therefore, not more but less guilty of the present dismembered
state of Poland than her Western neighbours, among whom we must not forget
ourselves;[2] and she is to-day only attempting to carry out the promise
which she made, but was not allowed to fulfill, a century ago. Disappointed
as he was, Alexander I. made the best of a bad job by granting a liberal
constitution to that part of Poland which the Congress assigned to
Russia. Indeed he did everything possible, short of a grant of absolute
independence, which at that time would have been absurd, to conciliate
public opinion in the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw. Unfortunately the experiment
proved a complete failure, largely owing to the factious and self-seeking
Polish nobility who have always been the worst enemy of their country.
Alexander after a time lost patience, and in 1820 he felt compelled to
withdraw some of the liberties which he had conferred in 1815. After this
the breach between the Russian Government and the Polish people began to
widen, partly owing to stupid and clumsy actions on the side of Russia,
partly to the incurable lack of political common-sense on the side of the
upper classes in Poland, partly to the fact that the country could never
be anything but restless and unsatisfied while it remained divided. The
history of Russian Poland since the time of Alexander is the history of two
great failures to throw off the Russian yoke, the failure of 1830 and of
1863. These risings were marked by heroism, disunion, and incapacity on the
one side, and by relentless repression on the other. The upshot was that
Poland was deprived of her constitutional rights one by one, until finally
she became nothing more than so many provinces of Russia itself. To some
extent, however, the failure of 1863 proved a blessing in disguise. The
rising had been almost entirely confined to the nobility; Russia therefore
turned to the peasants of Poland, released them from all obligations to
work upon the estates of the large landowners, and handed over to them at
least half the land of the country as freehold property. The result of
this measure, and of the removal of the customs barrier between the two
countries in 1877, was twofold: the power of the factious nobility was
shattered for ever, and a marvellous development of industry took place in
Poland which has united her to Russia "with chains of self-interest
likely to prove a serious obstacle to the realisation of Polish hopes of