The Sun.
London, England, 1833-07-22 00:00:00

POLAND.

FROM THE Ducn or POSEN, RIX 1. —The fron-
tiers of Poland are most strictly guarded by the Russians
as well as by the Prussians. Any attempt at trans-
gressing them on prohibited points is connected with
danger, if with a waggon, of losing the waggon and the
horses, and paying a fine of from 60 to 180 florin..
This fine is besides liable to be augmented in proportion
to the property of the transgressor, and can be carried to
an extent as the Commissioners of Palatinates may think
it proper. A reporter, should there be any, is entitled to
one-half of the fine, as well as one-half of the value of
confiscated property. In the case of people endeavouring
to pass the frontiers, their lives (as if of less value) are
in peril—they are shot by the pickets of Cossacks. Since
the commencement of April, the sentinels are doubled in
number.

Travellers in carriages and on foot are stopped at every
moment and asked for passports, from fear lest they
should be Polish refugees coming from France in disguise.
Giving an asylum or food to any one of these refugees is
punished with death ; and landholders, through whose
estates they happen to pass, are imprisoned.
The punishment of death is also inflicted on those at
whose houses arms may be discovered. At Pultusk, two
very respectable heads of families have been publicly
flogged because their children happened to be seen playing
with some pieces of iron which might have formerly be-
longed to some fire-arms, but at that moment were in a
quite harmless condition. The mode of punishing these
citizens was the most wanton, so as to render it difficult
to decide whether the penalty or the levity with which it
was inflicted was snore barbarous. The military court's
sentence sounded 200 lashes for both (thanks for its am-
biguity if it was meant to lessen its rigour). The officer
who was intrusted with the execution of the sentence,
from want of attention, permitted 125 lashes to be in-
flicted on one of the sufferers instead of 100, before he
became aware of the surplus. Here he ordered to stop,
and to inflict on the other only 75 lashes, " for that the
law," as the Russian Areopagite observed, "may have its
full execution." _ _ .

Enormities are committed under the pretext of seeking
concealed arms. A Russian Commissioner, who is in-
trusted with searching after them in the whole country,
Mr. Cywinaki, accompanied by an escort of gendarmes
and Cossacks, is going from place to place with a carte
blanche to ransack the houses of the inhabitants. The
houses are on a sudden surrounded, frequently at the dead
of ❑ight, by his zbirri, roofs and floors torn off, and walls
damaged. It need not much, but a mere report of a ma-
licious person, or a spy, or a simple suspicion, to have
one's house exposed to such like ruination, and even to
plunder ; for to those zbirri of the Government, nothing
is sacred, and seeking redress impossible, if not most im-
prudent.
Letters written to or by the Polish refugees abroad, are
fined with 300 florins, and those with enclosures still

higher. Mothers who used to write to their sons abroad,
had been warned by the Field-Marshal Paskewitsch, either
henceforward to discontinue writing, or they would be
whipped for it in the public markets.
Immediately after the revolution, at a period when dis-
tress and poverty under the most appalling features were
everywhere visible, Polish ladies had formed a committee
for the purpose of supporting the distressed and the needy.
Mrs. Sowinska, the wife of the gallant General who fell
in defending Wola, was at the head of this association.
13ut no sooner the Government got intelligence of it, than
it issued not only an order for its being dissolved, but also
sent about the country a circular containing a formula of
a decla:atiou for the ladies to sign in person, that they
protuise for the future to renounce all work of this kind of
charity, under their personal responsibility. They were
henceforward doomed to one of the severest trials human
heart can be exposed to—namely, to look upon the crippled
and the destitute Polish warriors, some of them brothers
or near relations of their own, without daring to afford
them relief, or even to shed a tear of pity fur them. A
tear would have been taxed as great a crime as an offer.
One who offended against that fiendish order was sentenced
to be publicly chastised, and then thrown for three years
into prison, and to be flogged every month. After the
introduction of the military tribunals, by which all civil
law is now superseded, the greatest penalty is not reckoned
atrocious enough. An instance of it was of late prac-
tised at Lubin. Miss Kawecka, convicted of having
afforded provisions to a refugee coming from France, was
sentenced by the courtmartial to be shot, and was really
shot. She was but in her 18th year, and a lady of noble
parentage.

No civil courts exist, all are tried by courtsmartial.
Unhappy would he be who should now appeal to the
organic statute granted by Nicholas, by which he intended
to have the constitution superseded. Military courts are
now found more expedient, and sentences executed within
24 hours, by shooting or banging—more congenial with
the mind of the autocrat. Such executions have of late
taken place at Borow, Lublin, Grodno, and Wanaw. At
the latter place four corpses of the hanged had been left
without sepulture; but on the next morning they were
found decked with flowers. The police then buried then'.
500 florins is the pt ice fixed on the head of every refugee,
when surrendered to the Russian executioners.
The number of spits is still greater than ever existed
before the revolution, and which is most to be pitied that
the Government is endeavouring to make them among
peasantry ;—a scheme which cannot fail but be destructive
of the confidence that formerly had prevailed between the
peasantry and nobility, that in all vicissitudes, public and
private, made the two classes rely upon each other, till it
at length became the main-spring of an unexampled pa-
triotism. Divide et impera has ever been the watch-
word of despots. They begin b 3 corrupting, and then
they destroy.
A general impoverishment of the whole country is evi-
dently aimed at. The taxation is the same as formerly,
and the kingdom is besides doomed to have an additional
share of taxes common with the Russian empire. Trade
and industry have vanished. Several merchants at War-
saw have failed, and others foresee their inevitable ruin.
The richest of them, Dysmanski, having broken, in de-
spair drowned himself in the Vistula. Jews, who were
rather hostile during the revolution, have turned patriots,
notwithstanding the several privileges that were bestowed
upon them by the Russian Government for their treache-
ries. All of them look bai'k with regret on their former
condition, and must be dissatisfied, trade, the only branch