Glasgow Courier. — 1846-12-03 (Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland)

THE DEMOCRACY OF FRANCE TO THE DEMOCRACY OF EUROPE.  The last wreck of a vast empire, which for ages formed a barrier of civilisation, menaced by Mussulman barbarism; a single spot spared from the odious rapine of three powers, accomplices in the distraction of a great people, still recalled its memory like those funeral crosses erected in places where a murder hasbeen perpetrated. This wreck has just disappeared, this cross the murderers have overturned. Instead of the Polish flag, which, under the guarantee of the most solemn treaties, floated upon the walls of Cracow, Austria, that same Austria which owed to Poland her safety in an extreme danger, has substituted his own, encouraged to the crime by the impunity of former offences, and by one of those bargains for mutual assistance which brigands make in the depths of their caverns. All the clauses of the treaty of Vienna had already been insolently violated by Russia. In concert with her allies, and for their common object, she had already almost consummated the abolition of Polish nationality. And by what means, what violences, and what crimes, was this consummation effected? Deeds, such as history can offer no other example of, and which, perhaps, hereafter, she will refuse even to believe! To recall even briefly those infernal scenes with which three sovereigns have frightened mankind, would lead us far beyond the limits of this document. It would be necessary to follow executioners through scenes of carnage perpetrated in the silent fortresses of Prussia, in the dark dungeons of Austria, in the deserts and mines of Siberia, upon public places transformed into slaughter-houses; into the homes of each family weeping the exile or the death of those dearest to them; weeping for their country and their religion, and forced to renounce the very language of their ancestors. It would be neeesssary to show a Government which dares to call itself Christian, urging one entire class of its subjects to the massacre of another class, without distinction of age or sex, by the offer of an infamous bribe, after having first deceived and brutified them. It would be necessary to paint fire and murder spread over a whole country which was converted, by the premeditated design of its Government, into one immense tomb. It would be necessary to relate how among those who have survived this universal assassination, are found more than three hundred miserable little creatures under three years old, incapable of telling who they are—without father, without mother, without known relative, the foundlings of blood. The French democracy believes it to be its duty to protest against these execrable crimes; to protest against all the acts of which the avowed object has been the final destruction of Poland; to efface the very name of this people, no glorious and so unfortunate, from the map of Europe. The French democracy believes it to be its duty to call for similar protestations from all those who think that nations ought not to he abandoned as the prey of violence, who, out of France, share the sacred principles of its revolution; of all those, in a word, who are animated by a sense of justice and humanity. Let them rise in their strength, and in the firmness of an irrevocable revolution let them rise as one man, and say to the oppressors, whatever name, be it despotism or aristocracy, they assume, We render you thanks. In tearing the last veil with which you enveloped yourselves you have dissipated the, last 'Heston of too trusting minds, you have removed the last pretext for inaction from the timid and the weak, you have hastened your ruin and accelerated the fall of your detested reign. There exist sinister pacts which you called treaties, under the shade of which were concealed your plots against the human family, which you destined to one eternal slavery. You have yourselves torn these treaties. Positive law exists no longer. As to natural law, that imprescriptible right which secures to each people as to each individual its proper existence, you proclaimed that you discard