The Sun.
London, England, 1861-11-30 00:00:00

form its administrative functions. He therefore
proposes two courses to the Government, either to
liberate the Rev. Mr. Bialobszeski, and thereby en-
able him, if he thinks fit, to resign his office as
Vicar; or to transmit a letter to the Pope drawn up
by the Bishop, laying before him the nature of the
difficulty, and requesting him either to use his in-
fluence in obtaining the Rev. Mr. Bialobszeski's
liberation, or to send a special Vicar from Rome,
Here the matter for the present rests ; but it is
obvious that this abnormal state of things cannot
long continue, and that either the Government or
the clergy must yield in the end.
Wielopolski is still at St. Petersburg, and it is
said vi ill be one of a commission to be appointed
there to inquire into the best means of managing
Poland. Meanwhile his Education Bill has passed
the Council of State, I may say, by acclamation ;
everything in it has been approved, and there
seems every chance of its becoming law without
modification. The question now on the tapis is the
condition of the Jews in Warsaw.

An increase has been observed during the last
few days in the number of arrests at Warsaw.
General Filmcki, the Chief of the Police, insists
upon every police sergeant bringing at least 20
prisoners daily to the head quarters of his district,
on pain of dismissal ; and he is himself very active in
arresting and knocking people about in the streets.
The ladies, who have long been persecuted in the
provinces. have now also become the object of attack
in Warsaw. Several of them have already been
wounded, and one of them thrown bleeding into
the gutter. The number of prisoners now in the
kingdom must be upwards of ten thousand. The
Dzionick, Powszechuy has published a list of
twenty-three of these, mostly workmen, the first
fifteen of whom have been sentenced to be attached

to the Orenburg Corps, the next five to two years'
imprisonment in the fortress of Noeogoorgiewsk,
and the three last to banishment from the country.
The chief offence of these men appears to have
been their beating and ill-treatment by the sol-
diery. A good specimen of the nature of the crime
which has been visited with such severe punish-
ment is the case of Peter Betcher, who has been
condemned to remain all his life in the criminal
division of the Orenburg Corps, for spitting on the
ground and making a contemptuous gesture, while
reading an announcement of the authorities posted

in the corner of a street. The Government must be
very hard up for real criminals, when it shuts up
people for such absurdities as this.
It takes good care, however, not to publish the
imprisonment of such distinguished men and
patriots as the Rev. Messrs. Wyzyuski, Wit-
mar, Sieklucki, Dziarzkowski, Otto, &e., the chief
Rabbi, Meizels, the Rabbis Jastrow and Kiamsztyk,
Szlenker, Hiszpanski,:and so on ; no doubt because
not even the form of a legal trial has been allowed
them. These unfortunate men are treated in the
most disgraceful manner by Colonel Hatzfeld, the
president of the military tribunal. He strikes them
in the face, abuses them in the vilest terms, and
often keeps them for days without food. The
calumny spread by the German papers regarding
Hiszpanski, who, they say, has played the traitor,
and is now lying in prison to save him from the
vengeance of the patriots, is as untrue as it is
absurd. He has always shown himself among the
foremost in his zeal for the national cause, and is,
like his fellow-delegates, forbidden to see any one,
even the members of his family. This falsehood,
like that of the discovery of the 15,000 muskets on
an estate of Count Zamoyski, which has been cir-
culated by telegram all over Europe, is one of the
means employed by the Russian Government to
disparage the Poles in the face of other nations ;
and it shows to what a state of degradation the
German papers must have been reduced to allow
themselves thus to be made the instruments of so
base an artifice. The Russians have, from the first,
used their utmost efforts to find arms in the pos-
session of the patriots, but they have invariably
failed; and, indeed, it is difficult to perceive what
use the patriots could make of arms, even if they
had them. Unaided, it is impossible for Poland to
enter upon an armed contest with Russia with any
chance of success, and their present position of
moral resistance, opposed to brutal force, is a much
stronger one than if they reduced themselves to the
level of their oppressors by resorting to violence.
The Government is about to resort to a new
scheme for depopulating the country. The Polish
towns are to furnish 10,000 recruits to the Russian
army—or, in other words, 10,000 men are to be
taken at hazard from the Polish population, in
order to be subjected to one of the severest punish-
ments it is in the power of Russia to inflict. This
is, however, but a snort-sighted policy on her part,
for she may be training these very men to turn
against her when the time comes.
The military have again shown their utter de-
fiance of every principle of right and humanity at
Sandomir. A fire had broken out in the middle of
this town, at the residence of one of the principal
merchants. The police sounded the al arum bell,
and the fire brigade speedily made its appearance,
accompanied by a crowd of the population who had
come to help. In the midst of the confusion which
is always visible on such occasions, Golubow, the
Military Commandant, fell with his Cossacks and
a detachment of a line regiment on the people,
after having placed guards at the doors of the
houses to prevent any one from coming in or going
out. The scone which ensued may easily be ima-
gined—men and women fell by dozens, many of
them severely wounded under the horses of the
Cossacks, and the soldiery struck at every one they
met with the butts of their muskets. The bishop
has sent an account of the transaction to General
Luders, the Viceroy, after much opposition on the
part of Golubow. But it is idle to look for redress
in such cases. " Disp2rsing a disorderly assemblage"
is the usual and all-sufficient explanation on all
occasions of this kind ; and General Luders, who
has done absolutely nothing since his appointment
to the Viceroyalty, is not the man to ask inconve-
nient questions.
Colonel Czenyeny, the military commandant at
Kielce, has given the inhabitants of the province
the benefit of his interpretation of the state of siege.
" Citizens are forbidden," says he, in an official
order recently published, " from assembling in
towns or villages on any pretence whatever, whe-
ther on commercial or household affairs, or for
family festivals or hunting parties, without the
permission of the military commandant. Any
person not attending to this order shall be brought
before the military tribunal for trial." And again,
" All religious processions, including those that
take place in churches, are forbidden
The clergy are bound to ask permission of the mili-
tary commandant to celebrate any religious festi-
val which might be the cause of a large assemblage
of people." Thus it will be seen that even a visit
to one's friends, or the performance of a religious
ceremony, becomes illegal unless stamped with the
sanction of that all-powerful of mortals—the mili-
tary commandant. The same officer has issued an
order to the police and troops under his command
to arrest every lady caught singing a forbidden
hymn, or wearing a cross or a mourning dress.
Russian agents are still moving about in the
provinces, exciting the peasantry with inflamma-
tory speeches full of falsehoods against their land-
lords. At Olkusk, some of the peasants of the place
who appeared as witnessesbefore a court of inquiry
swore that the soldiery had said to them—" If vou
heard the words of our pope, you would know how
to manage with the nobles and get rid of them."
These commissions are, however, nothing but a
solemn farce, and never lead to anything. The
agents denounced by the peasantry always either
escape scot free or with a gentle reprimand ; in-
deed, it would be strange if it were otherwise, a
Government Commission not being likely to punish
its own agents for doing what it directed them
to do.

The persecution of the clergy is more bitter than
ever. At Kutno the organist of the church has
been sent to Siberia for intoning the hymn, " God
save Poland," and its priests to three years' im-
prisonment for the same reason. Another clergy-
man, whom the soldiery had come to arrest, vas
so ill that he could not be moved; two of them
were accordingly lodged in his chamber until he
should be sufficiently recovered to leave it. The
same trick was played on a lady who had been
sentenced to be flogged for some political °Renee,