The Sun. — 1864-06-13 (London, England)

MONTALEMBERT ON POLAND.  froellroewmianrgkaibs ae npeaaLljaygveserbi na ttt'ihnattrnanobs llaet pi oanpeorf otbneTthmheeo Polish Question by the Count de Montalembert, upon which paper we took occasion to comment at some length in The Sun of Thursday, the 2d instant, immediately after the appearance of the Count's expostulation with all Christendom : When in the night along some storm-beaten coast, a gun which tells of a ship in danger bursts upon the startled ear, in what Christian country do the inhabitants of the coast, deaf to the cry of the sufferers, to the appeal of their fellowcreatures, their brothers, remain at home to sleep in peace, or keep awake only to hug themselves in the pleasant sense of security which land and the fireside affords ? When in the street or on the high road a cry of distress is heard from some passer-by who is attacked or murdered, what are we to think of those honest folk who, instead of running to the victim's aid, only think of shutting themselves up in their houses, and peep from behind the half-closed shutters to see from afar how the crime is perpetrated ? Yet this is what has been taking place in France, in Europe, during the last 18 months, with this difference that, instead of a ship, it is a whole nation that is being engulphed in a sea of blood, and that it is not in the night, not in the midst of a tempest, nor in the depths of a forest, that the catastrophe is happening, but in a dead calm. It is not a lonely traveller, nor a caravan of travellers—but a nation, a great Christian nation, which is hemmed in, seized, garotted, despoiled, outraged. and assassinated before our eyes. Eighteen months ago this nation, which a century of unheard of wrongs and skilfully planned oppression could neither subdue nor exhaust, fell into the pit which her executioners had dug for her. One mighty cry she uttered;to remind the world that she had been buried alive, and did not wish to die. Then disarmed, alone, desperate,with the boldness of despair, she engaged in the struggle which still continues. The victim has exhausted every appeal for human aid. She has invoked one by one, with the most solemn adjurations, civilisation, humanity, the law of nations, modern right, modern ideas, liberty, progress, honour, gratitude, pity, public conscience. She has obtained nothing ;no response has been made to this heart-rending appeal. Modern civilisation so proud of its progress, of its universal empire, of its marvellous inventions, its popular wonders, has remained dumb and powerless before the monstrous spectacle exhibited at its very door of the dispossession, mutilation, and butchery of a nation effected, on a system of deliberate hatred in the middle of the 19th century. Civilisation has owned itself conquered by barbarism. Even in that country where liberty flourishes the best, she has done nothing, has availed nothing, has attempted nothing to save a people, one of the first among modern races, whose liberty dates as far back as that of any, and who asks of God and man but the simplest, the most elementary kind of liberty, liberty to live. Modern right, so continually invoked in some countries, so strangely interpreted and so audaciously applied in others; this right which, if we are to believe its noisiest advocates, authorises a people to get rid of Kings whom it dislikes, without a cause, as in Greece, or for chimerical reasons, as in Naples—this newfangled right allows an empire more than half Asiatic to deny and to violate with impunity every ancient right in the case of an European and Christian people, which has fallen a prey to the spoiler after one thousand years of national independence. Humanity proves as helpless as liberty I Neither philanthropy nor the increased gentleness of our manners so fairly boast of) and of our penal laws, n(whiortchhs:wtse may so compassion which is daily called forth by publicity, and expended on real or imaginary misfortunes, has been of any avail against what seemed too horrible to be aught but a nightmare, yet has proved a fearful reality—a vampire sucking the life•blood of a weeping victim. Public conscience, too, pity, and gratitude have been forgetful and silent. In vain did Poland display before our eyes the remembrance of her services and of her claims, the eight of her wounds and her pans, ehe who hes