The Sun.
London, England, 1860-11-19 00:00:00

POLP:11 MEETING.

Saturday, the 17th inst., being the sixth anniversary of
the death of Lord Dudley Coutts Stuart, so well known for
his exertions in behalf of Poland's rights and the Polish
exiles in England, a meeting of the Polish Historical
Society was held at Sussex Chambers, Duke-street, St.
James's, to pay a tribute of respect and gratitude to the
memory of their departed champion.
Owing to the absence from London of the President, Col.
L. Szyrma,,the chair was takenby the Vice-President Major
C. Szulczewski, who after expatiating on the devotion of
and sacrifices made by the late Lord Dudley Coutts Stuart
for the cause of their country, continued :
Like the billows of the ocean, now rising, now falling,
have been our fears and our hopes during the intervals of
the successive anniversaries on which we have met to com-
memorate the day on which our never-to-be-forgotten
friend (Lord Dudley Coutts Stuart) breathed his
last. But however depresssed we may have been
at times by the adverse conjuncture of events,
utterly hopeless we have never been; for we are sons of
Poland, and in her breast hope never dies, so that to those
who would maintain that Poland is defunct, we may say,
with truth, reversing the old adage, that where there is
hope there is life. And there is life in the Polish nation,
although those who, when this life, like all compressed
forces, was venting itself in fitful and violent outbursts,
stigmatised us with the name of "revolutionary firebrands,"
now that it is manifesting itself in quiet exertions to develope
the material resources, and to raise the moral and intellectual
status of the people, while it is biding its time, speak of our
country only as a " dead and mangled carcase." But that
the 'f carcase" is not dead, none know better than those who
" mangled" it • and, as a proof of how much they fear the
life that is still stirring in it, I need only allude to the
agricultural society, founded in Poland in 1857, and to the
endeavours to crush it made by the Russian Government.
On the 28th of February, 1858, the society held its first
meeting in Warsaw, at which 1,500 Polish landholders were
present; in 1859 it courted 2,500 members, and at the be-
ginning of the present year 3,240; while the subscriptions
to it, which in 1858 amounted to £3,480, rosQ in the ensuing
year to £6,000, and at the commencement of this year to
£B,OOO. A few months later the number of members was
very near 4,000, and the receipts of the society were not
less than £lo,ooo—numbers which are very nearly the
same as those of the Royal Agricultural Society of England,
which has been in existence five and twenty years. But
the numerous meetings held allover the country for the dis-
tribution of agricultural prizes, during which all classes of
the community were brought into beneficial contact with
each other, and which was rapidly spreading an improved
system of husbandry among farmers and landowners, and
improving the breeds of live stock in the country; as also
the steps taken in connexion with the society to ameliorate
the domestic conditi9n, promote the education of the agri-
cultural population, and to develope the export trade in corn,
awakened the fears of the Government, and on the 24th
May au Imperial edict was published, restricting in various
ways the action of the society, and more espeCiany ordering
that the prizes shall not be presented by the society in
public meetings, but shall pass those to whom they are
awarded, through the hands of the Russian governors of the
provinces. So little then, we see, does Russia believe
in the extinction of the national spirit in Poland ; that she
dare not let the people associate even for such peaceful and
commendable purposes, and thus our countrymen are im-
peded in every branch of activity which they seek to deve-
lope for the good of the community. But this very fact
keeps alive in our people the remembrance of the
origin of the Government that oppresses them,
and of their distinctness from the race of the
oppressors, and makes them consider every endea-
vour towards national improvement as one also to-
wards national deliverance; and the dignified manner in
which, on a recent occasion, the majority showed their
sense of the insult practised upon them, when the repre-
sentatives of the three Crowns who divided among them-
selves the " mangled carcase," met in our capital to plot
against the liberty and independence of Italy, shows that
we have passed from the stage of noisy but impotent ebul-
lition to one of calm reticence, pregnant with a force which
will be put forth in energetic action when the day comes
for us as it has come for Italy. I have said when the day
comes for us as it has come for Italy; but may I not go
further, and say that it must come for us, because it has
come for Italy. In the case of Italy the inextinguishable
right of nations to throw off the galling yoke of foreign
oppressors—who impede the developement of their best
energies, and seek to eradicate those distinctive features
with which God has endowed them for some wise and bene-
ficent end—has been publicly acknowledged and tri-
umphantly vindicated ; and this recognition and this
triumph must tell, in one way or another, on every
enslaved nationality. When our day will come we cannot
tell, but we can wait; and, when it does come we shall, if
he be needed, have our Garibaldi, our nale-hearted,
single-minded, self-devoted, never-wearying hero in the
field, as in the friend, whose memory we have this day met
to honour, we found at a time when tongue and pen only
could be wielded in our defence, a champion whose disin-
terested zeal and devotion have never been surpassed.
Several other gentlemen expressed similar feelings, and
the meeting then separated, after passing a vote of thanks
to the chairman.