The Sun.
London, England, 1848-11-15 00:00:00

tlrrall

LOICDOII, WEDESIDAY,NOVEMBES 15, 11148.

To-morrow evening the festivities in aid of the
Polish refugees will take place in Guildhall. We
acknowledge, again and again, our solicitude to see
this annual entertainment supported with the enthu-
siasm due to a fallen but illustrious nationality.
Poland, be it ever remembered, has a claim upon our
remembrance superior to that of any other conquered
and dismembered country—it is more than a land of
heroic and unfortunate men, it is the kingdom which
gave birth to the army of warriors who defended
Europe under the walls of Vienna, and, led on by
SOBIESKI, the glorious Captain of Battles, drove
back in dismay and confusion the serried ranks of
Islamism. That Christendom is Christendom, that
more Alhambras than that in Spain were not built
up in the different territories of the continent
by the infidels of Africa, that European society
has not been ravaged fur centuries by conquering
legions of Mussulmen, is due, under PROVIDENCE, to
the ancestors of those very Polish refugees who now
claim our generosity, and supplicate with the elo-
quence of their uncomplaining misfortunes for our
sympathy and our assistance. And that generosity,
that sympathy, that assistance shall be lavished upon
them so long as one native of Lithuania remains in
sorrow and destitution upon the soil of England!
It has possibly been remarked with some surprise
by those who have not studied the progress of events
in the countries lying between Germany and the do-
minions of the AUTOCRAT, that in pleading for the Polish
refugees we plead exclusively for the Lithuanians—
for the exiles born in Russian Poland, and not for
any born in those divisions of Poland which are sub-
ject to the sway of either the Prussian or Austrian
Governments. To this circumstance we would par-
ticularly direct attention, hecause in it will be found
one of the most powerful arguments in justification of
the efforts made by the members, the committee, and
the President of the Association of the Friends of
Poland. We plead, therefore, exclusively, for the
refugee Lithuanians simply because those are now
the only Polish exiles who remain in this country to
demand the exercise of our benevolence. In conse-
quence of the political changes effected in the terri-
tories obedient to Fx)DBRICZ WILHELM and to
Fiannessm, Posen and Gallicia are open to the
unfortunate people who have heretofore been expelled
from their native land by reason of their patriotic
devotion. Several months have elapsed since these
provinces were again rendered accessible to their
offspring ; and it is a powerful testimony that the
Poles are not wilfully remainirg in England for the
purpose of fattening in idleness upon our charities—
the fact that not a single Posenese or G allician tarries
in the United Kingdom
long since
the doles of the
Association. They have
their beloved country to labour hastened back to
our in
honest and patri-
otic industry for their own sustenance and
d the suste-
nancethey fail,
of their wives and children,
we may be assured, to look back from the m
tire felicity of their present position to the time v•Pa-
hra
en
they received so many genuine, cordial, genial, exqui-
site consolations from the hands of the loving and
sympathising English. With them the memory of
the brilliant pageants of the ball held annually in the
Guildhall of the city of ondon is cherished as some-
thing holier than an idle L
outburst of frivolity, and as
something nobler than a merely spasmodic act of
munificence. They think too—be sure of that !—of
the poet whose ',body moulders under the pavement
of the Great Abbey ; and they remember, too, that
there was a propitious beauty in the circumstance
that foremost among those who proffered aid and en-
couragement to the children of Poland was THOMAS
CAMPBELL, the Bard of Hope ! On the hearths of
Posen, and in the homesteads of Gallicia, the name of
Lord DUDLEY STUART, the noble President of the
Association founded for the support of the Polish
refugees in England, is often breathed in the lan-
guage of admiration, and al ways coupled with the utter-
ance of a benediction. The Poles of Posen, and those
again of Gallicia, who have sojourned amongst us in
the days of their direst necessity, have returned
homewards with souls laden deep with gratitude, ant
with tongues fluent in the repetition of our praises.
Shall we belie all these honourable exertions, by
abandoning, at the eleventh hour, those unhappy
exiles from Lithuania, who are doubly wretched from
the prolongation of their miseries ? GOD forbid ! By
our previous exertions we have entailed upon our-
selves a heavy responsibility—the responsibility of
preserving the Polish refugees from starvation.
Were we to neglect them in their present otraita