The Sun.
London, England, 1845-10-08 00:00:00

entnE 11,1 t

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1845.

There has just been published, in the Journal deB
Dehatg, a case so horrible and so remarkable, that we
felt ourselves justified in yesterday transferring it to
our columns, under the heading of " Religious Per-
secutions in Russia." At the foot of our translation
we have acknowledged the highly respectable source
from whence the article is taken by quoting the journal
in question. Postponing the strong inclination of our
own feelings to give expression to all the indignation
its perusal has excited in us, we cannot help thinking
that it involves matter which may well originate the
adoption of proceedings, on the part of universal Chris-
tendom, which religion and policy have alike in vain de-

mended for eighteen centuries. From a date coeval with
the foundation of the Christian faith itself the z.al of
sectarian fanaticism has persecuted its opponents—of
whatever shade of opinions, under whatever condition of
circumstance—with all the barbarous rigours and all
the sanguinary penalties that are most opposed to the ge-
nius of Chistianity; to her precepts and her revelations.
In common with our Parisian Contemporary, we would
" wish to see the spirit of toleration which has tri-
umphed in civilised countries take the place of these
odious excesses." To go back to the period when Ca-
tholic armies destroyed, by " fire and sword," the Albi-
genses and the Vaurians. we also concur in thinking
would be but a sorry " means of preventing the perse-
cutions arising from Russian policy and orthodoxy."
But we certainly conceive that it might be very
possible for the great Powers of Europe to enter
into such engagements with one another as
might rescue the great common faith of which, under
various forms, all of them profess the essential doc-
trines, from the disgrace—from the infamy of even by
implication sanctioning the hideous atrocities that have
been perpetrated, in the name and for the glory of the
SAVIOUR (it seems like blasphemy, but it is not less the
truth, that we thus write), upon the persons and the
honour of defenceless, helpless, women, devoted to the
service of religion, and fulfilling the most active and noble
duties of human charity. The town of Witebesk has been
made the theatre of a martyrdom, in its extent
and its details of refined barbarity, worthy of
the most ferocious extravagances of NERO, DOMITIAN,
or lfaxistes. In a very ancient convent near the town
of Minsk, within the territory of Russian Poland, a
sisterhood of forty-nine nuns of the rule of Saint Basil,
were lately discharging the truly sacred offices which in
Paris are fulfilled by the well-known "Sisters of Charity?*
They ministered to the wants of the poor ; they suc-
coured, attended upon, and nursed the helpless or friend-
less victims of sudden and overwhelming calamities,
disease, wounds, accidents ; the sick, the wounded, the
dying. They fed them, clothed them, prayed with
them. They soothed their last moments with encourag-
ing exhortation, or restored them to existence
and society for the most part as improved
in moral feeling as renovated in physical health. These
men had for their chaplain a priest named NICHELE-
WICZ, who, on the Emperor NICHOLAS issuing his
ukase, declaring that he would tolerate in his European
dominions no other religion but his own—namely, that
of the Greek Church—was induced to apostatise from
the communion of Rome, to which he belonged, to that
of the EMPEROR'S election. his apostasy was re-
wardid by valuable promotions. He became bishop,
and then desired to have the sisterhood follow the
example of his apostacy. All his persuasions and his
menaces equally failing of their effect, he causes the
convent to be surrounded in the dead of night by Cos-
sacks, who seized them " with the most revolting bru-
tality, bound them with cords, and conducted them to
Witebesk, nearly twenty leagues from Minsk, com-
pellirg them to walk the entire distance." At Minsk
they were Confined in a notorious convent under circum-
stances of degradation and infamy, for which we must
refer our readers to the narrative we have already
published, and where, every Friday, fifty lashes
were inflicted upon each of them ! Scourged,
humbled, starved, " their bodies covered with wounds,"
these noble nuns were proof against all external
cruelty, torture, and violence ; they remained steadfast
in their religious profession. With this constancy on
their part the auger and ferocity cf the apostate bishop
inereased in proportion. He caused the devoted women to
be ironed and sent to the galleys, and slow starvation to
be superadded to their other tortures. Tormented
by thirst, faint with hunger, agonised by bodily
suffering, they were now compelled to serve as labourers
to the masons employed in building the ecclesiastical
palace. Thirty of these martyrs to their devoted fidelity
to the church in which they had been reared perished
under various strange, and scarcely conceivable tortures.
Of the seventeen who survived the fate of those victims,
three only retained sufficient strength to effect their es-
cape from the "schismatic nuns " in whose dissolute
service they had been compelled to enter as do-
mestic slaves. After surmounting difficulties, perils,
and reverses, which would seem rather to be•
long to an historical romance of the Middle
Ages than to the real life of any portion of
European society in the nineteenth century, they ac-
complished their escape into the Austrian dominions ;
and one of them, the venerable Abbess, from whom this
story of execrable persecution and unmanly brutality
has been promulgated, to the astonishment and disgust
of civilized nations, is at this moment in Paris. The
ferocious apostate, who thus signalised himself as the
imm diate instrument of carrying out the Russian Ern-
peror's insane scheme of compulsory conformity, has
since perished by a death, violent, indeed, but all too
easy (according to our fallible notions of human retri-
bution) for a criminal of guilt so desperate as his. lie
was drowned.

Now, we take it, there can be no difference of opinion
entertained among the Governments of Europe—among
any Christian States whatever—upon the scandal as well
as the enormity of the persecution which the Diocletian
of Muscovy is now waging against one of the manifold
religiqus sections embraced in the many-peopled, many-
religioned nation over which he presides. It must
be the universal feeling, that the cross—the
sacred standard to which all of these Emperors
Kings, Potentates, Princes, and subjects have sworn,
under the most impressive obligations into which rational
beings are capable of entering, absolute allegiance—is
dishonoured, polluted, utterly desecrated by impious
vielences of this kind. Why should not all the leading
States enter into a solemn and permanent convention—a
pledge of centuries of peace and improvement to the poste-
rity of nations, abjuring for ever, for each
and all of them, the infliction hereafter of
all personal pains or civil disabilities on their subjects on
account of religious opinions and tenets, where they have
no immediate tendency to violate the laws or disturb the
peace and order of their kingdoms ? What would be the
inevitable results of such a convention honestly con-
tracted and honestly adhered to ? The present pacifi-
cation of all heartburnings and discontents among men
on account of their diversities of religious doctrine
and ceremonial ; security against the recurrence of them
for the future ; and the establishment of a wholesome
check on their own imperceptible tendencies to relapse
into the criminal bigotry of darker times. But such a
convention may touch very nearly the errors of our
own domestic Government, and amount to a confession
of our own past offences to our Roman Catholic and
Dissenting subjects. So much the better. It may touch
as nearly some of our best and dearest allies, for the
same reason. It may come home to Prussia ; it may
reach Belgium ; it may affect France. So much the
batter, again, we say. The past cannot be recalled: the
future rosy be controlled. Let all the Powers of Europe,
acting on the exigency ss hick the carrying out of the
AUTOCRAT'S scheme of compulsory conformity has thus
c. eated, avail themselves of the opportunity to eradicate
from their political institutions, for ever, the fruitful
sources of incessant cis il and foreign discontent and com-
tnotions, of endless sacrifices, torments, assassinations,
intrigues, plot, conspiracies—all penal laws against
liberty of conscience and private judgment, subject only
to the limitations above suggested in matters of doe.
trine and religious opinions and observances.

solitary instance,
the ease of the Eclair, horrible as it is, only a
instance, or one even of three or four, of the
fatal Fflccts of the plague which rages on certain parts
of the African coast, the public mind would feel less
anxiety, and the attempts of the Government to put
down
slavesai
accounts might
an 3 d
no b.ceobcub ourrnt eti
hnwa it
st
tht
ahtfeionrsgus f
rotemhr
ee
3e.
ccntrary, and leave scarcely
ings inflicted on our gallant countrymen can never be
recompensed even by the attainment of the object in
view. Allse who are appointed to these stations enter on
a forlorn hope. They have almost certain death before
their eyes, without the excitement of battle and victory,
or the belief that their cruel fate will benefit the African
But a few years since :Lire° vesselt -fitted
every fbr counteracting the malaria;
a certain proportion of black seamen were placed on
board each ship; most of the officers had been more °Hess
seasoned to the climate; the friends of the Africans were
in high hopes that the expedition would be success-
ful, though all persons acquainted with the
coast augured a very different result. And their
forebodings were but too literally fulfilled. Nearly the
whole of the European officers and sailors fell a sacrifice
to the disease, and only one vessel returned—with
inniorea thltittntleone-mhoalrfe ofilit,pheefuclrewdead, and the rest
condition
than those
on board the Eclair. This has been invari-
ably the consequence of similar attempts, and
what renders the task of putting down the trade more
difficult is, that the ships which keep at sea, and only
occasionally approach near the coast, are liable to nearly
the sane calamities. Any communication with the in-
fected spots spreads the contagion, and the unfor-
tunate victims must either desert their post,
and seek shelter in a more healthy climate,
or dle like outcasts from society. Foreigners
shun their touch, they are rarely allowed to land on the
most sequestered nook of a French, a Spanish, or a
Portuguese settlement, and when they reach their native
land a fate only somewhat more mild awaits them.
Change of air and clothing and medicine, of itself but of
little avail, it is true, they obtain, but medical men of