wards during the three centuries that fol- the peasant sometimes was compelled to lowed the Reformation. We have already work six days for his lord, and was only referred to the rise of a persecuting spirit allowed to retain one for himself. During among them, and traced the steps by which the eighteenth century-the last century of a system of religious oppression succeeded Poland's existence the number of days to the absolute tolerance of an older period. exacted was increased throughout all the This tendency was undoubtedly to a great Polish provinces. But this was not the end extent imported. Their inclination towards of the peasant's troubles. There were slavery, on the other hand, was of genuine numbers of small payments extorted on native growth. But strange to say, it only various pretexts, which he had to make up developed recently, and began to make its out of his scanty earnings. And to crown appearance just at the time when the West- all, he was afflicted with a sort of anticiern nations were leaving it off. In the pation of the tommy-shop. He was comancient days of Poland, before the close of pelled to purchase at the lord's shop whatthe fifteenth century, nobles and freemen ever he required beyond the produce of the were far from being convertible terms. soil-of such quality, of course, as the lord There was a very large class, including the chose to supply, and at such prices as the chief part of the labouring population, lord chose to charge. He had to buy the termed 'kmetones' or 'plebeii' in the laws, beer that the lord manufactured, and the who were not of noble blood, and yet were herrings the lord bought at Dantzic. And free. They resemble serfs so far that if if the result of all these combined exactions they rented lands they paid their rent for was that the peasant could not support the land they occupied, not in money, but himself, the peasant starved - at least in in so many days' labour upon the lord's Poland. In Lithuania, where slavery was land. But they differed from serfs in this more openly acknowledged, the lord was essential particular, that they were at perfect bound to support the peasant; and one of liberty to go where they liked. This liberty the Lithuanian statutes provided, with huwas carefully secured to them by the law. mane but somewhat Irish forethought, that, But towards the end of the fifteenth century if the lord left the peasant to starve, the the tone of legislation began to alter. The peasant should be free. nobles, in whose hands the power of legis- If his social condition was bad, his civil lation lay, began to reduce the 'plebeians' status was no better. At the beginning of to a condition more and more dependent on the sixteenth century it was enacted that his their will. In 1496 was passed the statute plaint should be inadmissible in a court of that may be called the Magna Charta of the justice except with the sanction of his lord. Polish slaveowner. Under its enactments Indirectly, of course, this prohibition placed the plebeian was, in the first place, forbidden him absolutely at his lord's disposal. But to acquire land, or, if he possessed it, was the Polish nobility were not satisfied with forced to sell it; and in the second place, was indirect powers. In 1573 it was formally forbidden to move from one place to an- enacted that the lord should have the power other without a pass from the lord. To of punishing the plebeians at discretion. A ensure the efficacy of this new restriction, little before this time the attention of learned more than one stringent Fugitive Slave Law men in Poland appears to have been strongwas also passed. These two enactments ly directed to the Roman law, and Polish reduced the plebeian at once to serfdom. legislators were seized with the mania for He ceased to be an owner of the soil him- reproducing its provisions. A more conveself, and became ascriptus gleba of another nient theory for the Polish slave owner could man. In this state his condition, though not have been devised. They claimed all nominally not one of slavery, was much the prerogatives that were exercised by the worse than the condition of a slave. For Roman master over his slave, and the claim as the peasant was forced by law to occupy was allowed. To speak briefly,' says the lord's land, and the lord was left to settle Dresner, in 1607, whatever was the legal the conditions on which he would allow his power of the ancient Romans over their land to be occupied, the result was that the slaves, the same power belongs to the Polish lord exacted from the peasant precisely as nobles over the plebeians who are under much labour as he pleased, and was not them." Nor was this bare theory; it was bound to support him in return. Some- carried to the extremest consequence. Half times the lord was reasonable, and only a century before, it was fully recognised required three days' work, leaving him the other four for his own sustenance. time went on, and the nobles became more extravagant and therefore more exacting, But as servos fuit, haec nunc nobilibus Polonis in plebeios * Ut breviter dicatur, quæ antiquis Romanis in subditos est potestas.-Dresner, Simil., p. 57. 6 that the lives of the plebeians were at the pleases them, and send off with a hundred absolute disposal of their lords. A writer blows any one that interferes with them.'* of their own upbraids them for this barba- To estimate fully the depth of the degra rity in terms of bitter reproach, which may dation to which the Polish nobles had rebe fitly commended to the consideration of duced their slaves, it must be remembered those who have learned to think that the that these were no negroes, men of an infeinterests of freedom were in any way af- rior race imported from a barbarous land fected by the fall of the Polish republic. and incapable of the acute and sensitive 'Your lips overflow with freedom,' writes feelings of the white man. They were men Modrzewski, in 1559, 'but there is nought of the same race as themselves, differing among you but a barbarous servitude which from them in nothing but accidental claims abandons the life of a man to the mercy or of birth, and reduced by them to the most mercilessness of his lord.'* And in another abject slavery and the extreme destitution place he reproaches them with, in some from which slaves are generally free. With provinces, selling their slaves like cattle.'t these facts in view, most persons will be As time went on, the protection which the inclined to agree with the judgment which 'plebeians' received from the law appears Von Sybel passes upon the whole case: rather to have diminished than increased. When one weighs these relative conditions, The killing of slaves, not only on alleged one can hardly speak of the Polish nation grounds of justice, but without any reason having been overthrown by the Partitions. assigned, gradually received the sanction of What fell in 1793 was the inhuman dominathe law, or, at least, a connivance closely tion of a few noblemen over the Polish verging on a sanction. In 1588, by a statute people. These only changed their masters; of Lithuania, the fine of a sum equal to about ten guineas was fixed as the penalty for killing a house slave. In 1651, we are told, on the authority of Oligarovius, that anybody might kill a serf for ten golden pieces, but that his owner might kill him gratis-an account of the market price of serfs, which shows them to have been very inferior in commercial value to the negroes of our own day. At the beginning of the next century, in the generation which immediately preceded the Partition, we have upon this subject the evidence of a witness eminently entitled to credence, Stanislas Leczynski, the twice exiled King of Poland. The words are well known, but they need to be recalled to the remembrance of those who talk of the 'once free land of Poland: Such necessary persons (the serfs) should, without doubt, be esteemed; but we make scarcely a difference between them and the beasts which plough our fields. We often spare them less than the beasts, and only too often sell them to equally cruel masters, who compel them by increase of work to pay the price of their new servitude. With horror I mention the law which lays upon every noble who kills a peasant-only a fine of fifteen francs.' + Even the impending dissolution of the republic did not increase the respect of the nobility for the meanest human rights or the most sacred human feelings. Even in 1781 the traveller Bernouilli relates that 'the nobles outrage every maiden that * De republica emendanda, 1. 19, ap. Lelewel. 1. 79. Ap. Lelewel, 238. Euvres du Philos. bienf. iii. 3. Lelowel. and watched the change, which even upon the Russian side could not bring them more harm than good, with indolent indifference.'t It is not upon such a past as this that the Poles, if they are wise, will rest their claims. to the sympathies of Europe. It is, of course, open to them to resolve to fight out the old feud of the two nationalities to its bitter end. They have inherited the right, if they choose, to stake their lives upon a last desperate attempt to restore the Poland of old times. If Russia can be justified for the efforts which she made to restore the empire of Wladimir, the Poles can hardly be blamed if they prefer to risk everything rather than renounce the dream of renewing the glories of the Jagellons. But in such an undertaking they cannot count upon the sympathy of Europe. The memory of the persecuting slaveowners, whose corrupt and factious anarchy was trampled out by Catherine, is not a felicitous topic for those to dilate upon who are asking for the aid of free and order-loving Englishmen. Nor would the tale of the Partition, even if the wrongs of the Polish nobles had been as cruel as the exiles love to paint them, in any case be relevant to the present struggle. However faulty the title of Catherine may have been, it was abundantly cured by subsequent events. Since that time the Polish nobles have tried the fortune of war again. In order to restore their own independence, or at least to transfer their vassalage from Russia to France, they made themselves the allies of Napoleon in his efforts to destroy the independence of every European nation. * Bernouilli, iv. 129. † Bernouilli, ii. 202. It was a desperate venture for a great prize. If it had succeeded, Poland would probably have recovered from Russia all that she had lost from the days of Wassilij to the days of Catherine. Russia would have shrunk back into the dimensions of a semi-Asiatic principality; and Poland, under the powerful tutelage of France would have been the largest monarchy of Eastern Europe. And there was fair ground for hoping that, as soon as Napoleon himself had passed away, the nominal independence would be come real, and Poland would resume the national position she had occupied in the middle ages. This day-dream was destined to a speedy disenchantment. The wager of battle to which the Poles had appealed was decided against their cause. The early November frost of the year 1812, which ment. The traditlons of their race did not brought life and freedom to so many a European nation, was a death blow to the hopes of Poland. Russia, attacked without even the semblance of a pretext, and saved by a devotion that has no parallel in history, entered by as pure a right of conquest as any conqueror ever claimed into the land of the race that had plotted her extinction. The duchy of Warsaw, which had thrown in its lot with Napoleon, of course shared his ruin. Alexander became master, not only of the Russian provinces that Catherine had reclaimed, but of the true Poland which lies on this side of the Vistula, by the right which aggression always gives to those against whom it is directed. The Poles had trusted the hopes of their nationality to the arbitrament of the sword; and they had no right to murmur when by the sword it was doomed to perish. a difficult race to rule. The very abuses to which they had been for centuries exposed should have made the task of satisfying them easy. Austria has at least succeeded in satisfying the Gallicians to that exent that the contagion of insurrection, even in the present excitement, does not spread across the border. If she has not been able to conciliate the nobles, her liberal government of the peasantry has at all events secured her from any disaffection extensive enough to be dangerous. Even Prussia, whose rule is a caricature of administrative pedantry, has contrived to persuade her Polish subjects that there is no evil in her government on account of which it is worth their while to hazard the risk of a revolt. These Poles were not exacting in the matter of govern furnish them with a standard dangerously high by which to measure the short-comings of their actual rulers. This it is which makes the case against Russia so unanswerably strong. The very tyranny of the old Polish nobility, which would have made the lower classes very tolerant of their new masters, becomes the heaviest, testimony against them. All the facts which make in favour of the Russia of the past tell with fatal force against the Russia of to-day. The darker the colours in which a just historian must paint the old government of Poland, the deeper the brutality or the incompetence of that rule which has made even the old government of Poland to be regretted. But The remarkable unanimity with which all the signataries of the treaty of Vienna, with the single ignominious exception of Prussia, have recognised the duty of interposing beBut from the year 1815 the strength of tween Alexander II. and his oppressed subthe Polish cause begins. As a nation they jects, opens the chance of a brighter future had fallen by the justest retribution that for the Poles than a few years ago any one was ever meted out to a foreign policy of would have dared to hope for them. incessant aggression, and an oppressive and for the success of such interference it is abbarbarous domestic rule. But they had not solutely necessary that those who guide the lost their rights as men. They had a right public opinion of Europe should steadily to good government, and, at least, to some distinguish between attainable and visionary portion of the freedom they had lost. It aims. An absolutely independent Poland was a right so obvious that it was not suf- is a mere chimera. There is no power that fered by the plenipotentiaries at Vienna to be left to the spontaneous impulses of their ruler, but was embodied in one of the first of the provisions of the most important treaty which had been signed in Europe since the treaty of Westphalia. It is a matter of notoriety that even a professed observance of those provisions did not outlast the life of Alexander. Since 1815 the misgovernment of Poland has not only been constant, but growing. And with the misgovernment the discontent has been growing in at least an equal ratio. Yet they ought not to have been can set it up; and if set up-assuming that the Russian empire remains otherwise unbroken-there is no power that can maintain it. Recent events have shown that the Polish character still makes united effort as impossible as it was in the days of the Confederations of Bar and Radom. An independent Polish kingdom, even if it could be established, would never be more than the nursling of domineering embassies. The individual ambition which, even at this supreme crisis, could not be restrained from dividing the Polish arms, would give abun 2. Aurora Floyd. By M. E. Braddon. 3 4. Recommended to Mercy. 3 vols. 1862. 7. 8. 9. 10. Nobly False. By James M'Grigor Allan. 2 vols., 1863. The Law of Divorce. of Oxford. 1861. By a Graduate Wait and Hope. By John Edmund Reade. 3 vols. 1859. dant facility to each ambassador to construct | ART. VII.—1. Lady Audley's Secret. By for himself a party in the interests of his M. E. Braddon. 3 vols. Seventh ediown court. A country governed upon such a tion. 1862. system is in no true sense a nation. It is a mere battlefield for foreign intrigue. An independent Poland will become a possibility when individual Polish leaders shall have shown that they have acquired the moral capacity for self-renunciation. But a nation which even in its deepest woe is still torn by factions is not likely to make head against the forces of the largest empire in the world. The best that can be hoped for Poland is an improved condition under Russian rule. The conditions which are needed to reconcile the Poles to a Russian sovereign are manifest enough, and do not seem very hard to be observed. The Poles have not only been oppressed, but insulted; and in their The Old Roman Well. 2 vols. 1861. condition insult is harder to put up with 11. Miriam May. Third edition. 1860. than oppression. A nation which is under 12. Crispin Ken. By the Author of 'Miriam a foreign yoke is sensitive upon the subject May. 2 vols. Third edition. 1861. of nationality. Like a decayed gentleman, 13. Philip Paternoster. By an Ex-Puseyite. it lays great stress upon points of form. It 2 vols. 1858. is constantly requiring its ancient lineage to be recognised, and is ever upon the watch for some fancied or real slight. If Russia 15. Passages in the Life of a Fast Young would rule the Poles in peace, she must Lady. By Mrs. Grey. 3 vols. 1862. defer to a sensibility which neither coaxing 16. Only a Woman. By Captain Lascelles nor severity will cure. All the substance! Wraxall. 3 vols. 1860. of power may be exercised as well through 17. Harold Overdon. By Chartley Castle. Polish administrators as through Russian. 1862. The union between the two countries may for practical purposes be complete, though every legal act and every kind of scholastic instruction be couched in the Polish language. That such an act of barbarism as the recent conscription will never be perpetrated again is an assurance that we may 21. The Woman of Spirit. 2 vols. 1862. justly gather from the well-known character 22. Clinton Maynyard, a Tale of the World, of Alexander II. If some such securities the Flesh, and the Devil. 1862. 14. The Weird of the Wentworths. By Johannes Scotus. 2 vols. 1862. 1860. By W. Winwood 18. Liberty Hall, Oxon. 20. The Daily Governess. By Mrs. Gordon for freedom as were contained in the Charter 23. Spurs and Skirts. By Allet. 1862. of 1815 could be restored, there need be no 24. Ashcombe Churchyard. By Evelyn fear, in the present state of European opin-. Benson. 2 vols. 1862. ion, that they will be set aside again; and it is not likely that any future Russian govern- 'I DON'T like preaching to the nerves instead ment will renew the barren labour of at- of the judgment,' was the remark of a tempting by force to 'denationalise' the shrewd observer of human nature, in relaPoles. If such a result could be attained tion to a certain class of popular sermons. by the mediation which the European Pow- The remark need not be limited to sermons ers have happily both the will and the right alone. A class of literature has grown up to offer, the insurrection may not have ful- around us, usurping in many respects, intenfilled all the hopes that its first outburst en- tionally or unintentionally, a portion of the couraged; but at least the lives that have preacher's office, playing no inconsiderable been so freely offered up will not have been part in moulding the minds and forming the an idle sacrifice. habits and tastes of its generation; and doing so principally, we had almost said exclusively, by preaching to the nerves.' It would almost seem as if the paradox of Cabanis, les nerfs, voilà tout l'homme, had been banished from the realm of philosophy only to claim a wider empire in the domain of fiction-at least if we may judge by the very | mands of the novel-reading public were to large class of writers who seem to acknow- increase to the amount of a thousand per ledge no other element in human nature to season, no difficulty would be found in prowhich they can appeal. Excitement, and ducing a thousand works of the 'average excitement alone, seems to be the great end merit. They rank with the verses of which at which they aim-an end which must be Lord Fanny spins a thousand such a day;" accomplished at any cost by some means or and spinning-machines of the Lord Fanny other, 'si possis, recte; si non, quocunque kind may be multipled without limit. modo.' And as excitement, even when barmless in kind, cannot be continually produced without becoming morbid in degree, works of this class manifest themselves as belonging, some more, some less, but all to some extent, to the morbid phenomena of iterature-indications of a wide-spread corruption, of which they are in part both the effect and the cause; called into existence to supply the cravings of a diseased appetite, quantity, determined by rigid boundaries of and contributing themselves to foster the disease, and to stimulate the want which they supply. The sensation novel is the counterpart of the spasmodic poem. They represent the selfsame interest with a different leaning.' The one leans outward, the other leans inward; the one aims at convulsing the soul of the reader, the other professes to owe its birth to convulsive throes in the soul of the writer. But with this agreement there is also a difference. There is not a poet or poctaster of the spasmodic school but is ful ly persuaded of his own inspiration and the immortality of his work. He writes to satisfy the unconquerable yearnings of his soul; and if some prosaic friend were to hint at such earthly considerations as readers and purchasers, he would be ready to exclaim, with a forgotten brother of the craft (alas, that we should have to say forgotten after such a hiatus!): — - Various causes have been at work to produce this phenomenon of our literature. Three principal ones may be named as having had a large share in it-periodicals, circulating libraries, and railway bookstalls. A periodical, from its very nature, must contain many articles of an ephemeral interest, and of the character of goods made to order. The material part of it is a fixed space and time; and on this Procrustean bed the spiritual part must needs be stretched to fit. A given number of sheets of print, containing so many lines per sheet, must be produced weekly or monthly, and the diviner element must accommodate itself to these conditions. A periodical, moreover, belongs to the class of works which most men borrow and do not buy, and in which, therefore, they take only a transitory interest. Few men will burden their shelves with a series of volumes which have no coherence in their parts, and no limit in their number, whose articles of personal interest may be as one halfpenny worth of bread to an intolerable quantity of sack, and which have no other termination to their issue than the point at which they cease to be profitable. Under these circumstances, no small stimulus is given to the production of tales of the marketable stamp, which, after appearing piecemeal in weekly or monthly instalments, generally enter upon a second stage of their insect-life in the form of a handsome reprint under the auspices of the circulating library. 'Go, dotard, go, and if it suits thy mind, Range yonder rocks and reason with the wind, Or if its motions own another's will, Walk to the beach and bid the sea be still; In newer orbits let the planets run, This last-named institution is the oldest Or throw a cloud of darkness o'er the sun; offender of the three; but age has neither A measured movement bid the comets keep, diminished the energy nor subdued the Or lull the music of the spheres to sleep: faults of its youth. It is more active now These may obey thee; but the fiery soul than at any former period of its existence, Of Genius owns not, brooks not, thy control.' and its activity is much of the same kind Not so the sensation novelist. No divine as it was described in the pages of this Reinfluence can be imagined as presiding over view more than fifty years ago.* The manthe birth of his work, beyond the market ner of its action is indeed inseparable from law of demand and supply; no more im- the nature of the institution, varying only mortality is dreamed of for it than for the in the production of larger quantities to fashions of the current season. A commer- meet the demand of a more reading genera cial atmosphere floats around works of this tion. From the days of the Minerva Press' class, redolent of the manufactory and the (that synonym for the dullest specimens shop. The public want novels, and novels of the light reading of our grandmothers) must be made - so many yards of printed to those of the thousand and one tales of stuff, sensation-pattern, to be ready by the beginning of the season. And if the de # Quarterly Review,' vol. iii. pp. 340, 341. |