of these social evils, amidst unbounded commercial prosperity and the highest political power in Great Britain. The social evils which destroyed Rome, he reminds us, were in full activity during the eighty years of the splendid, pacific, and wise rule of the Antonines-the most happy, to external appearance, which the world ever knew. Their baneful influence appeared at once, when political dangers commenced with the accession of Commodus. These doctrines are not the less likely to be true that they are contrary to general opinion, that they run counter to many important interests, that they are incapable of present application, that they are adverse to the policy of the rulers of the state. Government rules men, but Providence rules government, and will in the end assert its supremacy, and right the moral evils of mankind, or punish the sins of nations.

POLAND

[BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, AUGUST 1831]

POLAND in ancient possessed very much the extent and dominion of Russia in Europe in modern times. It stretched from the Baltic to the Euxine; from Smolensko to Bohemia; and embraced within its bosom the whole Scythia of antiquity-the storehouse of nations, from whence the hordes issued who so long pressed upon and at last overthrew the Roman empire. Its inhabitants have in every age been celebrated for their heroic valour: they twice captured the ancient capital of Russia, and the conflagration of Moscow and retreat of Napoleon were but the repetition of what had resulted five centuries before from the appearance of the Polish eagles aiding the Tartar horse on the banks of the Moskwa. Placed on the frontiers of European civilisation, they long formed its barrier against barbarian invasion and the most desperate wars they ever maintained were those which they had to carry on with their own subjects, the Cossacks of the Ukraine, whose roving habits and predatory life disdained the restraints of regular government. When we read the accounts of the terrible struggles they maintained with the great insurrection of these formidable hordes under Bogdan, in the seventeenth century, we are transported to the days of Scythian warfare, and recognise the features of that dreadful invasion of the Sarmatian tribes, which the genius of Marius averted from the Roman republic.

Nor has the military spirit of the people declined in modern times. The victories of Sobieski, the deliverance of Vienna, seem rather the fiction of romance than the records of real achievement. No victory so glorious as that of

Kotzim had been gained by Christendom over the Saracens since the triumphs of Richard on the field of Ascalon : and the tide of Mahommedan conquest would have rolled resistlessly over the plains of Germany, even in the reign of Louis XIV., if it had not been arrested by the Polish hero under the walls of Vienna. Napoleon said it was the peculiar quality of the Polanders to form soldiers more rapidly than any other people. And their exploits in the Italian and Spanish campaigns justified the high eulogium and avowed partiality of that great commander. No swords cut deeper than theirs into the Russian ranks during the campaign of 1812, and alone, amidst universal defection, they maintained their faith inviolate after the rout of Leipsic. But for the hesitation of the French emperor in restoring their independence, the whole strength of the kingdom would have been roused on the invasion of Russia; and had this been done, had the Polish monarchy formed the support of French ambition, the history of the world might have been changed;

"From Fate's dark book one leaf been torn,

And Flodden had been Bannockburn."

How, then, has it happened that a country of such immense extent, inhabited by so martial a people, whose strength on great occasions was equal to such achievements, should in every age have been so unfortunate, that their victories should have led to no result, and their valour so often proved inadequate to save their country from dismemberment. The plaintive motto, Quomodo lapsus! Quid feci?-may with still more justice be applied to the fortunes of Poland than the fall of the Courtenays. "Always combating," says Salvandy, "frequently victorious, they never gained an accession of territory, and were generally glad to terminate a glorious contest by a cession of the ancient provinces of the republic."

Superficial observers will answer, that it was the elective form of government; their unfortunate situation in the midst of military powers, and the absence of any chain of mountains to form the refuge of unfortunate patriotism. But a closer examination will demonstrate that these causes were not sufficient to explain the phenomenon; and that the series of disasters which have so long overwhelmed the

VOL. III.

R

monarchy, have arisen from a more permanent and lasting cause than either their physical situation or their elective. government.

The Polish crown has not always been elective. For two hundred and twenty years they were governed by the race of the Jagellons with as much regularity as England by the Plantagenets; and yet, during that dynasty, the losses of the republic were fully as great as in the subsequent periods. Prussia is as flat, and incomparably more sterile, than Poland, and, with not a third of the territory, it is equally exposed to the ambition of its neighbours: yet Prussia, so far from being the subject of partition, has steadily increased in territory and population. The fields of Poland, as rich and fertile as those of Flanders, seem the prey of every invader, while the patriotism of the Flemings has studded their plains with defensive fortresses which have secured their independence, notwithstanding the vicinity of the most ambitious and powerful monarchy in Europe. The real cause of the never-ending disasters of Poland is to be found. in the democratic equality which, from the remotest ages, has prevailed in the country. The elective form of government was the consequence of this principle in their constitution, which has descended to them from Scythian freedom, and has entailed upon the state disasters worse than the whirlwind of Scythian invasion.

"It is a mistake," says Salvandy, "to suppose that the representative form of government was found in the woods of Germany. What was found in the woods was Polish equality, which has descended unimpaired in all the parts of that vast monarchy to the present times.* It was not to our Scythian ancestors, but the early councils of the Christian church, that we are indebted for the first example of representative assemblies." In these words of great and philosophic importance is to be found the real origin of the disasters of Poland.

The principle of government, from the earliest times in Poland, was, that every freeman had an equal right to the administration of public affairs, and that he was entitled to exercise this right, not by representation, but in person. The result of this was, that the whole freemen of the country

* SALVANDY, vol. i. Tableau Historique.

constituted the real government; and the diets were attended by 100,000 horsemen, the great majority of whom were, of course, ignorant and in necessitous circumstances, while all were penetrated with an equal sense of their importance as members of the Polish state. The convocation of these tumultuous assemblies was almost invariably the signal for murder and disorder. Thirty or forty thousand lackeys, in the service of the nobles, but still possessing the rights of freemen, followed their masters to the place of meeting, and were ever ready to support their ambition by military violence; while the unfortunate natives, eaten up by such an enormous assemblage of armed men, regarded the meeting of the citizens in the same light as the inhabitants of the Grecian city did the invasion of Xerxes, when they returned thanks to the gods that he had not dined in their neighbourhood, or every living creature would have perished.

So far did the Poles carry this equality among all the free citizens, that by an original and fundamental law, called the Liberum Veto, any one member of the diet, by simply interposing his negative, could stop the election of the sovereign, or any other measure the most essential to the public welfare. Of course, in so immense a multitude, some are always to be found factious or venal enough to exercise this dangerous power, either from individual perversity, the influence of external corruption, or internal ambition; and hence the numerous occasions on which diets, assembled for the most important purposes, were broken up without having come to any determination, and the Republic left a prey to anarchy, at the time when it stood most in need of the unanimous support of its members. It is a striking proof how easily men are deluded by the phantom of general equality, when it is recollected that this ruinous privilege has not only, in every age, been clung to as the Magna Charta of Poland, but that the native historians, recounting distant events, speak of any infringement upon it as the most fatal measure to the liberties and welfare of the country.

All human institutions, however, must be subject to some check, which renders it practicable to get through business on urgent occasions, in spite of individual opposition. The Poles held it utterly at variance with every principle of freedom to bind any freeman by a law to which he had not