The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1835-12-18 00:00:00

DECEMBER, 18, JB3

for Poland its effects were almost electrical upon her vola-
tile, vain, and unscrupulous population. Unmindful Of
the pecuniary obligations due to the Russians—forgetful
of the paternal kindness of the emperor—reckless of the
consequences of bearding a lion on the confines of his
own jungles and who had been for fifteen years their pro-
tector—laughing to scorn the most saaed of obligations,
and recollecting, or seeming to recollect nothing but the
resentments which former calamities had inspired them
with, they flew to arms, assaulted and endeavoured to as-
sassinate their, temporary viceroy, committed. excesses of
various kinds, refused to pay taxes like thepatriotic gin-
bibbers of Mary-bone beaded by a washerwoman, con-
tested the payment of their just debts, disarmed the po-
lice, and bade defiance to NICHOLAS
We will do them the justice to say that they. were en •
eouraged in these mad and lawless proceedings by the
heroes of the Barricades. The French professed to be
immense admirers of these acts of Polish treachery and
villainy. They even talked of marching to tile aid of the
brave Poles." They proclaimed to the world that the

battle of freedom should be fought in Poland, and that
their further limits from France should be the northern
confines of the empire of liberty and intelligence—that
a free press should thunder, under the protection of can-
non, at the very gates of the autocrat, until his native
Goths might be able to appreciate the blessings of
Parisian civilization 1
It is true the heroes of the barricades did not march
to Warsaw, but they collected francs for the Poles in thou-
sands. The ladies of France went round weeping and
begging in their behalf. The theatres, and the gods in
the gallery, sighed, and sometimes_ blubbered, for Po-
land. Sous flowed in from unwashed bumpkins who had
few sous to spare. Barbers clipped hair ala Pole. Mil-
liners invented frills in ,their behalf; and charwomen
smoked pipes which wereir tieritethanufactured-by btai.e
but reduced Polish generals. This trashy and polluted sen-
timentality was permitted to invade the shores of Eng-
land. The begging-box went round here for the he-
roes," as it still goes round for the ruffian rebel in Ireland.
Ladies admired, and lauded for youth and loveliness, al-
though in ripe years for the exercise of a better discre-
tion, canvassed, and even importuned for pounds and
shillings in the cause. Sometimes an itinerant swindler,
in a fantastic dress, was impressed into the cause of liberty
and philanthropy, and exhibited as a living specimen of
a polish hero, if not with twenty mortal gashes on his
head, with at least double that number upon his well con-
cealed reputation. In short, the ladies of England—
our fair, retiring, beautiful, generous, religious, and
unsophisticated countrywomen—did not display much
sense, nor much superiority of taste on that occasion.
But vve pass it all by.
The effects of this western sympathy in favour of the
Poles were of a very disastrous kind. A vain people,
never, in their best condition, overburthened by pru-
dence or judgment, looked to France and England for
aid; and they calculated that as the francs and shillings
came to their relief, something of much more value in
the shape of physical force would follow. They were
deceived. France would not move. England, under
the tory-whig-radical, and now O'CONNELL-PALMERS-
T6N, dared not march. The Russians, despising all
menaces, and treating the mites of liberal ladies with
the cold contempt of unsunned vandalism, came down
upon the heroes of Poland like a torrent, in the winter
of 1831 and 1832. They'were repulsed at first, but they
soon after scattered the pretensions of Polish bravery to
the four winds of heaven ; dismembered Poland a second
time; punished her dishonest landowners by seizing
their possessions, curbed the pretensions of manufacturers
by protesting their bills and blowing up their factories,
and by sending the sons of the nobility who had rebelled

to.stotiy a new system of philosophy in the mechanics'

institutes of the mines of Siberia.
This unfortunate affair being ended, which we consi-
der, taking it in relation with the second revolutionary
movement in France, which seated Louts PHILIPPE
upon the throne, to be the main cause of the present dis-
tracted state of Europe, we are next led to its cense-
Sorne_ people.putunlain of the disturbedequi-
librium of the balance power in Europe, caused by the
encroachments of the Ciar of Russia.in Poland, in Tur-
key, in Persia, and on the high road to India. No one
laments more than we do the terrible punishment and the
galling retribution which the Poles have brought upon
themselves, nor the aggrandizing spirit of Russian 'di-
plomacy in the East, having the Sultan under her feet,
Greece fettered by her intrigues, and the passage of the
Bosphorus at her command. No man can look at the
strides of NICHOLAS without being convinced that Eng-
land is the craven dupe. the contemptible and pluckless
victim of his able and unopposed policy. He desires to
have, and he has, the Black Sea for his harbour; he de-
sires, and we fear lie will obtain, the upper Mediterranean
for his outward basin. His engineers direct the works
on the southern side of the passage of the Dardanelles.
He has Persia firmly in his grasp. Egypt is his byplay,
and die Pasha his partizan. He may not, perhaps he
dare not, invade India ; but he has a colony of Russians
on our frontier, and the road to the Indus is as open and
accessible to him, and much more so, than that of BONA-
PARTE was to Italy. over the Alps.
These are facts; and we concede they are matter of
complaint to gingerbread politicians, who, with a pi-
geon feather stuck •in their caps, are mighty puissant in
then pages of waning and discreditable periodicals, and
who, like schoolboys throwing snowballs at the Emperor
of all the Russias, dun us from morning to night with
the cry—" the balance of Europe is disturbed—the Em-
peror NrcuoLas has infringed, .violated, and trampled
upon the treaty of Vienna"!
Those who allow prejudice to take such liberties with
their better powers of discernment are not of that class to
whom we are most anxious to address our arguMents.
But it is necessary to inform all objectors that Russia did
not make the first inroad upon the treaty of Vienna. It
was perpetrated by the barricade heroes of France—by the
very men who placed LOUIS PHILIPPE on his throne, and
who now 611 his dungeons. England might in 1828
have preserved the integrity of the Ottoman Empire; but,
in the slang Of the day, she trusted to the "magnani-
mity of the Emperor." She might in 1831 have pre
served the integrity of the Netherlands as fixed 'by the
treaty of Vienna, but she trusted in the "honour of
France." The very moment in which the territorial
rights of WILLIAM of Holland were invaded, and ins-tided'
by the consent of the cabinet of England, the treaty of
Vienna fell a dead letter to the ground. To gratify the
ambition of barricade France, the fortresses built at the
expense of England on the borders of France and the
Netherlands, were dismantled and razed. This was not
an ordinary violation of the treaty—it was an open and
premeditated insult to England. France, which has been
the curse of Europe for the last half century, and the
metropolis of which ought to have been levelled to the
earth in 1815, has been permitted by the imbecile minis-
ters of England not only to outrage all treaties, but to
interfere with the commerce of England, particularlj, as
regards Spain and Portugal, in a way offensive to reagon
and justice, and dishonouring as regards our obligations
to other nations. Belgium is at this moment a province
of France. The boundary of the Rhine has been recog-
ttised by Lord GREY'S puppet king in Brussels. An
English pensioner, whose patriotism does not stand in
high repute, is made the cover for designs which he his
not talent to penetrate ; but which must end in his ex-
pulsion from his mushroom throne, and ultimate
disgrace. The battle which shall forerun these events
will most probably be fought in Belgium—by whom ?
By the Russians, in vindication of the rightful claims of
WILLIAM, King of the Netherlands.
Let us therefore hear no more about the violation of
the treaty of Vienna. The consequences of that breach
of solemn engagements will, we fear, be grievously felt
by all the western powers of Europe. But upon England
the largest share of the blame rests. She was a consent-
ing party to injustice. She held back, and shut her eyes
like a hypocrite singing psalms, while Holland was
robbed, and in which robbery she was a confederate. She
must therefore pay dearly, and with compound interest,
for this iniquity. But for the treacherous conduct of
England and France there would have been no rebellion
In Poland ; for,. unsupported by the connivance and the