en torn from them, who may not speak their mothers' tongue in the
land of their fathers, who are forbidden to worship in accordance with
the dictates of their conscience, whose sacred homes are desecrated by
the presence of privileged spies, who cannot sit down in peace in the
holy quiet of evening, because they know that the morrow may see them
dragged off to unknown and inaccessible dungeons, or summoned before
brutal judges without defenders, where they will find accusers, but will
be allowed to cite no witnesses; subjected to witness the horrible
anxiety endured every spring and fall by Polish fathers and mothers lest
the sons of their love should be unexpectedly seized in the night and
hurried off over the Caucasus, the Ural, or to the mouth of the Amour,
to serve in the army of the oppressor for life, or longer than home
memories in such young bosoms could be expected to last, with no
prospect of reward save such as may be reckoned in the number of
_palkis_ and _pletnis_ (whips and lashes); sons, whether rich or poor,
to be exposed to cavil, cunning, and vindictiveness, to the practices of
gambling judges and a profligate soldiery, to a venal police, to
fraudulent employes, themselves badly paid for service, but whose
extortions and abuses always meet with approval, a single complaint
against whom would expose the complainant to be sent through that
hopeless gate always open on the route to Siberia;--oh, for the sake of
common humanity, say not that men placed in such situations have, in
spite of their glorious history, no rights, no claims on human sympathy,
no cause to sacrifice life even when it has become a haunting horror!

Believe not that such complaints are inventions: the facts are known to
everybody who will look upon them. They are no slanderous stories, but
occurrences renewed with every morning, taking place under all
circumstances and with every transaction patent to the world. They were
appreciated and described in Prussia, and even in Austria verified, not
long before the last campaign. Under such circumstances, what must be
thought of the discoveries and conclusions of writers who assert that
'the Polish nation is a mere chimera'? As no individual, mighty as he
may be, can by a blasphemous word suppress the existence of the Eternal
Father, so neither passion nor love, favor nor animosity, interest nor
purpose of the most talented or ambitious, can erase at pleasure a
nationality which has a history