The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-28 00:00:00

SCHARF'S CORRESPONDENCE,

PRINCE CZARTORYSKI TO M. DUPIN.
PARIS, Dec. 26.

The Opinion Nationale of the 25th publishes the
following letter from Prince Czartoryski to Senator
Dupin, in reply to certain parts of the latter's
speech on the Address :

PARIS, Dec. 21.

Monsieur le Senateur,—l have read with all the
attention it merits the speech you made in the
Senate during the debate on the Address. I could
not but be profoundly touched by the terms in
which you were good enough to speak of my late
Lather and of my family, but I do not the less think
myself bound to protest against certain assertions
in your speech which attack the two things that are
dearest to me in this world—truth and my country.
You have called to mind, Mr. Senator, the loth
May, 1848, and you believed you remen-anered that
on that ill-omened day, and at the door of the in-
vaded National Assembly " was a group of Poles.
Behold," you say, " how our sympathies were re-
warded.' But you cannot be ignorant, Mr. Senator
—and my learned and honourable friend, M.
Wolowski, has just cited the fact—that after the
day of 15th May there was an investigation and a
trial at Bourges.
oundimplicated; Well, in this trial no Pole was
f
no Polish name has even been
uttered.

I am much astonished to have to recall to an
Attorney-General of such recognised merit a solemn
judgment of a French court of justice. If an
anarchical party, without conscience or scrupulous-
ness, was able at that time to abase the name of
Poland to attain a perverse end, I did not expect 15
years later to see this abuse do service in an argu-
ment in a calm and deliberate discussion.

You have also, Mr. Senator, enumerated with a
particularity too forgetful, perhaps, of true charity,
the pecuniary aid which the French Government
accorded to the wrecks of the Polish army of 1831.
That army, perhaps, hindered at the time a coali-
tion which was about to be formed against France.
The battle of Grocho w and Ostrolenka contributed
at all events to the strengthening of a dynasty
which you served and supported ; so much at least
was affirmed in the Chambers over which you pre-
sided with so much brilliancy.

Permit me to remind you that there was likewise
at the end of the last century a numerous French
emigration to Poland. Of these refugees from re-
volutionary France we did not ask their opinions;
in the greeting we gave them considerations of poli-
tical interest played no part. We have never drawn
up the statistics of our hospitality ; but I can assure
you, Mr. Senator, without fear of being contra-
dicted, that the generosity of Poland at that time,t
of Poland already in misfortune and captive, was
not less than the liberality of France at the present
moment.

I pass over in silence many other allegations o
your speech, those for example on feudalism in
Poland; on our situation in 1812, &c., which all
go to prove one thing, namely, that your nume-
rous and honourable occupations have not left you
the necessary leisure to study the present condition
or the past history of my country. But it is itn
possible for me to omit quoting the assertion that
" The Poles, as their history shows, were dread-
fully intolerant towards the other sects, and
patronised only the Jews."
It is not only to the Jews, Mr. Senator, that Poland
has of old served as a refuge ; it did not less greet
the victims of the other religious persecutions, the
Hussites, the Huguenots, the Protestants of different
nations and different religious epochs. The great
law of our Diet of 1572 solemnly proclaimed the
civil equality of all Christian confessions, Without
any distinction.
This was precisely at the epoch when religious,
wars (which Poland has never known) were devas-
tating Christian Europe, in the very year when St.
Bartholomew took place at Faris. And this date calls

to my mind another interesting fact, of which you
cannot be ignorant, Mr. Senator, since it is your
illustrious historian, Dc Thou, who relates it. In
this year, 1572, a French prince, who was after-
wards Henry 111., offered himself as a candidate
for election to the throne of Poland.

He was only elected after his envoy, the Bishop
of Montluc, had solemnly declared that this prince
had nothing to do with St. Bartholomew ; and
when, the year following, a deputation of Catholic
bishops and senators rtpaired to Paris, it only
saluted Henry of Valois, as King of Poland, after
having received from this prince the oath to main-
tai❑ peace between the Dissidents : Pacem inter dis-
sidentes servabo.

You have also, Mr. Senator, expressed the wish
that Poland should be subjected to a better social
regime, to a better tenure of property. But are you
aware of all the efforts my country has made to
arrive at the end which you point out ? Are you
aware, above all, of the obstacles which foreign
oppression has not ceased to oppose to it in this
course ? Are you ignorant of the sad end of the
Agricultural Society, denounced as revolutionary in
1861, for having adopted as a principle that the
peasant farmers should be placed in a position
to become proprietors. Are you ignorant that
our glorious constitution of the 3d of May
was proclaimed by Catherine 11. to be the work of
Jacobinism, because it admitted all classes gradually
to acquire the title of nobility—that is to say, the
plenitude of civil and political rights? We were
denounced as Jacobins at the end of the last cen-
tury, just as now we are stigmatised as anarchists.
A strange accusation, truly, against that nation,
in behalf of which the Holy Father not long ago
ordered solemn prayers, proclaiming it to be the
secular champion of Christianity, and inviting it to
remain ever faithful to its mission ! He even among
the Poles, against whom extreme tendencies are most
charged, he whose nomination is daily pointed by
certain parties as the sign of the subversive ideas of
the National Government, General Mieroslawski,
during the three months he was commissioned to
organise abroad the resources of the insurrection,
has not, I am happy to say, committed any act
which justifies, from the political point of view, the
blame of the most Conservative opinion. His
destitution, recently pronounced, has been prompted
by military considerations which rendered his
functions for the moment valueless.
But, above all, I'protest against the idea which is so gra-
tuitously and so universally attributed to us, that we ask of
the Western Powers to undertake a war of liberation in on:
behalf. This demand, Mr. Senator, we have made. What
we claim, and shall not cease to claim, is that Europe do
its duty ; that after having abandoned us to the rule of
the Czar on conditions which he " has trampled under
foot," it should declare him deprived of this sovereignty ;
that, denying the right,which was conferred upon him in
1815, it implicitly recognises that of Poland to
recover her independence. " After eizht months," said the
National Government in a recent circular—the Government
which I serve and recognise, and which I do not despair of
seeing one day recognised by yourself,Mr. Senator—" After
eight months we have not obtained from the Governments
which march at the head of the civilised world the sole act
of justice we have asked from them—that of recognising
our right to defend, ourselves against oppression. Are wo
asking too much of Europe ? We appeal to the conscience
of the peoples and the loyalty of the Governments."
One may not have the will or the power to redress the
attacks made upon justice, but it is not permissible to deny
them when they are manifest. It is not permissible to seek
to give to crime another name because chastisement cannot
reach it ; and in this connection I may be permitted to
remind you that in England, which you judge so severely,
Mr. Senator, and which I have no commission to defend.
not a single respectable and authoritative voice has been
raised to deny the right of Poland and extenuate the
crimes of the Muscovites.

In a recent speech Mr. Layard, the Under Secretary of
Foreign Affairs, repeated, doubtless to satiety, that the
English people would not go to war for Poland, but he has
had the justice and candour to add these words, to which I
venture to call your attention, Mr. Senator :—" History (he
said) does not furnish examples of more deplorable, more
horrible deeds; a policy of extermination is applied to that
unfortunate country and pursued without relaxation, not
only against men young and old, but also against women
and children. One shudders at being made cognisant of
such horrors."

The principle of the solidarity of peoples is novel without
doubt, and is not yet reduced to practice; but the notion
-of the just and the unjust, of crime and duty, is of ancient
date, and cannot be called in question. It is melancholy to
recall it in this century of light and civilisation, it is
melancholy, above al!, to plead such a cause before an
eminent jurist, and it is with this sentiment of melancholy
that I have the honour to be, Mr. Senator, your very
humble and obedient servant,
(Signed) CZARTORYSKT.

A letter from Milan says :

In glaring contradiction with the sudden and earnest as-
surances of peace which proceed from Paris, is the fact that
several French officers are now in Italy for the purpose of
inspecting the active military forces of this country. A
French general is now at Turin, and has every day long
conferences with the Minister of War ; and a colonel
of the general staff, a colonel of Engineers, a lieute-
nant-colonel of artillery, and a major in the line arrived
here yesterday, who are commissioned not merely to visit
all the military depots, but to study the whole line of the
Po. The military and civil Italian officials have received
orders to facilitate by all means in their power the labours
of these officials. The day after to-morrow the commission
will inspect the line of the Mincio, and the cour-
tesy of the Piedmontese is carried so far that the com-
mander in the second military district, Lieutenant-General
Durando, sends the chief of his staff and his first aide-de-
camp to accompany them. What an inspection of this
sort means, uniess it is for the purpose of seeing whether
the Piedmontese army is ready to take the field, it would be
difficult to say. That the Italian Government considers the
breaking out of war as near at hand is evident from the fact
tnat preparations, which are only made when war is
most imminent, are now being made. Thus in
Lombardy six field hospitals have been established, viz., at
Castiglione della Stiviere, Brescia, Milan, Cremona, Pavia,
and Lodi, and ambulances have been furnished.
The King is expected here about the end of next month,
Great military spectacles will then take place. The King
will also inspect the troops posted on the Po and the
Mincio,