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

THE POLISH INSURRECTION.

(From the Special Correspondent of the Timss.)
LEMBERG, July 15.
There have been signs of a rising of peasants in
the district of Bochnia, in West Galicia. Why they
should rise is by no means clear, but several pro-
prietors have been threatened, the villages are in a
very excited state, and it is said that acts of vic-
lence have been committed, and that the peasants
have only with great difficulty been restrained from
pillage. Two very different, but not contradictory,
explanations of this movement are given. The
Lemberg official paper states that the excitement
was caused by the news of some peasants having
been hanged by the insurgents in the kingdom of
Poland ; while the Gazeta Narodowa maintains
that it is due to the intrigues of Russian agents,
Both explanations may be true, for it is well known
that the peasants of the kingdom often favour the
Russians and betray the Poles, and that when the
Poles catch them at such work they hang them;
and nothing is more probable than that Russia, en-
raged as she is at Volhynia having been invaded by
the Galicians, may have resolved to foment troubles
in Galicia, in which case nothing more would be
necessary than to let the peasants know that their
brethren were being;executed by " the Poles" on the
other side of the frontier. Bochnia was the centre
and chief scene of the horrible massacres of 1846.
Since then taskwork has been abolished, and all
forced relations between peasant and proprietor

put an end to. Nevertheless, considerable bad
feeling is still entertained by the former towards
the latter class, partly from old recollections of
statute labour, and of its inevitable, invariable
accompaniment the law of the stick, and from an
insane dread that the Poles may some day, after
recovering their national independence, reinstitute
serfdom, and partly from an unsettled and irritat-
ing dispute as to the privilege claimed by the pea-
sant to cut wood in the proprietors' forests, and
to send his cattle to graze in the proprietors' pasture
lands. The peasant appears to confound an ancient
permission granted to him when he was the proprie-
tor's subject, with an absolute right. However that
may be, there is a " peasant question" in Austrian
as well as in Russian Poland, and if the Poles think
it worth while to cultivate the goodwill of the agri-
cultural classes in provinces where they have no im-
mediate intention of getting up an insurrection, they
would do well to make concessions in time, without
reference to the strict legality of the Galician pea-
sants' demands. I know that it will be difficult to
make these concessions with advantage, for the more
that is given to the peasants they more they require,
but it is more difficult still to liberate Poland by
force of arms, when the great majority of the nation
are opposed to its would-be liberators.
It is as well to speak the truth about the un-
happy Polish insurrection as about other things, and
since the total failure of the Galician expedition to
Volhynia, following close upon the total failure of
the insurrection organised in Volhynia itself, it has
become more than ever evident that unaided it can-
not last. There seems to be a general understand-
ing among all the newspapers of the continent,
which claim to be considered liberal organs, that
when the Polish and Russian accounts of any given
occurrence differ, the former ought to be accepted
and the latter rejected. Both, however, ought to
be rejected. Neither Russians nor Poles tell the
truth as to passing events in Poland. The lie would
seem to be used as a weapon on both sides, and the
Poles, and the more injudicious and unscrupulous
of their friends, shower lies forth with do much
skill and in such numbers that the political sky
is darkened, and all Europe kept, with regard
to the Polish insurrection, beneath a shadow
of falsehood. As for the Russian missiles they are
clumsily manufactured, and for the most part do
not reach the West of Europe at all. The great aim
of the Russian official journals in misrepresenting
facts is to deceive Russians. The Poles, however,
have a double object to attain. They seek on the one
hand to persuade the West of Europe that the Polish
insurrection is more formidable than it really is, and
on the other to keep up the hopes of the insurgents,
not only by publishing exaggerated and sometimes
utterly untrue accounts of Polish victories, but also
by misleading them as to the probability of a war
being undertaken on their behalf.
Thus (to quote one instance) the leading article
in the Times of July 4, complaining that the diplo-
matic action in connection with the Polish questio❑
may place England in such a position that, while
having no wish at all to go to war, she may have yet
to choose between war and a disgraceful peace, is
represented in a telegraphic summary as simply
setting forth that England has now only to choose
between war and a disgraceful peace. All that poi•
tion of the article in which a war on behalf of Polish
independence is protested against is omitted.
The interest taken by the West of Europe in the
Polish insurrection may be said to be in proportion
to its belief in the magnitude of the movement,
and accordingly Europe is informed from day to
day of disturbances having taken place in provinces
which have remained perfectly quiet, of victories