THE PARTITIONS OF POLAND.* TILL last year the Partitions of
Poland seemed ancient history. They are not, indeed, further removed from us than the French Revolution ; yet while that is constantly in our minds as the seed-plot and starting-point of so much that is actually with us, the Partitions of Poland do but recall the memory of a great political crime. Since the 15th of last August, however, Poland has come to have a fresh interest. The Proclamation of the Grand Duke Nicholas has given new hopes to a nation which throughout a long series of misfortunes—some brought on by its own errors, and more by the wrongful ambitions of its neigh- hours—has never lost its sense of unity or its passionate longing for a lost independence. The Powers among which its territory has been divided for a hundred and twenty years have left no means untried, occasionally to conciliate, far more often to extinguish, the recollections of Polish greatness or the hopes of a Polish resurrection. Lord Eversloy has thought the changed prospects which are opening to Poland a good occasion for giving a popular account of the circumstances in which it disappeared from the map of Europe and its conditions under foreign rule. The story is a strange combination of deserved and undeserved ill-fortune. Poland, before the Partitions, had probably the most impossible Con- stitution of which there is any record. Alike as a. monarchy and as an oligarchy it showed the worst side of each form of government. With a King elected by the Diet, having no voice in the appointment of the great officers of State, and usually forced, as a condition of being chosen, to consent to some further reduction in his nominal powers, and a Diet in which only the nobles were represented and the action of which could be stopped by one negative vote, Poland seemed expressly created to be the victim of foreign aggression. The temptation thus set up was not likely to be neglected when on one frontier her next neighbour was Catherine IL and on another Frederick the Great. The first Partition was effected chiefly by bribery. In 1773 the Diet was given the choice between consenting to partial dismemberment and being totally dismembered by force. For all but fivo months the pro- posals of Prussia, Russia, and Austria were hotly debated, the Liberum Veto being suspended. But a common fund raised by the three Powers had been well laid out, and on August 5th the Treaty they offered was accepted by the Diet. Voltaire wrote to Frederick : "It is your destiny always to astonish the world. I know not where you will stop." But Frederick preferred to lay the responsibility on Russia. The second Partition was begun by a secret Treaty between Prussia and Russia, which provided that the Treaty "was to be kept secret until Prussia was put into actual possession of the district to be ceded to her," and forty thousand Prussian troops immediately crossed the frontier. Austria naturally resented this transaction, and the Emperor Francis at once demanded " an absolute equality of acquisition," though it " was with regret" that he had consented to seek this equality at the cost of Poland rather than of France. The form of obtaining the consent of the Diet was again gone through. But this time the Russian Ambassador at Warsaw felt himself strong enough to arrest and send to Siberia the seven principal leaders of the Opposition. In the end the Treaty was accepted " in dead silence."
The share of England in these events consisted of a strong protest in January, 1793, which was maintained in words but withdrawn in effect just three weeks later. On January 13th Grenville told the Austrian and Prussian Ambassadors that George III. " would never be a party to any concert or plan one part of which was the giving of com- pensation for the expenses of the war from a neutral and unoffending nation." On February 5th he again wrote to our Ambassador at Berlin that, "though his Majesty never can consider it [the second Partition] but with disapprobation and regret, he has no intent to oppose its execution." The only English opponent of the Partition was Charles Fox—so great and so inevitable had been the change in English feeling caused by the opening of the navigation of the Schelde by the French Revolutionary Government. From that moment the one object of English foreign policy was the defeat of French designs in Europe.
* The Partitions of Poland. 13y Lord Evorsloy. London: T. Fisher Uuwin [7s. oa. not.] In an interesting final chapter Lord Eversley describes the condition of Poland under its three masters. The good intentions of the Emperor Alexander I. were neutral- ized by his brother Constantine, to whom the carrying out of them was entrusted, and all trace of them dis- appeared during the reign of Nicholas I. Under Alexander IL important concessions were again promised, and but for the Polish insurrection in 1863—" a hopeless movement from the very first "—the promise would probably have been kept. After the suppression of the rebellion the use of the Polish language was forbidden, and the Russian judicial system was introduced. Since the accession of the present Emperor the situation has improved. The Polish language is permitted in churches and schools, and the Bale of land to any non-Russian purchaser is no longer forbidden. The absorption into Russia, with the consequent freedom of trade between the two countries, has led to a great increase in the national prosperity of Russian Poland. Her manufacturers " have had the benefit of an open market to a country of one hundred and sixty millions of people," while the condition of the peasantry has been improved by the change from a condition of serfdom to one of ownership. The record of Austria as regards her Polish subjects has since 1866 been a far better one. Galicia enjoys a very full measure of autonomy. A Diet has been formed in which the Polish and Ruthenian languages are used, and Polish and Ruthenian Deputies have seats in the Reicherath. "It is the only county inhabited by Poles in which they are permitted to express themselves freely, in speech and writing, in their own language, where no attempt is made to prevent their free development, and where they can celebrate events connected with the past history of Poland." Austria has found the benefit of this policy in the present war. As might be expected, it is in Prussia that the Poles have for the last thirty years had the worst treatment. In 1885 all Poles of Russian origin were expelled from Prussia. In 1886 a Commission was appointed to purchase the estates of Polish owners and divide them into small holdings to be farmed by German peasants. In 1907 Prince Billow continued Bismarck's policy by giving to the same Com- mission powers of compulsory purchase of the land of Polish owners at prices fixed by the authorities. The use of the Polish language is also forbidden in the Law Courts and in elementary schools. . As, in spite of these measures, the proportion of land held by Polish owners has increased owing to the skill with which the purpose of these laws has been defeated, Prussian methods seem to have had precisely the results that might have been looked for when applied to a race of much greater intellectual quickness.
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