highest court of appeal, so as to secure them the enjoyment of good salaries for the rest of their lives at the expense of the Polish, and therefore to the great relief of the Imperial treasury.

In all important questions, whether civil or criminal, brought for decision before this tribunal, a canvas is resorted to; and, as a natural consequence, whenever the Government or even a high government official is interested, the judgment always is certain, whatever may be the justice of the

case.

Property is also rendered uncertain by the imposition of arbitrary taxes, and by the system of government interference in all the private concerns of the citizens. For instance, a very large question, involving the fate of all the large landed proprietors, as also that of all the peasants, has lately been under consideration-that of abolishing the soccage tenures, under which the great mass of the peasants farm their holdings. The Emperor Nicolas gave these tenures by a stroke of his pen the character of perpetual holdings, and the Government now wish to abolish or commute the dues by a somewhat similar process, without consulting either of the parties interested.

Again, the city of Warsaw has been taxed several times for the same service. After the revolution of 1831, the Emperor decreed the construction of the citadel at the expense of the city; the troops were then quartered on the inhabitants, but finding this inconvenient, the Government erected barracks, and decreed that a 'quartering' tax should be levied upon the people to pay for the expense of the buildings, the name given to the tax clearly indicating its object. This decree was considered a boon in comparison with the constant annoyance derived from giving quarters in their houses to the troops. The barracks have been built, occupied, and paid for years ago, but the quartering tax continues.

Some few persons having been killed in the King's Palace during

the revolution of 1831, the Emperor Nicolas, who affected always the greatest horror of bloodshed, determined never to occupy it. He therefore gave it as a present to the city of Warsaw, thereby relieving the Imperial treasury of the expense of maintaining it. The Viceroy occupies it, the city repairs and maintains it at an annual expense sufficient to enrich several government employés, and was further called upon for years to pay the 'quartering' tax for the Viceroy, as if he were not in the occupation of a Government residence. Well may the citizens declare that a few such presents would ruin them.

A very heavy toll was imposed many years ago upon all horses or vehicles entering the city barriers, which it was expressly declared was to pay for the construction of a bridge to connect the city with the large suburb of Prague on the opposite side of the Vistula.

The inhabitants were pleased at the prospect of the bridge being constructed, as some of the chief supplies to meet their daily wants are dependent on the communication across the river, which is frequently intercepted for days, and even weeks, by running ice.

The tax has been levied for years, and would have sufficed to pay for several bridges, but last year when the bridge was commenced, no funds were forthcoming; the unhappy town was called upon to contribute from some other source for the erection of their bridge, and the toll at the barriers is continued as if it had no relation whatever to the bridge.

In the same way heavy taxes have been imposed for the supply of gas, water, and for drainage, but the town is barely lighted, has a most scanty water supply, and does not possess a single sewer.

These are cited only as showing the manner in which Government interferes with property, to the great detriment of the proprietors, but without consulting them, or giving them any control over their expenditure, or even going through the form of giving them that for which they nominally pay. The

whole system is one of plunder for the benefit of the Government employés; if this be carried on under the eye of the Viceroy in the capital, what must it be in the smaller towns and villages, where the same system is at work by men who play into each other's hands, and prevent all complaints or even inurmurs, by the power they possess of depriving by a false and secret denunciation any refractory Pole of liberty, even for life.

Another and very great cause of complaint arises from the obstacles raised by Government to prevent the education of the country. A system was elaborated during the reign of the Emperor Nicolas, and continues in operation, having for its avowed object the denationalizing of the Poles, by checking their intellectual progress, and educating them with Russian views by Russian masters.

With this view the University was abolished, the national library plundered and removed to Petersburg, and an enactment issued prohibiting any person from teaching for hire unless approved by the Government authorities. The result has been that there have since been no students of law, and when the existing 'advocates-who are all aged men, having commenced their careers before the revolution of 1831-shall have died out, there will be no professional class of men in the country conversant with its laws. The medical school has only been re-established within the last two years, and as a consequence, there is a great lack of medical and surgical practitioners throughout the country. The young men of the better classes have no good schools which they can frequent, and except in the wealthier families who can afford private tutors, the young men of the present generation have grown up with a stinted education that is painful to witness, and are driven, from want of intellectual acquirements and means of employing themselves, to frivolous and dissipating amusements which the Government seeks to provide for them by keeping a paid corps

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of ballet-dancers and players. It will surprise English readers to learn that the Imperial Government attaches so much consequence to the education of the youth by this means, that the actors and corps de ballet in Warsaw constitute the command of a LieutenantGeneral decorated with eight or nine grand cordons.

The education of the lower classes receives an equal share of attention. The village schoolmaster must receive his diploma from the Minister of the Interior, and as a Government official, therefore, becomes a spy and informer. Happy, then, the benevolent proprietor who, anxious for the welfare of his peasants, and desirous to establish a school, has a teacher sent to his village, as is frequently the case, who can scarcely read or write, and happier still if he can be debauched by money and a liberal supply of wodka (a species of cheap gin), in which case he may allow another, without complaint, to do his work for him.

To such courses as this a benevolent Polish gentleman must have recourse if he desires to improve the intellectual condition of his peasants. Can anything be more degrading? Can anything be more galling to a people than to see themselves systematically driven back in the scale of civilization, and that in close contact with the German race, who are making rapid progress, who immigrate into their country, and are gradually absorbing all trades and occupations requiring art and skill? It is from no want of ingenuity on the part of the Poles that this is the case. On the contrary, they are by nature ingenious, and not averse to work if well treated; but without liberty of person or security of property, the desire of acquisition has been checked, and a habit of indolence and carelessness generated which strikes all strangers on their first arrival in the country, and leads them to observe that the Pole is indifferent to gain, provided he can supply his absolute necessities, and the means for getting drunk upon occasion.

SS

This is the result of Russian government and education; the present move, however, shows that it has not been successful in denationalizing the people.

Their national traditions are too powerful, and the confidence of the people in their nobility too strong, to be subverted by such barbaric means as these. The hatred of the peasant against the foreigner who oppresses him is kept alive by the constantly recurring conscription for the army, which takes away the best young men in the country, tearing them from their homes, from their fathers, mothers, wives, and children-from all they hold most dear on earth-and sending them three thousand miles on foot across the treeless, shrubless steppes of Russia, and across the mighty Caucasus, to oppress in their turn tribes and people of whose names they had never heard, with the ultimate prospect after fifteen years - if they survive, which not one in fifty does-of having to take this long dreary march back again to the home of their youth; that home which has haunted the unhappy exile's dreams for years, but which they find so changed they know it not, and in which they are no longer known, but being worn out, frequently mutilated by wounds, and incapable of work, and without any pension or means of support, are too often received and supported as a religious duty, and become a heavy charge upon their impoverished relations.

The unhappy forced conscript serves his term at a nominal wage of three roubles (about nine shillings) per annum, of which he is lucky if he receive half; and at the end of his service, whatever his state whether able-bodied or disabled by loss of health or limbsis cast adrift upon society without so much as one copeck in his pocket, but with the great boon of freedom, which consists in his being free to roam, in his having therefore no legal status in any village commune, and as a consequence too frequently, with the imperious necessity imposed upon him

of robbing to supply the food essential to his existence.

The Polish peasant's antipathy to the Russian rule is also kept alive by the iniquitous system of quartering the troops on the villagers generally throughout the country, when they are not actually in camp. The Russian Government finds this an economical system as compared with building barracks; and the officers who command the troops find that they are thus enabled to economize,' as they express it, upon the provisions of their men and the forage of their horses; or in other words, they make a good round sum of money from these sources, leaving their men and horses to feed as best they can upon the inhabitants.

The writer knows a case where several Russian soldiers came by mistake to a foreign resident's house for a billet. They were refused admission; but the foreigner having spoken to them with kindness, they implored him for food to satisfy the cravings of their appetites. He, being a benevolent man, ordered them food, when the soldiers fell on more like voracious beasts than men, and kissed his hands, and thanked him for such a meal, they themselves said, as they had never tasted in their lives. The meal was a sufficiency of plain coarse bread and meat.

Such facts as these speak for themselves; but the demoralization of the country is encouraged by the premiums secured in large fortunes by the corrupt practices of Government officials. Within a few years a step was taken by the Government with a view to abolishing the distinction between Poland and Russia. Previously the Polish customs revenues were totally distinct from the Russian; one tariff was in force in the kingdom of Poland, and another in Russia, and a line of frontier subsisted between Poland and Russia; so that a foreigner entering Russia through Poland was subject to two examinations on two distinct frontiers.

The prevalent idea had been to keep the Poles in the kingdom separate from their fellow country

men in Lithuania, Podolia, and the Ukraine, and at the same time to separate both by a Chinese wall of passports and customs dues from Western Europe.

Considering that this process had accomplished its purpose, and that the sympathies of the Poles on the two sides of the frontier had been sufficiently eradicated, the Emperor Nicolas abolished the frontier between Russia and Poland, and advanced the Russian frontier to the western limit of Poland. The result has been that a whole army of Russian officials have been provided for and have made their fortunes; a greater field is opened for the corruption of the Poles; but, contrary to the expectation of the Government, the removal of the frontier having facilitated the intercommunication of the Poles, the inhabitants of the Lithuanian provinces again look to Warsaw as their capital, and their hearts are found to beat as strong as ever with patriotic throbs for the reconstruction of their Polish nationality.

The feeling of antipathy against the Russian invader is fostered also by the difference in religion. The great mass of Poles are Roman Catholic; a great number of whom are of the sect known as 'United Greeks,' especially in the Lithuanian provinces; these, being in communion with Rome, and acknowledging the Pope as their spiritual chief, form a powerful sect, between which and the orthodox Greek church-the church of the State-there is an antipathy great in proportion to the slight difference of their creeds.

The Roman Catholics have been aggrieved by suspension for years in the nomination of bishops, but the United Greeks are positively oppressed by violent efforts to make them conform to the national church.

Scenes have occurred since the accession of the present Emperor, and with his personal approbation, in which peasants have been flogged and imprisoned for refusing to communicate in the orthodox communion.'

One occurred in 1858, in the

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government of Witepsk, which is hardly to be credited in the present century and in the reign of a sovereign renowned for his good intentions.' The inhabitants of a village, Dziernowitze, formerly of the United Greek communion, and acknowledging the Pope as their spiritual chief, but nominally converted by harsh measures in the time of the Emperor Nicolas to orthodoxy, showed signs of apostasy, and actually petitioned the present Emperor for permission to return to their former religion, which in secret they had always professed. Their petition was refused; but the peasants notwithstanding apostatized, and a commissioner, M. Steherbinn, was sent to inquire into the affair, and if possible bring the people back to the true orthodox national Church.

M. Steherbinn visited the country, and drew up a report for the information of the Emperor, in which he detailed the steps he had taken, by imprisonment and otherwise, with the assistance of gendarmes, &c., but without one single ecclesiastic, to convince or convert the people, and bring them back from the error of their ways.

In his report to the Emperor, M. Steherbinn writes

Of the three most intractable apostates incarcerated by me in the prison of Witepsk, two expressed repentance. They were conducted to the confessional and holy communion by myself; God aided me in the accomplishment of this surprising work, which no one at Witepsk expected. The importance of the success is incontestible if regarded both from a religious and political point of view. The apostasy was about assuming large proportions. It already menaced the dissolution of the union of the united Greek Church with orthodoxy effected in 1839.

On this part of the report the Emperor Alexander II. wrote with his own hand, 'These prudent and truly Christian proceedings do great honour to M. Steherbiun.'

The result of this inquiry was a series of recommendations, the first of which only will be cited as illustrative of the spirit of the whole: 'In case an entire com