The Sun.
London, England, 1865-08-23 00:00:00

Pacified Poland.

The following is part of an interesting letter,
dated the 9th and 10th August, communicated to us
by a friend of Poland belonging to this country.
The letter is from a Pole, and gives a touching
description of the many distresses to which patriots
still in Poland, Lithuania, &c., continue to be sub-
jected by the unabated tyranny of Russia, Prussia,
and Austria :

" When I last met you my thoughts were much oc-
cupied with the melancholy news from my country.
In fact each day tells of new persecutions directed
against the families of the emigrants, who are interest-
ing themselves in the fate of their countrymen in exile.
Different pretexts are made for imprisoning them, send-
ing them to Siberia, or oppressing them in various
ways. When no other pretence can be found, the false
denunciation of a Russian agent, or revolutionary
placards affixed by the Russian police itself, are
employed—the source being easy to recognise from the
language being full of Muscovite expressions and phrases
foreign to our language. I have received several letters
from young exiles, who write to me in despair at the per-
secutions which their families undergo intheir own country,
for this reason only that they have a father, a brother, a
husband, a son, or some other member of the family among
the emigrants. Besides this, secret agents are sent to other
countries, whose mission is to sow discord among the emi-
grants, to intrigue against them, acting so as to prevent
their obtaining any employment or means of subsistence.
It is by means of theso infernal subterranean intrigues
that they have succeeded in obtaining the dismissal of 20
emigrants who had found occupation on one of the rail-
ways in France, and who were dismissed ono morning
sudden without a reason given. They culminate in-
dividuals, they excite passions, they raise discord, they
sow mistrust among us, they endeavour to plunge
each of us in misery, so as to succeed by this means iu
breaking the bond which unites the patriots—to divide
them and kill them morally. And it is not the Russians
only who distinguish themselves by these ignoble machi-
nations, but also the other two Powers which have torn
Poland to pieces. Only lately, we were informed, that,
following the inspiration of Russia, Austria, which at the
present moment seeks to throw liberal powder in the eyes
of Europe, sent on the 4th of May a secret agent, Andre
Mikuli, formerly an officer of Austrian cavalry, provided
with several passports for different names, with the object
of sowing discord among the emigrants, and of trying to
weaken the sympathy of the nations for the Polish cause.
Recent news comes to me also of a failure of corn and
grain, and of an impending famine, both owing to this
cause, and to the conflagration of towns and villages, prac-
tised upon a great scale by Russia by means of organised
bands of evildoers in order finally to devastate the coun-
try, and by these Tartar-like measures to compel the in-
habitants to transport themselves into the distant Russian
province. The Ruthenian provinces (that is to say, Podo-
lia, Volhynia, and the Ukraine), and more especially
Lithuania, are the scenes of this barbarous devastation. In
many localities the inhabitants have caught the Russian
soldiers with torches and packets of inflammable matter ;
they have given them into the hands of the Muscovite
authorities, who have allowed them to escape from the pri-
sons. Out of a great number of these malefactors caught
by the inhabitants in the criminal act, there was only one
soldier shot, but the Russian papers denied that he was
shot as an incendiary, saying that it was for having struck
his commanding officer. It is believed that, besides the de-
vastation of the country and depopulation of its native in-
habitants, the Russians have yet another object. The
papers have even spoken of it ; that the peasants of the
confiscated lands in Poland, during these last times, not
wishing to belong to the Crown, have rather preferred
burning their own houses and villages than to see those in
the employment of the Russians installed there. This has
produced a lively sensation among all classes. To prevent
this having evil consequences for the Government, to turn
away ithe Russians' attention from the real cause, they
have themselves begun to burn the towns and villages
that had been under the nobles. This may perhaps be true,
for the fact is proved that the Muscovite Government
tolerates and excites clandestinely these conflagrations. I
am also informed that in the schools they create innume-
rable difficulties in the examinations, to prevent the young
ones being able to advance into the upper class. When
any one has not so advanced, they force him to quit the
school, not granting him permission to enter another, so
as to cut off from him all road to instruction. By such
means this year, after the annual examination before the
holidays, they succeeded in sending away about nine-
tenths of the youth frequenting the schools. You may
imagine the despair of these poor young people,
and of the parents who have no means of giving education
to their children; for it must be observed that, besides the
public schools of the Government, there are no private esta-
blishments which are not strictly prohibited by the ukases
of the Czar. I say nothing of the fresh transportation of
unfortunate prisoners to Siberia, and to the works of the
fortresses, for these are ordinary well-known occurrences,
which continue to be repeated daily, and of which we can-
not foresee the end. The civilised world will not believe
in all these infernal machinations, because they seem too
ignoble, too degrading ; besides, the Russian policy consists
in denying all, and deceiving all the world. They say the
contrary, and pay numerous agents and papers, which de-
fend them, and relate false facts ; but I can assure you, by
all I hold most sacred, that I have not added one word to
the confidential information I have received, and I might
even cite the persons and places, if this would not give
occasion to new prosecutions. . . . Among other things I
am told that quite recently they have sent to Siberia from
the provinces called Ruthenian (Volhynia, Podolia, and the
Ukraine) 150 persons, and that there are several parties of
prisoners who are destined to follow the same route by
Kiev. They have fixed a fresh tax of 5 per cent. Besides
this, they have diminished by one-half the indemnifica-
tion for the lands given to the peasants, which makes
a loss of a sixth at least on the property of each Polish
proprietor possessing lauds. Then, again, a fresh tax,
and this is the way in which they make it :—During
the last two years the Russians had employed in each
village guards composed of peasants, four, eight, twelve,
or even more men, according to the size and number of
the roads crossing each village. These men were
armed with pikes and scythes. The duty of these
guards was to stop any one entering the village, and to
load him before the village police, who visa his pass-
port and left him, or arrested him to send him before a
Russian employe in the city, according as the traveller
might appear to them suspicious or not, or simply according
to the humour he might be in; for each man in going even
to his neighbour must he provided with a passport, which
he must constantly keep. You may imagine what an enor-
mous waste of tune—what a delay in business—when one
is obliged to pass through several villages in -one day,
especially if the policeman is not to be found, for ho does

not choose to remain always at home. This has lasted
since 1861 till tho present day. It is still continuing. For
the last two years they have ordered the noblemen, pro-
prietors of villages, to pay to these guards 40 kopecs (Is.
4d.) per day to each man, making about £5l for each guard
—of whom there are at least four, but generally more.
This crying injustice is a refinement, not only to rob the
proprietor, but also to inspire the peasantry with a taste
for playing the spy for the Government, and to raise one
class against the other. 1 say nothing of an infinity of
disagreeables towards the proprietor on the part of the
peasants when they are unable at once to pay all that is
due, and in this position almost all the citizens find them-
selves—for the financial state of the country is deplorable."
—Scotsman.

The Holborn Murders.

4.

The latent malignity which always co-exists with vanity
was never more clearly illustrated than in these Holborn
and Ramsgate murders. The key to those crimes, and to
the whole history of their perpetrator, is simply diseased
vanity, vanity of that extreme kind that it hates every hu-
man being who will not gratify it. Throughout his known
career, in the wild autobiography which he published in
April, 1864, in his applications to the police to make Sir
Bulwer Lytton inquire into his " attributes," in the papers
which he insisted on reading before the magistrates of
Ramsgate, Stephen Forwood has been consistent. The
world, which would not acknowledge his greatness, give
him the chance of revealing his latent powers, enable him
to rise to some pleasant ledge where he could stand idle
and let all below admire, was a world out of gear, a stupid
world, even, as he became ulcerated by delay and hardship,
a criminal world, to be taken by the throat and punished,
and forced to perform its first duties. To make the recog-
nition of his merits easier, Stephen Forwood, insolvent
baker of profligate habit and some trace of that education
which makes men write puffy letters, and use words like
" baneful" and "uncongenial," and "the mournful requiem
of all earthly joy," took the name of Ernest Southey. With
the same object he adopted the trade of billiard sharper
and writer of begging letters, not because he thought bil-
liard sharping or begging right, but because right and
wrong seemed to him trivialities when compared with
the moral duty which he owed to mankind of getting
money enough to secure himself fair play. It is related of
a Swiss employed by the Empress Catherine to kill her
husband, that he took the money earned by his crime, went
home, and lived ever afterwards a worthy citizen, noted
for his benevolence and scientific acquirements. After his
death a paper was published, written by him to reveal both
his crime and his motive. He had always, he said, been a
good man. He had never done a wrong thing save only
this murder, and he had done that because he had found
that to live a good life, to have full possession as it were of
one's self and one's soul, it is essential to have some inde-
pendent means. So he turned assassin for an hour to earn
the gold which was to make him philanthropist for a life.
Forwood's logic was of the same kind, but somewhat baser.
He did not want to be a good man, but to be acknowledged
as a great one. "What I have suffered," ho says in the
autobiography, "has made me, who was a common, an un-
common man, and has taught me to live not for life, but for
its aims." That idea is not an unfrequent one, particularly
among men with just enough wit to be self-conscious, and
not enough to use the self-consciousness for purposes of
comparison, but it did not bring to Forwood its usual con-
sequence—a conceited content. Usually the man who be-
lieves himself superior to his soundings becomes rather sar-
castic and depreciatory, or good-humouredly tolerant of his
inferiors' bettor luck. But Forwood wanted before allthings
to make his "uncommonness " manifest, could- not be
content with being anything unless he also seemed to be.
He says he sought money by "play" in order to provide
for the woman he had seduced—whose life he meanwhile
made so miserable that she hid herself away from him ; for
the children—whomhe quietly, and as it were scientifically,
put to death with prussic acid; and for the legitimate wife
—whose brains he sprinkled on the floor. He really sought
it only for himself, confident that once possessed of it he
could force the world to acknowledge that his self-estimate
was correct. "Even in billiards I reasoned that I could
there show to men of position and power that I was go-
verned by principles and aims which were worthy of bet-
ter employment, and I then engaged to conduct a billiard
establishment." " I have the courage," he writes, "to do
this duty to society, and 1 ask in return that society shall
do its duty to me." If it will not, then a "private misfor-
tune may becoine a public calamity." Judging from this
hint, and from another in a statement made after the exa-
mination before the magistrates, we imagine that
Forwood contemplated for some time the assassi-
nation of some distinguished statesman, probably
of Lord Palmerston, as to him the most con-
spicuous. The theory in his mind evidently was that so-
ciety was a personal foe, who owed him money, and who,
not paying it, must be taught in some striking way that
every wrong brings some retribution on the wrong-doer.
Not having the power to spread pestilence, or fire the me-
tropolis, or produce an earthquake, or inflict any striking
injury on the whole body, it remained to affect and injure
it all by killing ono of its most valuable members. Then
the world would have sat in sackcloth and ashes mourning
over its own wrong-doing, over, as it appeared to Forwood,
its own criminality which had produced this necessary
fruit ; might even—for vanity is capable of all things—
have made a tardy rcatitution, anti given Stephen Forwood
a reward instead of a gallows. "I am an innocent man,"
he exclaims even now, "and I will not be photographed ;"
and in a burst of irrepressible conceit asks, " Is there none
who can read what must bo the formation of a mind which
could, under its own strong sense of right, offer up for
theirs and the public good the lives of others for whom he
had lived and faithfully struggled through many years
of the bitterest suffering." Somebody, we suspect,
whom the world would have missed has, as Forwood hints,
had a terribly narrow escape. A man whose mind has
been ulcerated by dwelling for years on his own virtues
and the hideous ingratitude of society is just of the temper
which political assassins have always displayed.
The ultimate direction of the murderous desire developed
by this indulged vanity was probably suggested by Mrs.
White's departure. Forwood seems to have formed a
connection with this woman before her marriage, to have
continued it during her marriage—Mr. White talks of
being the "putative father" of his children—and to have
at last taken her to live with him. When his ill-treat-
ment, as he says, compelled her to fly, his vanity, once
more outraged, suggested that he might include his ven-
geance on her and society in a single blow, and after un-
availing threats to Mrs. White of horrible consequences to
follow her non-return, and an endeavour, happily frus-
trated, to seize her last child, he framed a plan of massacre
every step of which displays cool, deliberate forethought.
He had first to obtain possession of the children, who were
with their "putative" father, and this he did by represent-
ing that Mrs. White was about to emigrate, and wished to
take them with her. The father, who did not believe
them to be his own, but knew them to be his wife's,
readily gave them up, and Forwood took them to the little
coffee house in Red Lion street, and there, in a cool, de-
liberate, almost thoughtful way, gave each of them a
spoonful of prussic acid, killing them almost instanta-
neously. He ought, he thought, to maintain them ;
society, blind to its duty, would not by recognising
greatness enable him to perform his; he would punish
society by showing the alternative it had compelled
him to embrace. The guilt, of course, fell to society, of
which he was only the agent and the victim. He
next bethought himself of those others whom also he was
bound to maintain. Mrs. White he could not get at, for he
did not know whore she was, but he could get at his own
wife, a quiet, decent woman, maintaining herself and his
child at Ramsgate by assisting a dyer. Putting on a false
moustache and whiskers lest he should le arrested before
his work was done—or was it from some secret conscious-
ness that his vanity was lying all through, and that he
should wish to fly, and so leave society unwarned ?—he
went to Ramsgate, obtained an interview with his wife, shot
her and his child, and when seized by the dyer confessed
that ho had murdered three children. Before the magis-
trates he exhibited the same vanity, read papers declaring
himself a social victim, specified well-known men as crimi-
nals because they had declined to do their duty by sending
money in answer to begging letters, and loudly complained
that the prison authorities would not let him read the jour-
nals, which were sure to contain comments to which ho
should like to reply. Even in prison, with five murders
upon his hands and the prospect of a shameful death before
him, the diseased vanity of the criminal is stung with the
idea that he has not at the last compelled society to recog-
nise how right he was, how wrong all other men, how just
a retribution itself had suffered for the crime of compelling
him to work for his bread.—The Spectator.

AN ELOPEMENT.—The Liverpool correspondent of
the Scotsman tells a curious story. A gentleman of
that town having made several successful hits in blockade
running, went abroad to settle his affairs, leaving his young
wife in a fashionably furnished house in Liverpool. The
lady is described as possessing great personal attractions,
and is only 20 years of ago. At the beginning of this month
the gentleman returned, and two days afterwards his wife
disappeared. An ex-detective officer was employed, and if
the story be true, has succeeded in partly unravelling one of
the most singular cases of elopement ever brought to light.
Somo six months back the lady gave out that she was going
on a visit to some friends in London ; but instead of this
it seems she engaged herself as barmaid at a noted tavern
in Manchester, where a certain commercial gentleman from
London was in the habit of frequenting. The pretty bar-
maid and the commercial gentleman left Manchester for
Liverpool together, and two days after the faithless fair
one had rejoined her husband she eloped with her Man-
chester lover. They were traced to London, and there the
clue was lost.—Birmingham Post.

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