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Leader (1850-1860), 6th December 1851, Edition Town of 2, Page 1153, Untitled Article

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      11 the accounts come through the Government , and % re theref ore , extremely doubtful . And just yesterday morning as we were writing the last words before going to press , the Morning Chronicle published the following : — [ By Submarine Telegraph . ] ( From our own Correspondent . ) Paris , Thursday Evening , half-past Six . —Fighting is going on in the streets of Paris , and will probably not end to-night . It is said that General Castellane , at Lyons , and General Neumayer , at Lille , hare declared against the Government . But this is denied by the Government . Strasbourg and Rheims are also said to have risen . M . Carlier has heen sent as Commissary to Lyons . Great doubts

      are entertained of the fidelity of General Magnan . Despatches half an hour later state that the barricades were carried ; but they also state that nothing certain could be known , except that a blooody struggle had been fought in the streets .

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      PRO CLAMATION OF THE REFUGEES IN LONDON . The following proclamation has been sent to Paris by the French refugees whose names are subscribed to it : — _ „ To the Peopxe . The Refugees in London , whose Names are Subscribed : — Will you be debased ? Will you be enslaved ? "Will you become henceforth an object of eternal contempt and ridicule to the oppressed Peoples who awaited their deliverance at your hands ? Louis Bonaparte has just crowded into a few hours more crimes than it would have been thought possible to include in the life of man .

      Like a thief , he has seized upon the liberties of his country "by a nocturnal surprise . A vulgar artifioe , which certain people have been rash enough , to call courage . He has audaciously trifled with the sanctity of the domestic hearth . By the aid of his swaggering soldiery and Police he has silenced every voice in Paris except his own . At one blow he has suppressed all the journals , and has cast forth into the streets of Paris , without bread , those of your brethren whom the press supported . He has outraged , stricken down , and trampled under foot the national representation , not only in the persons

      of your enemies , but in that of Greppo , the energetic and loyal representative of the workmen of Lyons ; in that of Nadaud , the mason , who has so often and . so nobly defended your interests at the tribune . Do you want to have a Master ? and 'do you wish that that Master should be Louis Bonaparte ? You have seen the air with which he traversed the streets of Paris , hedged in by soldiers and covered by cannon , and causing himself to be borne in triumph by his staff ; adding to the crime of high treason the . insolence of a conqueror , and treating France as a conquered country—he , whose military annals can boast of nothing except the opprobrium of the Roman expedition !

      That the members of the majority are expiating the ill which they have done ; that the constitution which they have violated in you , is violated in them ; that they are undergoing the chastisement through that universal suffrage which they destroyed ; that they who have made a portion of France pass under the yoke , in the stale of siege , now feel upon themselves the full weight of the state of siege ; that they who have sanctioned the transportation of our brethren , en maBse , and without judgment , now find force where they Bought justice—is a lesson not more hard than merited . It is the penalty of retribution which is inflicted on them , and it is not for us to complain . But what it concerns us to understand now is , whether you are in the mood for a change of tyrants ? For does this crime belong to that Assembly of which he was the inspirer and accomplice ? and

      Was it not he that , by his Ministers , proposed passed that odious law of May , against which he now rises [ up , because the candidature of Joinville has made him afraid ? Is not he , still worse than the Assembly , charged with the responsibility of having drowned the Italian Republic in the blood of the Romans , mingled with that of the French soldiers ? Among bo many Bhameful and liberticide measures , let one be mentioned , a single one , which did not exhibit LouiB Bonaparte acting in concert with the Assembly . As soon as his ambition was threatened by the Assembly , he became the enemy of that body . But forget not that ho has been its accomplice , so long as it acted to oppress you . lie now comes forward to tell you that the People is Sovereign ; and at the same time he dares to demand ten years of power— -that is , the abdication of that sovereignty for ton years .

      . . „ . ,. Ho sets himself up as the man of the Republic—of that Itepublio which is the Government of equality , and at the name time he proposes the establishment of a Senatethat is , an Assembly of Dukes , Counts , Barons , und MarquiaeH . Come , let us hasten , debased and clownish as wo aro , —let us hasten , in virtue of our Sovereignty , ° nco more to inatal an aristocracy , after bo many battles fought and so much blood shed to put down that ariatocracy for ever ! It is the man of the Republic that invites us ! He boasts of restoring to you universal suffrage ; but ° n condition that it be worked for his private advuntuge « " » d not for youra ; Bince he is going , for ten years , to be your Master . " No scrutiny of the liBt , " ho says . Do you . quite understand what that m » un » ? It moans that the

      cleotions are to be made by registers lodged in the office of the Mayor . The great swindling manoeuvre which has been practised upon France once in her history , is to be renewed . Will you permit , precisely when it is pretended to restore your right , that it shall be filched from you ? Moreover , to exercise the right of the suffrage you must be free . Let him begin , then , by restoring free speech to the journals ; let the doors be flung wide open to popular meetings ; let every man speak his mind and learn that of others . Why those bayonets ? Why , those cannon ? To restore universal suffrage combined with

      the state of siege , is to add mockery to falsehood . To the People proclaimed sovereign it is the mantle of slavery which is thrown over your shoulders ; even as the barbarian chief , in the time of the Lower Empire , threw the purple over the Roman Emperors in placing them among bis camp followers . Do you wish to be enslaved ? Do you wish to be debased ? Such is the cry wrung from us by an indignation impossible to restrain . We , who in our exile can at least speak , do speak . But we owe more than speech to the Republic—our blood belongs to it . We know it , and shall not forget it . Bernard ( le Clubiste ) . Louis Blanc . Landolphe . Lyonne . Lemard . Robillart Suireau . Percy . Lyaz Boncoeur . Le Capitaine Hemont . Cadet . Meteyer . Colin . Shanly . Paget Lupicin . Baron . Mercier . Herzog . Cachet . Philippe . Pathey . Boura . Soubit . Rotillon . Maugenet . Languedoc . Florentin . Rousseau . Frossard . Bauer . Auroy . Daranchi . Mkfoon . Bartholomew Charles . December 3 , 1851 .

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      CONTINENTAL NOTES . "We find in the organ of the Polish Democratic Society , the Demokrata , the following extract from a letter , written in a very severe and indignant tone , by a correspondent who was an eye-witness of the reception of the Boy-Nero in Galicia . It corroborates , we regret to find , ' to a certain degree , the statements of the Allgemeine Zeitung , mentioned in a recent number ( p . 1102 ) : — <* Foreign Governments ( writes a Polish friend ) keep in bondage the subdued nations by extirpating from their breasts the virtues of good citizens , by effacing their manly self-respect ; their astuteness

      teaches that by this kind of moral paralysis , better than by violence and by the force of bayonets they secure a servile submission . The greater the corruption the weaker the faith in virtue . The more a foreign potentate succeeds in diffusing the venom , of corruption , and in shaking the faith of the subjugated people in virtue and self-respect , the more resistless becomes his domination . It is not by the greater or lesser material resources of the country , or by the value of its sons , that you can judge of the vitality and of the future of a nation ; but by the greater or lesser corruption , by the preservation or loss of its national dignity and its civic virtues .

      " The time of emancipation of oppressed and subjugated nations can almost to the day , nay to the hour , be predicted . The more a nation is gangrened by corruption the more protracted is its slavery , and the later strikes the hour of its resurrection . ' We are loth to confess that in Galicia , at least a certain political atony prevails , a kind of torpor having its source both in the spread of corruption by the oppressors , and in a deep-seated decay of national organization . " The Emperor of Austria , struck by the general

      panic of his fellow-despots , and being anxious to personally convince himself on which of the Peoples under his sway he might rely for a more lively attachment to his throne , and for a more ready acquiescence in oppression , visited . Italy . Such a cruel derision , flaunted by an alien monarch in the face of an unfortunate and subjugated People , was chastined by silent contempt ; and all the endeavours of parasites were of no avail to break the passive but terrible manifestation of the national self-consciousness , and of the detestation of a foreign thraldom . 44

      Regardless of their political position , nobles and peasants , rich and poor ; in short , every Italian soul declared , by an eloquent silence , that to-day or to-morrow he might rend his chains , that he spurned the favours of an alien , strong in his faith in his own rights ; that from such a quarter he infinitely preferred disfavour as the earnest of a better future . " And , indeed , the Austrian felt himself vanquished by the power of the national will . The minions of the court dared not leave their master in such a state of discouragement , they confidently pointed out to him Galicia , whose fealty and slavish attachment was to blot out the humiliation he had suffered in Italy . " And they were not mistaken in their infernal calculations—their reliance on the debasement of the country was verified .

      " Throughout Gulicia , in every direction , the name profuae servility was exhibited , everywhere decorations that debased the wearer , udorning the necks of the abused , were perceivuble ; and the Polish nobilitywhose virtue , indigenous hatred of foreign oppressors , was undisputed—were the foremost in those rjotB of abasement and nutional disgrace . " Princes and countH vied in the display of their degradution . Old and young did all they could to render the sojourn of the foreign opprousor amongst them us ngreeuble as possible . A Htate ball , public performances , nothing wan neglected ; and certain luuies reckoned those days among the happiest of their life . No : they do not deserve the name of Polish women ! The Polish

      women alwaytt , oven in days of the greatest sorrow and despuir , set an example of unbending love of country and contempt for foreign yoke . The lower oIuhsch in Galiciu , especially the peasants , kept in ignorance and

      darkness , drew the Emperor ' s carnage , and bore in triumph the worshipped idol of authority ! But how can we blame them ? Can we complain of their abasement , when the nobles show the same idolatrous worship , when by their actions they deny their national dignity ? With the loss of the Polish independence , the people of the villages lost the living history of their native country ; for , as to the written history it was inaccessible to them ; this treasure was , miser like , kept from them by the nobles , without any advantage to themselves and to the people . From whence , then , were the latter to draw the love of their nationality ? Traditionally the peasants preserved no other recollection but that of their past social misery and oppression . Such to them was all the

      history of the past ! It is , therefore , not to the people , but to the majority of the Galician nobles that belongs a place in the pillory of universal contempt . It is not of the people at large , but of the nobility that we must despair ; it is not the ignorant people , deprived of all sources of enlightenment , but the leading Galician nobles who have entered , with the fullest knowledge , into a compact with the invaders , and have forsaken the cause of liberty and national independence . " Are we , then , to despair on that condemned soil of finding one true Pole ? Oh no I—there are many , and our hearty thanks are due to their abstention from that inglorious humiliation !

      " In exchange for so much vileness , for such an abasement of the nation , the oppressor will distribute orders and titles amongst you , rejoice ye in them , show yourselves in the saloons of the governor , boast of your ignominy and degradation ; but mind , the day of retribution is at hand !" Now , the fact of the people of Galicia being , to a great extent , Austrianized is not to be wondered at , if we bear in mind that this part of Poland has been ever since 1772 , uninterruptedly in the hands of the Austrian Government , and that that Government had a mighty lever at their disposal for denationalizing the superstitious peasants of Galicia , namely , that of being of the same religion ( Catholic ) , and having

      at their command legions of priests , and especially Jesuits , for influencing the peasants . But on the authority of men who are thoroughly acquainted with the moral condition of the provinces groaning under the yoke of Russia and Prussia , we are authorized to give a flat denial to the assertion of the Allgemeine Zeitung , that in them the people are Russianized or Prussianized , the reverse being the case . The position of the two latter parts of partitioned Poland is altogether different . In the first place , they were only since 1796 under the sway of the Russian and Prussian Governments , and moreover not uninterruptedly so , for the so-called Kingdom of Poland

      enjoyed from 1806 up to 1830 , a national selfgovernment ; and the Duchy of Posen , from . 1806 to to 1815 . Thus , whilst Galicia has uninterruptedly borne the thraldom of Austria for seventy-nine years ( almost a century ) , Russia—deducting twenty-four years of a national existence ( from 1806 to 1830)—has only done so for thirty-one years , and Prussia , deducting the interruption of nine years , for fortysix . Besides , these two powers ( Russia and Prussia ) have not the same religious means to dispose of as has Austria ; the first is Schismatic , the other

      Lutheran ; whilst the Polish populations are chiefly , and the peasants entirety ) Catholic . Up to this moment the Polish peasantry in the so-called Kingdom of Poland , and in the Grand Duchy of Posen , most cordially hate the very name of a Muscovite or German . It is enough to tell him that he is to take a part in a coming war against the Muscovites or the Germans ( as he calls the Prussians ) , and he , without any hesitation , leaves his domestic hearth and family , grasps his scythe , and rushes to the battle-field with enthusiasm .

      There is , moreover , one circumstance which ought to be taken into consideration , viz ., that the Polish peasants of Galicia are insidiously oppressed by the Government , and through the nobles ; hence a clabshatred which does not exist in Russia , or Prussia , or Poland . Some days ago the Times quoted , vnthout any comment t from the Austrian Correspondence ( Oestreihishc Correspondenz ) , an organ of the Imperial Government , the following assertion : — "Austria has always respected existing treaties and the riuhts of independent States . "

      JLhis is one ot the most barefaced falsehoods ever thrown into the face of the world , even by the Chunceries of Vienna ; for is it not notorious , that of all the kings of the Austrian dynasty , who from 16 (> 1 up to 1851 ( 290 years ) have reigned in Hungary , — about twenty in number—not one but has violated the treaties which recognized the independence of that state , as for instance , that of 1 ()<)(> witli JJocskfiy , of 1 (> ' 22 with Bethleu , and that of KM / 3 with George ltukoczy ; that they have ever trampled upon the Hungarian free constitution , und have every one of them ( Matthew—l ( iO 8-Hil !> , perhaps excepted , who , to a certain extent at least , maintained the llungaiinii Constitution ) committed perjury by breaking the oath they had Hfforn to that constitution .

      Did not thin mime Austria , which " has always respected existing treaties , " take poHsession ( only five years since ) of Cracow and its surrounding territory , which , according to the provisions ot tlie existing troaty of Vienna , waa to bo an independent

      Untitled Article

      Dec . 6 , 1851 . ] JEf ) * ILttibeX . 1153

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 6, 1851, page 1153, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1912/page/5/