II. 1794-1795}

CONVENTION WITH SWEDEN AND DENMARK.

Sweden and Denmark still persevered in their determination to preserve
a strict neutrality in this eventful contest. A convention was concluded
between them on the 27th of March, by which they agreed to protect
the freedom of commerce on the Baltic, on the principles of the avowed
neutrality of 1780. Each were to equip a fleet of sixteen ships of the
line for that service; and by the tenth article the Baltic was declared
to be a neutral sea, absolutely inaccessible to the armed vessels of the
belligerent powers.

THE STATE OF POLAND.

During this year the fate of Poland was sealed. The Czarina having
demanded that its army should be reduced to 16,000 men, the Poles
resolved to resist her will, and to try once more the fate of arms. The
celebrated Kosciusko was placed at their head; but their struggle was to
no purpose; Kosciusko was defeated by the Russians, wounded, and taken
prisoner. On the refusal of the king to give up Warsaw, the capital, it
was stormed by Suwarrow, who brutally gave orders to allow no quarter.
Poland was now partitioned between the plunderers--Russia, Austria, and
Prussia--and ceased to be a kingdom; the patriots being proscribed,
their property confiscated, and Stanislaus compelled to live in Russia,
where he ended his days. "Poland fell," says an eminent writer, "the
victim of her own dissensions; of the chimera of equality insanely
pursued, and the rigour of aristocracy unceasingly maintained; of
extravagant jealousy of every superior, and merciless oppression of
every inferior, rank. The eldest born of the European family was the
first to perish, because she had thwarted all the ends of social union;
because she had united the turbulence of democratic to the exclusiveness
of aristocratical societies; because she had the vacillation of a
republic without its energy, and the oppression of a monarchy without
its stability. Such a system neither could nor ought to be maintained;
the internal feuds of Poland were more fatal to human happiness than the
despotism of Russia; and the growth of improvement among its people was
as slow as among the ryots of Hindostan." These are just remarks; but
the causes of Poland's overthrow do not extenuate the guilt of the
spoliators: the dismemberment of the country is a foul blot upon the
historic page of Russia, Austria, and Prussia--a blot which can never be
wiped out.

MEETING OF PAR