The Sun.
London, England, 1863-04-03 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, APRIL 3, 1863

Richmond papers, it is known hers that from' 6
dole.- to- 6 d01e..50c. in Confederate notes have been
offered within the past two days in Fredericks-
burg, and, moreover 2 dole. 25c. in Virginia bank
notes, and 3 dole. 50c. in Confederate notes, are
freely paid for our national currency.

The rebel Senate has resolved that the President
shall issue a proclamation dissuading the further
cultivation of cotton and tobacco, and enjoining the
planting of grain. Governor Brown, of Georgia,
threatens to do the same.

Governor Leteher has issued a proclamation in-
voking the people of Virginia to pay attention to
the act of the Legislature restricting the cultivation
of tobacco, and requiring the cultivation of grain in
its stead.

A bill to organise a volunteer navy has been in-
troduced into the rebel Senate.

The rebel papers speak of Gen. Hooker's army as
having been sent to Port Royal.
Mobile papers say ample preparations are making
to give our troops a warm reception on the Talla-
hatchie.

FINANCIAL AND COMMERCIAL.
NEW YORK, MARCH 20, EVENING.

The sub-treasurer commenced to-day to receive
deposits of money on call, after 10 days' notice, at
5 per cent, and something like 1,500,000 dols. in all
was deposited. The amount of money now held by
the Government at the various sub-treasuries, at 4
and 5 per cent per annum, on call after 10 days, is
about 70,000,000 dols. The law limits the amount
of such deposits to 100,000,000 dollars ; and it is
pretty clear that in the course of the next 30 to 40
days this limit can be reached. In this way the
Government can obtain 30,000,000 dols. on most
advantageous terms, and without creating any dis-
turbance in the money-market, as the money will
flow in gradually, and be distributed as rapidly as
it is paid in. Until the limit of deposits has been
reached, it is safe to conclude that the secretary
will not attempt to negotiate a loan. Money was
lent to-day on call at 5 per cent., and at 6 every one
had money to lend. Mercantile paper is worth 5 to
6 per cent. Debt certificates, old issue, are steady ;
the new issue are 8 better.
Gold fluctuated between 154 and 155 to-day,
closing at 154! bid. The short interest in gold is so
large that each decline is rapidly checked by the
purchases of the bears. Exchange active at 171.

culative peasant who had sold four of his country-
men-for six Polish florins to be strung up to the
❑earest tree.

In the meantime Gen. Langiewicz's surgeon had
dressed the wounda of Mr. Finkenstein and of the
Pole who still survived. The Dictator then had
Mr. Finkenstein put into a cart, and sent him to
Cracow, attended by his own surgeon, whom he re-
quested not to leave the patient until he was well,
and who still visits him daily. He also wrote, and
confided to the surgeon, a statement to the effect
that he had found a person, supposed to be an En-
glishman, wounded and on the point of death, under
such and such circumstances.

While I was with Mr. Finkenstein, Langiewicz's
surgeon came in. lie had, of course, seen nothing
of the general since the 15th, the day on which the
prisoners were massacred. This was two days before
the battle of Z iposcie (near Chrobeiz), three days
before the battle of Grochowiz (near Busk), and
from four to five days before the disappearance of
the Dictator from the camp, which, it may be re-
membered, took place early on the morning of the
21st, after the midnight council of war. But he
tok, me in what state he had met with Mr. Finken-
stein, and that he had found three of the Poles
dead and the fourth all but lifeless.
This afternooe, being at the Hotel do Saxe, I
went into the spacious, well-appointed, and alto-
gether admirably-managed hospital which has been
formed there by private subscription, and one of
the first patients pointed out to me was the Polish
gentleman who had been knocked down and
bayoneted, but not quite killed, though the soldiers
had left him for dead. The surgeon who directs the
hospital had been attached to Rochebrune's corps
of Z nerves, and was present at the battles of the
17th (Zaposcie) and 18th (Busk). As he brought
his wounded away with him from Busk (or Gro-
chowica), after attending them on the field of battle
when the Russians had retired to Pinezow, he is
naturally of opinion that Busk was a decided vic-
tory for the Poles. As for Zaposcie, if that had
been won, Bask (or Grochowica), being further
from the Galician frontier, would never have been
fought, and the insurgents, who, as it was, were
compelled by hunger and want of amunition to enter
Cracow and Tarnow on the morning of the 22d,
would have been driven to do so five days earlier
by force of arms.
But to keep to the principal subject of this let-
ter. The surgeon of the Zauaves, then, was surprised
to hear that Mr. Finkenstein was alive. He had
helped to place him in the cart which conveyed him
to Cracow, and considered at the time that he was
far too badly wounded ever to recover.
We have lost sight of the lady who accompanied
Mr. Finkenstein on his fatal journey to Miechow.
She was, in fact, separated from him in the camp,
and it afterwards appeared that she also had been
wounded, robbed, and partly stripped. She is now
in Cracow, and has so far recovered that she is able
to walk about.
Now, who does the reader suppose these soldiers
were that deliberately bayoneted defenceless men
and women ? Mongols, Tartars, Asiatics of some
kind, no doubt. Nothing of the kind. They were
Germans, probably from Courland; but, at least,
they spoke the German language, and it was in that
tongue that they expressed their astonishment at
their English victim not being dead, proposed to
cut his finger off for the sake of his ring, and re-
commended the process (so readily adopted) of
breaking his head with the butt-ends of their mus-
kets, as one likely to finish him. It is not, then,
because there is something essentially barbarous
in the Russian blood, but because there is some-
thing essentially barbarous in the Russian system,
that these atrocities are committed by the soldiers
in the service of the Russian Government.
Formerly the Russian officers, who in some cases
(a minority, no doubt) are as good as the officers of
any other army, could count on the implicit obedience
of their men; but the bonds of discipline have now
all been loosened. The soldiers have been warned
against their commanders, and have been invited to
watch the conduct of subalterns, and report upon it
to their superiors. In other words, a real revolution-
ary feeling has been created in the ranks in order to
checkthe supposed revolutionary feeling which may
or may not have animated the more educated portion
of the officers. The consequence is that the officers
now find themselves commanding mere hordes of
savages. Some imitate the conduct of the savages ;
others do their best to check it ; while some, ordered
not to restrain, but to urge on their troops to fresh
excesses, have committed suicide, as the unhappy
Colonel Korff did a few weeks since, and as several
Russian officers have done in the course of the last
two years,
" We were told that the Russian officers bad
turned revolutionists and communists,"said a Polish
proprietor to me the other day. " But it is the sol-
diers who have turned communists. They rob and
plunder wherever they go, and we have often had
to thank the officers for protecting our property
against their thoroughly
communistic instincts."
It is, in fact, the revolutionists of the Russian army
—or, in other words, the men who are heartily sick of
the barbarous and demoralising old system, and do
tilt know how to change it—that have endeavoured
to keep order in the ranks. Now that they see
what revolution really
means, they have to °pease
it with revolvers. It is only their superior personal
courage that saves them from being murdered by
the majority, as the educated classes in Russia will
infallibly be murdered if the long-talked-of peasant
insurrection should ever
ment of Russia for the
believe that General
Mr. Finkenstein, of course, intends to call upon
take place.
his Government to obtain redress from the Govern
the medical report of injuries done to him ; and I
have already Langiewicz's statement, and
General Langiewicz's own
surgeon, been communicated in the
proper quarter.
Whenever I ask a Pole if he is not astonished and
shocked at the conduct of the Russian soldiers in
murdering unarmed, perfectly inoffensive men, the
answer I usually receive is, " Disgusted, yes; but
not shocked or astonished, because we have been
used to this sort of thing
so long. You never be-
lieved it in England; you thought that, as we were
the bitter enemies of the Russians, our evidenc3
against them was of no value. Now you, as an
Englishman, can judge for yourself, without taking
the opinion of any Pole in the matter."
Nevertheless, owing to the absence of discipline
in the Russian army, more horrible deeds are done
now than were ever commited in the war of 1830
tan d '3l, when the soldiers were ruled with a rod of
iron by men who, if they were not highly civilized,
at least knew the ordinary traditions of European
armies, and tolerated no acts of barbarism not ex-
pressly commanded by themselves. Russia was also
rather stronger then than she is now, and much of
her present cruelty is the cruelty of impotency. If
the Russian troops cannot beat the insurgents in the
field (which they have always failed to do when Lhe
numbers have been anything like equal), the Go-
vernment would ,ike them at least to make their
presence felt in every district they enter ; and, ac-
cordingly their passage is marked wherever they go
by robbery, murder, and incendiarism.
News arrives here every day of victories gained
by the insurgents over the Russians. Whether they
are sometimes defeated and the news not published
I cannot say ; but that the insurrection is maintained
in all parts of Russian Puland is quite certain.
Cieszkowski is in great force in the " Palatinate"
or "government" of Cracow, in the kingdom of
Poland ; Padlewski is in Plock ; Czachowski com-
mands the insurgents in sandomir ; Lewandowski
and Lelewel share the direction of a numerous band
in Lublin. It was in Lublin, too, that Mielencki
gained two brilliant victories on the 22d and 23d,
when the Russians are said to have lost altogether
about 400 men. This is thought not to compensate
for the fact that Mielencki himself, one of the best
of the insurgent chiefs, was dangerously wounded
in the action of the second day.
In the Lithuanian provinces the most important
leaders are Rokiuski, who has lately moved towards
Podolia; Count 'l'yczkiewicz, and the brothers
Rykoff, two Russian gentlemen, formerly in the
Imperial army. By the last accounts the Rykoffs
were fighting hard in the province of Samagitia.
That several Russian officers have joined the insur-
gents is a fact beyond doubt. In this we have a
striking proof that the sentiments expressed in the
celebrated letter addressed by the Russian officers

at Warsaw to the Grand Duke Constantine were
perfectly genuine. No one said, or thought, that it
was very numerously signed, or that it represented
the feeling of more than about 100 men. Ido not
say that 100 Russian officers have joined the in-
surgents ; but if a list were to be drawn up of those
who have openly taken part with the Poles, and
those who have attacked their own men to keep
them from plunder, and worse than plunder, then
the list would already be rather a long one.
Even the essentially military virtue of courage
seems now to have departed from the Russian army,
and it
,is certainly gratifying to find that, even
from a military point of view, the soldier cannot
commit crime with impunity. The Russian soldier
is not fighting now for his " father" the Czar, or fur
his " mother," Moscow, or for Holy Russia, or any-
thing of that kind. If St. Nicholas be the patron
of thieves, then he is fighting in the name of St.
Nicholas. He is quite ready to murder a Pole for
the sake of robbing him ; and if he does go into
battle, it is either because he is driven for ward by
his officers, or simply with a view to plunder. But
when he has killed his Pole he wishes to pluck
him, and thus there have been numerous instances
of Russian soldiers creeping out of action, not so
much from fear as a desire to rob the dean as soon
as possible. I hear, however, from more than one
good source, that o❑ the 23d, at the battle of
Schlesen, where Melenchi fell, the charge was
actually sounded ten times before the Russian in-
fantry could he got to march to the attack, and
that the officers menaced them, shook them, beat
them, kicked them, entreated them, and ultimately
dragged them like sheep to the slaughter, for the
Poles; shot 238 of these panic-stricken thieves,
while their own losses in killed and wounded
amounted only to 50.

MARCH 29.
You have doubtless heard that when Archbishop
Felinski, of Warsaw, resigned his place in the
Council of State his resignation was not accepted,
and that thereupon he addressed a letter to the
Emperor, giving his reasons for declining to
take any further part in the administration of
affairs in the Kingdom of Poland. I am told
that a more or less exact account of the con-
tents of this letter has already been published
in a French newspaper; and a few remarks as to
its general purport appeared two days ago in
the Czas, the principal journal of Cracow, and in-
deed of all Poland. To-day the Czas contains a
verbatim extract from the Archbishop's epistle in
which he does not confine himself to his own perso-
nal reasons for quitting the now non-existent (or at
least non-apparent) Council of State, but—justify-
ing the course he takes by the present deplorable
state of Poland—adjures the Emperor to adopt the
only means possible for restoring and permanently
establishing peace to his unhappy country. The
important part of the letter is as follows:
" In presence of the blood which we now see flowing in
great streams, at a moment so solemn for our native land,
I, as the first spiritual shepherd of the kingdom, feel it my
duty to approach your Majesty, in order to point out what
appear to me to be the sole means of arresting the calami-
ties which afflict the country. Administrative reforn a,
however sincerely undertaken, cannot satisfy our nation.
Poland demands an independent political life. The most
terrible repression will not be axle to quench the spirit which
animated all classes, and which every flay divides more and
more the nation from the Crown. Your Majesty may be-
lieve it as a fact, that nothing but the restoration of p. liti-
cal independence to Poland, united only by dynastic ties to
Russia, wil' be able to avert the sad probability of your
reigning, not over a flourishing country, but over the em-
bers and ruins of our villages and t wns. May your Maj.-s-
-ty not delay the solution of this question until the insur-
rection be suppressed I Your Majesty it, powerful, and mag-
nanimity would not be mistaken for weakness."
Some of the Arcn bishop's friends ex press surprise
at the publication of this letter (or rat' er a portion
of it), inasmuch as it was evidently written for the
Emperor alone, though naturally more than OM
person was con,ulted confidentially before it was sent
off. It is worth observing that the Archbishop of
Warsaw off:rs, and presses upon the Rnperor,
thi
same solution of the Polish cl,ffieulty that was about
to be presented to him last au,umn (in corn
pliance with the Grand Duke Constantine's re-
quest) by Count Andrew Zamoyski, in the name of
the Polish nobility, when the Count was suddenly
arrested, conveyed to St. Petersburg, and ordered
into exile. It ought also to be remembered that
since 1814 this is the only solution which the Pces
have declared themselves willing to abide by; that
it was proposed to the Emperor Alexander, both
before and after the signing of the Treaty of
Vienna, by Kosciusko; and, above all, that the
Emperor Alexander professed to have accepted it,
and assured Kosciusko, Prince Adam Czartoriski,
and several officers of the Polish army now living,
that he would make it his first object to carry it
out. The Archbishop, then, not only expresses the
settled desire of all Russian Poland, but at the
same time takes his stand on an historical basis and
on the true meaning of the Treaty of Vienna, which
empowered the Emperor Alexander to include all
the Polish provinces in his constitutional Kingdom
of Poland, and bound him (though the obligation
was afterwards set at naught) to grant the inhabi-
tants " national representation and national insti-
tutions."
I do not think any of the Poles imagine that the
recommendation of Archbishop Felinski will be
acted upon. Russia will not make the required
terms with the Poles while they are in arms, and if
they are utterly defeated she will not see any reason
for making terms at all. " Magnanimity," as the
Archbishop says, " would not be mistaken for
weakness." But the magnanimity must exist before
it can be exercised, and at present it forms part of
the pride of Russia to keep a special mark of con-
quest en the Poles of Lithuania, Volhynia, Podolia,
and the Ukraine, to suppress their national ehurch,
schools, and newspaper press, and to force upon
them, in the law courts and public offices, a lan-
guage which is not their own and which they
abhor.