trol necessary for the conduct of a government, nor the justice and humanity of freeing and elevating their serfs. Although split into factions, only less violent in hostility to each other than in enmity against the Russians, they introduced no measures of reform, no enterprise of industry, no plans of general education or religious freedom. For sixteen years they persisted in a series of the most ill-concocted conspiracies, the most aimless outbreaks, the most desperate and fruitless strug gles, all resulting only in disaster and ruin even more terrible than that of 1792. The Emperor Nicholas was not a man to deal gently with such a band of freebooters, who gave ample proof that their clamors for independence sprung not from an earnest longing for the function of self-government, but merely from an uneasy desire to be freed from the checks and restraints which all real governments are obliged to enforce upon their subjects. The titular nationality of Poland was abolished, and that was done too late which ought to have been done at first, in the adoption of a vigorous policy of assimilation to bring these provinces into unity of laws and privileges with the rest of the empire. That this was done with a strong hand, and often with a terrible vindictiveness, is most true. That the madness of those demi-savages could have been repressed by any gentle processes, it is impossible to believe. That these successive insurrections were justified by any of the principles of action recognized by the laws of nations, or the principles of Christian morality, has never been shown or attempted to be proved. There was neither the deprivation of essential rights, the endurance of intolerable oppression, nor the reasonable prospect of good to be accomplished, which all good writers admit to be necessary to justify revolt against a regularly established government.

In this terribly appropriate way, the kingdom of Poland has come to its end, in the midst of bloody strife and wide-spread desolation, the natural fruits of its own frenzy. Thus winds up a millennium of turbulence and violence unmatched by any thousand years of any other people. Poland is extinct, and it has departed without being desired. There is no remembrance of the past, and no hope for the future, that should make the

world wish for its restoration. Faith, humanity, and civilization, would love to have it buried in oblivion, like Pontus, or like more ancient Assyria. But a present exigency renders the duty imperative of reviving these terrible memories, to warn statesmen and nations against involving the world in general war in a hopeless attempt to reconstruct a civilized and responsible State out of these impracticable materials. Poland, as a country, had neither a natural unity, a definite locality, nor a settled boundary. It had neither centre nor circumference. As a nation, it had neither internal cohesion, nor object of existence. Its people were serfs, too ignorant to judge, and too depressed to have a will in regard to public affairs. Its chiefs were as destitute of true patriotism as they were reckless of moral obligation. They clung to their country, because it afforded them wealth by the labor of slaves, and still more because it furnished a theatre for the indulgence of their fractious wills and their unbridled violence-not because it had been in the past, or could be in the future, a light, and a glory, and a blessing among the nations of the earth. As a kingdom it has now passed into history, along with so many other kingdoms that have risen and disappeared-with Castile and Leon, with Burgundy and Navarre, and more than it is worth our while to enumerate, showing beyond all controversy, that a kingdom, like a man, is born to live, and then to die. We weep for the death of the great and good, although we cannot wish them back among us. For the extinction of Poland, there need not be even the passing cloud of national sorrow. These things being so, it may well be wondered, how the civilized world has come to look with so peculiar a sympathy upon "Bleeding Poland," and to feel so intense an interest in these reckless, hopeless, insane, and criminal enterprises for its resuscitation from the death to which it has been consigned by its crimes. It is not a sufficient answer to say that it was because the whole world knew no better. All these fearful facts of history are on record, accessible to all, and yet the judgment formed has ignored their existence. One reason, in this country, has been the public gratitude for the gallantry of Pulaski and his compatriots in our own revolution. A still

more influential cause is in the fact that we have been so much accustomed to take our impressions in regard to affairs on the continent of Europe entirely from English representations. Then it should be remembered that the Poles of history, and poetry, and romance, were exclusively an aristocracy, and all literature is suffused with a special interest in the sufferings of fallen aristocracies. Only Christianity is absorbed with the labors of fishermen and cordwainers, and the martyrdom of peasants and women. England has held on to Poland, because it furnished excitement without calling for action, and moved pity without the obligation of interference, and because it kept alive a national prejudice against Russia, which often serves a very convenient purpose in politics and diplomacy. France has retained her "Polish Committee" from generation to generation, for the facility it afforded of producing a sensation, and threatening an explosion in the heart of Europe, and because Poland was looked upon with special interest by the Church of Rome. And the Church of Rome has seen the advantage of having thus a point of living contact and antagonism with the Greek Church. Consider all this influence as combined and managed by the skill of the Jesuits, and we have elements which go far towards the solution of the problem, why so great interest has been felt in Poland.

So far as we have observed, the champions of Polish resuscitation have alleged only one consideration which bears even the semblance of a general principle, applicable to the affairs of nations, and fitted to commend the cause of the insurgents to public respect and approbation. It is what, in modern phraseology, goes by the name of nationality. It is said that Poland is a nationality, that a nationality has the right to perpetuate its existence, that the right of a nationality to vindicate to itself the prerogative of self-government is inalienable, that neither conquest, nor submission, nor the lapse of time deprives a nationality of the right of reasserting its existence, at whatever perils or sacrifices to itself or others, and with or without a reasonable prospect of success. If we now inquire what constitutes this "nationality," we shall find a great want of clearness and consistency in the definitions presented. If

nationality means, as the insurgent Poles claim, the resuscitation of the ancient kingdom with the ancient boundaries, then the question opens before us, at what period shall we stereotype the boundaries of a kingdom whose limits were changed in every century of its existence. At one time it reached within one hundred and fifty miles of Moscow, and at another included that capital. At one time it included Moldavia. They claim Lithuania as an integral part of Poland, but it only became so in 1569. A hundred years later, Prussia was finally ceded from Poland to Brandenburg. Another century still brings us to the first formal partition. Where shall we draw the line? For what good end is the civilized world bound to turn back the shadow on the dial plate of time? The provin ces, which fell to Prussia in the first division, are now German and Protestant, rather than Polish and Papal, and would be ruined by coming again under the anarchy and turbulence of the ancient Polish rule. Those which fell to Russia are largely Russian in their population, with a considerable mixture of German Protestants and Catholics. It is essential to the claim of a people for independence that they should have a country, defined or definable by metes and bounds, which Poland has not, and never had for any considerable time.

If, again, it is claimed that Poland should of right be a kingdom again, because it has once been a kingdom, the question arises, whether there is any statute of limitations running against that right, or is it indefeasible and perennial? If the latter, we see flitting before us the ghosts of an army of dead kingdoms, whose claims, if allowed, would make strange work with the map of Europe. In Spain we should restore the kingdom of Leon, Castile, Aragon, Murcia, and several more. In Austria we should have Bohemia and Hungary; and in Italy, Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia. In France we should restore Burgundy, Lorraine, Navarre, and others; and Great Britain would restore nationality to Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man,-the latter having been purchased from its last sovereign so late as 1765. Several of these could present much fairer claims on the merits than can ever be urged on behalf of Poland.

But we find a novel significance attached to the term nationality-a modern meaning to an old word-which is now used to denote something like ethnological identity. This usage has crept into our language since the time that Dr. Goodrich revised Webster's Dictionary; for there the word is defined-" National character; also, the quality of being national, or strongly attached to one's nation." This ethnological application is altogether a forced meaning, and if allowed will introduce a strange confusion of language, and a still more deplorable confusion of political rights and interests. The usage comes to us from Germany, where it has been employed as an obscure expression of a shadowy idea. The Germans find their country divided into a large number of separate sovereignties, while the people, thanks to Luther's translation of the Bible, all read the same language. And it humiliates them that they have no German government for the German nation. And they are seeking to propagate a popular determination in favor of national unity on the ground of their being one in nationality. And they give color to their idea by attempting to extend its application to other countries. The very suggestion that Europe can be governed in this age by this principle of ethnological affinity, is too absurd for refutation. Shall we go by the nationalities that existed before the Roman conquests, or by those that prevailed after the fall of Rome? Or, shall we take the age Charlemagne, or that of Charles the Fifth, or that of Napoleon, or the Congress of Vienna, or the treaty of Villa Franca? At any rate, it will not help Poland, for Lithuania is not Polish, and if we go back to the Slavonic origin, it brings us to Panslavism at once, which we shall have to the full as soon as Russia gets hold of Croatia. If the progress of civilization is promoted by having people of a common race united under a common government, the consolidation of Poland with Russia was a great step in the right direction.

of

It would be very desirable, on very many accounts, to see a growing national unity taking place in Germany. And there are not wanting indications of such a tendency. But we believe that this theory of ethnological unity is

one of the