demands for a con-
stitution—to the Crown. Prince Alexander
Schtcherbutoff, who was one of the two most con-
, spicuous leaders of the Constitutional party in the
Moscow Assembly of 1862, is now Mayor of Mos-
cow and President of an Elective Municipal Council
which possesses considerable local power ; and it was
he who obtained permission to form the Volunteer
companies which are to replace reguiar troops at
Moscow, in order that a greater number of the
latter may be available for service in Poland.
Hitherto the Polish insurrection has only had the

effect of ineres3ing the interns' strength of Russia

proper.
As for the revolutionary party, which must not
be supposed to include all who read M. Herzen's
writings on account of their novel tone and of their
high literary merit, it has hitherto proved itself
powerless for direct action. Its influence hes shown

itself chiefly among some of the junior officers of
the army, and M. Herzeu has himself acknowledged

,hat his general teaching is odious to the peasantry

whom he has so earnestly striven to befriend, but
who believe that the man who is the enemy of their
Sovereign is their enemy also.
The greatest chance the Poles have had has been
given to them by the Russian Government itself,
which by cautioning the soldiers against obeying
too implicitly the orders of the regimental officers

or (what comes to much the same thing) by encou-
raging them to keep a watch over these officers and
report as to their conduct, destroyed all discipline
in more than one corps. The same result was pro-

duced by the infamous incitements to pillage and
slaughter issued by many of the generals, and which,
in some instances, the more honourable of the regi-

mental officers sought to check at the peril of their
lives. The abolition, at an opportune moment, of
the right to inflict corporal punishment in an arbi-
trary manner is said to have been another cause of

" demoralisation' in the Russian army.
Then when the moderate party in Poland accepted
the programme of the revolutionary party in regard
to the serf question, and the peasant was declared
free proprietor of his land, there seemed t o be some

foundation for a hope that the peasant might prove

grateful to his benefactors ; but the gift came too
late, and looked too much like a speculation. If
the peasant's rent was to be forgiven at all it should
have been forgiven to him earlier. In the kingdom

at this moment the peasant is in some districts
favourable to the Polish cause, in many others un-
favourable ; and, on the whole, is indifferent. In
the Catholic portions of Lithuania he appears, here
and there, to have given active assistance to the
insurgents, and the Lithuanians, of all classes, have
certainly shown themselves more energetic than the

inhabitants of the other divisions of ancient Poland.
In the south-eastern provinces the insurrection has
quite failed, and more completely and far more sud-
denly than it failed in 1831, when an expedition of
regular troops entered Volhynia from Galicia as a
very irregular expedition entered it the other day.

All endeavours to drive the Russians permanently

out of " Ruthenea"---that is to say, the Ruthenian
provinces of Volhynia, Podolia, and the Ukraine—

must, from a variety of reasons, be attended with far
greater difficulties even than similar attempts to
drive them out of Lithuania and the Congress King-
dom, If the two latter divisions of ancient Poland
were replaced in the hands of the Poles, the fortress
which commands them would also be in their hands.
But the capital, and military key of the three great
Ruthenian and Russo• Greek provincesis the Russian
city and fortress of Kieff, which stands on the Polish
side of the Dnieper and enters the Ruthenian pro-
vinces like a wedge. Kieff formed no part of the
Poland of 1772. It belonged to the Russian empire
before the partition and to the Czarite of Muscovy,
before the " Czar of Greater, Lesser, and White
Russia" (which was the official, though not the fa-
miliar designation of the Czar in England at the
beginning of the 18th century) had adopted the title
of "Emperor of all the Russias." It was, in fact,
ceded freely, for a promise of money, to Peter the
Great's father, by John Sobieski, when the latter
was preparing for his great expedition against the
Turks.

But without considering the possibility of recon
quering the Ruthenian provinces, it is difficult for
the Poles to make even a Polish demonstration in
those parts ; not that the very small civilised class
in Volhynia, Podolia, and the Ukraine is not alto-
gether Polish, but because the very large semi-bar-
barous class of newly-emancipated Ruthenian pea-
sant-slaves is bitterly hostile to the Poles, and be-
cause its natural servile hatred has been encouraged
and excited by appeals to its timidity and fanati-
cism. Every one knows that the Polish proprietors
agreed the other day to give the Ruthenian peasants
their portions of land in freehold, and promised to
respect their religion and language ; but every one
does not know that the Polish National Govern-
ment, or at least its recognised agents, were guilty
of a very unbecoming act in their dealings with
these peasants, which was easily, and in this one
instance most justly, turned against its authors. In
the districts of which the few insurgents who ap-
peared in Volhynia contrived, in the-absence of the
Russian soldiers, to gain possession, the duty on
spirits was declared abolished, and in one place at
least, to my certain knowledge, the price of vodka
was reduced by about a rouble a gallon, and all in
the name of the liberty and independence of Poland.
" This," said the Russians, in reply, in an address
given to the priests to be read in all the churches,
"is a device worthy only of a Jew, a Lech, or a
devil." (The Poles are called Lechs or Lechites by
the Ruthenians and many of the Russians, just as
the Russians are called Moskals by the Poles.)
"You will not get the Emperor to cheapen spirits,"
the address went on to say, " for he would have the
orthodox keep their heads clear," and so on. As
for land, they were told that "the conspirators from
that hotbed of Lechery, the kingdom of Poland,
might give them " a piece of barren soil to be
watered by their tears ;" but that would be all.
Ultimately, the Ruthenian peasants showed they
did not think much of the promised land flowing with
gin and brandy offered to them by the Poles, for
they knew that the Poles had no power to give it
to them ; and when after a few days the troubled
districts were occupied by Russian troops they fell
upon their Polish benefactors and inflicted on them
more cruel tortures and more horrible deaths than
were ever heard of during the worst excesses of the
French revolution.
I regret to hear that another expedition to Volhy-
nia is about to start, and if the Russians are as dia-
bolically wicked as the Poles believe them to be they
will rejoice at the news, for if it does not fail at the
very outset, like Wysocki's expedition, it will lead
to a fresh massacre of the Polish inhabitants by the
Ruthenian peasantry. I can recal conversationsl
have had at different times during the last few
months with some half dozen proprietors of Volhy-
nia, each of whom assured me that he looked for-
ward with dread to the breaking out of an insur-
rection in that province, and without being able to
say that it was the general wish, I know that it
was the earnest desire of many of the proprietors
that the National Government would send them no
expeditions from Galicia, and that the anonymous
and irresponsible body which directs the general
movement was begged to content itself in regard to
the three south-eastern provinces with levying
money contributions.
However, if the armed insurrection has not made
any progress lately it still exists, and is making
ready for one more great effort, while the National
Government is strictly obeyed, willingly
sometimes happens) unwillingly, by every Pole. In
the Kingdom the Polish taxes are paid and the
Russian taxes refused. In Ruthenia the Polish
believe this
and Russian taxes are both paid, and I or (as
is also the case in Lithuania. On tileothoessribie to
hand,
no one receives rent, and it is almost impossible
proprietors
penniless,
sell agricultural produce. The sm
all parts of Russian Poland are already
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one pays taxes to two

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