oeuvre in the Diets; on the back of these, the 30,000 Saxon troops.
But then what will the neighboring Kings say? The neighboring Kings,
with their big-mouthed manifestoes, pities for an oppressed Republic,
overwhelming forces, and invitations to 'confederate' and revolt:
without their tolerance first had, nothing can be done. That is the
external difficulty. For which too there is a remedy. Cut off sufficient
outlying slices of Poland; fling these to the neighboring Kings to
produce consent: Partition of Poland, in fact; large sections of its
Territory sliced away: that will be the method, thinks King August.

"Neighboring Kings, Kaiser, Prussia, Russia, to them it is not grievous
that Poland should remain in perennial anarchy, in perennial impotence;
the reverse rather: a dead horse, or a dying, in the next stall,--he
at least will not kick upon us, think the neighboring Kings. And
yet,--under another similitude,--you do not like your next-door neighbor
to be always on the point of catching fire; smoke issuing, thicker or
thinner, through the slates of his roof, as a perennial phenomenon?
August will conciliate the neighboring Kings. Russia, big-cheeked Anne
Czarina there, shall have not only Courland peaceably henceforth, but
the Ukraine, Lithuania, and other large outlying slices; that surely
will conciliate Russia. To Austria, on its Hungarian border, let us
give the Country of Zips;--nay there are other sops we have for Austria.
Pragmatic Sanction, hitherto refused as contrary to plain rights of
ours,--that, if conceded to a spectre-hunting Kaiser? To Friedrich
Wilhelm we could give West-Preussen; West-Preussen torn away three
hundred years ago, and leaving a hiatus in the very continuity of
Friedrich Wilhelm: would not that conciliate him? Of all enemies or
friends, Friedrich Wilhelm, close at hand with 80,000 men capable of
fighting at a week's, notice, is by far the most important.

"These are August's plans: West-Preussen for the nearest Neighbor; Zips
for Austria; Ukraine, Lithuania, and appendages for the Russian Czarina:
handsome Sections to be sliced off, and flung to good neighbors; as it
were, all the outlying limbs and wings of the Polish Territory sliced
off; compact body to remain, and become, by means of August and Saxon
troops, a Kingdom with government, not an imaginary Republic without
government any longer. In fact, it was the 'Partition of Poland,' such
as took effect forty years after, and has