The Sun.
London, England, 1833-12-09 00:00:00

rem justice to all parties, that the law would
afford what it ought to do—viz., equal justice.
fThe law absurdly makes no sensible distinction
between the writer, the publisher, the printer,
and the copier or accidental propagator of a
libel. Now we would desire to see Lord Dur-
ham accept the public admission of the false-
hood of' the libels from all parties except the
wilful concoctors, and apply his superior and
acknowledged talents to the alteration and im-
provement of the law. Lord Mansfield stated
the liberty of the press to be the right of print-
ing without any previous license, subject to the
consequences of the law; but unfortunately the
law does not, as at present constituted, secure
the proper consequences to any party complain-
ing of or defending alleged abuses of the just
liberty of the press.—Morning Chronicle.
The letter from a personage who styles himself
" A Russian Subject," and which we publish
this day, will amuse the greater portion of our
readers, and possibly provoke a few of the less
phlegmatic among them. To judge from the
tone of this communication, one might sup-
pose that, however little accustomed to free
agency a Russian may be in his own happy
country, he fancies himself as much an autocrat
in every other as Nicholas is.at St. Petersburgh
or Warsaw. In most of the letters which we
have seen, sent forth avowedly for the defence of
the Russian Government, the only relation
touched upon by the writers is that existing
between the Czar and his own subjects, are
not directed against her foreign policy,—her un-
quenchable spirit of aggrandizement, at the ex-
pense and to the ruin of other states,—her
abominable treachery,—her base and stupid
detestation of the name of liberty,—her tremen-
dous and harrowing oppression. Now that
has never, that we know of, been a topic of com-
plaint with foreigners : no civilized country
troubles itself to examine very seriously as to
the degree in which tyranny and slavery have
been mortised into each other throughout the
Russian empire. It is not whether the often-
times atrocious measures of the Cabinet of St.
Petersburgh are approved or murmured at by
its own semi-barbarous subjects that European
statesmen habitually condescend to inquire,—
all that is taken for granted ; everybody is
willing to admit that the people are worthy
of the Government, and the Government
of the people, and that neither would be
tolerated in any civilized country on the
globe. That topic, we repeat, is hardly ever
mooted by foreigners, and by Englishmen least
of all—yet it is the only question that Russians,
in their endeavours to vindicate Nicholas and
his aristocracy, ever have the courage to dis-
cuss. The journals of Great Britain, and their
correspondents, almost invariably direct their
animadversions against the foreign policy of
Russia. Her appetite for aggrandizement, at
the expense of neighbouring States, and to their
ruin—her duplicity and hypocrisy—her detesta-
tion of the name of civil liberty—her intermed-
dling with the principle and form of the govern-
ment throughout every State in Europe,however
nominally independent and actually remote—
her harrowing oppression of the countries which
she has wickedly betrayed and subjugated—
these are fair and natural subjects of resent-
ment, among foreign Powers, and with all
enlightened men, who inveigh against the
original iniquity which partitioned Poland,
when Frederick played the part of jackall to
Catherine, and Austria was bullied into an un-
willing share in the crimes of that impious confe-
deracy. So the complaints of the whole world,
because of the treatment experienced by Polaml,
from the treaty of Vienna down to this passing
hour, were made on behalf of the Polish nation
and of humanity against Russia as a whole—
against Russia, which had scourged and tortured
them into rebellion, and which now pleads the
consequences of her own cruelty as an excuse
for those aggravations of it which Poland has
since endured. But how are such just and
distinct accusations met by this gentleman, who
first talks of his being " an unprejudiced person,"
and then signs himself " A Russian Subject ?"
In this manner, he solemnly assures us that " his
respected Sovereign (Nicholas) acted agreeably
to the wishes of his nation (the Russians
scilicet) with regard to the Poles—in fact,
we rather accuse him of too great leniency
towards those treacherous rebels, and they
would have found much worse had their
punishment been left to the Russian nation ! ! !"
Sir, we believe you,—devoutly we believe, on
your authority, this or any other horror of that
nation, which in another part of your letter you
declare to be " much improved" within these
five years. But that, again we say, is not the
question. Nobody reproached the people of
Russia with being one atom more humane, or
equitable, or civilized, or enlightened, than their
Chief ; nor is it of the least importance to us
Englishmen—to us Europeans—to learn that
what a rude and unfeeling, yet subtile and cal-
culating, Asiatic despotism decrees, untaught
and callous myriads of itrbondsmen are ready
in a moment to execute—nay, to outstrip in
fierceness. It is truly a precious piece of logic
to allege in justification of the heartless policy
of the Czar Nicholas towards Poland—a justi-
fication;we mean, as addressed to Europe gene-
rally—that his own Russian subjects are more
barbarous still than he is, and, had their devilish
nature been unrestrained, that they would have
administered to the Polesa still harder measure of
" punishment !" This Russian subject calls the
Poles " those treacherous rebels !" Good Heaven !
Can human intellect be so perverted ? Can this
gentleman be so very unread in history, nay, FO
little conversant with society, as to be ignorant
that the generation has not yet passed away
which saw that giant " treachery," of which
Poland, free Poland—ay, regal, monarchical,
conservative Poland, became the helpless and
unprovoking victim—a generation whose ready
heart and hand would have frustrated the villany
before twelve months expired, had there been in
contemporary Governments virtue, or honour, or
humanity, or wisdom, to direct or co-operate with
the upright energies of their unanimous people ?
If it be said that prescription runs against Poland
and that thirty or forty years of successful usurpa-
tion is a full defeasance of a nation's rights, what
prescription, let us ask, runs against the rights of
that fragment of the Polish kingdom which so
lately composed the duchy of Warsaw, whose
constitutional independence of the Russian em-
pire, though solemnly guaranteed by all Europe in
the year 1815, was never—no, not for five suc-
cessive years—respected by the brutal tyrant who
held the delegated despotism of the Emperor,
and forced the insurrection of 1830-31 ?
" Treacherous rebels " indeed ! We are shocked
at the hardihood of him who could employ such]
terms. If that be, as no doubt it is, the!
sense in which the people of Russia regard'
the condition of the Poles, it just proves this
—viz., that the Russians and their Government
are partakers of a common crime, and that when