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

at Warsaw to the Grand Duke Constantine wets
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 for
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 forward 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 dead as soon
as possible. I hear, however, from more than one
good source, that on 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
Pelee 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 Czes 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 reforo s,
however sincerely undertaken, cannot satisfy our nation.
Poland demands an independent political life. The most
terrible repression will not be able to quench the spirit which
animates all classes, and which every day divides more and
more the nation from the Crown. Your Majesty may be-
lieve it as a fact, that nothing but the restoration of politi-
cal independence to Poland, united only by dynastic ties to
Russia, will 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 Majes-
ty not delay the solution of this question until the insur-
rection be suppressed I Your Majesty is powerful, and mag-
nanimity would not be mistaken for weakness."
Some of the Archbishop's friends express surprise
at the publication of this letter (or ratter a portion
of it), inasmuch as it was evidently written for the
Emperor alone, though naturally more than one
person was consulted confidentially before it was sent
off. It is worth observing that the Archbishop of
Warsaw off2rs, and presses upon the Emperor, the
same solution of the Polish difficulty that was about
to be presented to him last a ugumn tom-
pliance with the Grand Duke Constantine's re-
quest) by Count Andress Zamoyski, in the name of
the Polish nobility, when the Count was suddenll
arrested, conveyed to St. Petersburg, and ordered
into exile. It ought also to ba remembered fiat
s:nce 1814 this is the only solution which the Poles
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 Felinaki 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 church,
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.