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126 CHARACTER OF THE POLISH CONSTITUTION. CH. XVII.

yoke; and certainly if anything could have aroused the spirit of a people not wholly subjugated, it was the unparalleled insult offered to them on that occasion. A nation of gentlemen had been, up to a recent period, ruled by a line of native princes; and when the descendants of Casimir were extinct, no less a personage than an Elector of the Empire, himself a sovereign prince, was thought worthy, even by the Court of Petersburg, to fill the throne of Poland. Yet that proud aristocracy, which could hardly tolerate a sovereign, whose ancestors had sat on the throne of the Cæsars, because he was not the object of their free choice, had now to endure the deepest humiliation. The successor of Augustus of Saxony was a discarded paramour of the Czarina, a man without birth, or talents, or virtues, raised from obscurity by means which have been, in all ages, considered infamous-the wretched Stanislaus Poniatowski. But even under this extreme provocation, the irregular patriotism of the Poles proved incapable of making that vigorous and united effort which alone could have redeemed their liberties. All other nations, in the presence of the foreign foe, have laid aside their domestic differences. But this people, with a Russian army menacing their capital, continued their conflict about questions of constitutional and municipal law; and appeared to be more solicitous about excluding Dissenters from civil privileges, than about defending their common country against foreign conquest. Nay, such was the infatuated rage of party, that one faction was willing to purchase a momentary triumph by sacrificing the independence of their country. In the midst of these divisions, Russia, of course, obtained an easy victory.

State of Europe.

The state of Europe at that time favoured the consummation of the design which had long been contemplated. With the exception of Russia herself, the great powers were ex

1772. THE PROPOSITIONS FOR PARTITIONING POLAND. 127

hausted by the long war which had recently been brought to a close. France, which had competed with the Court of Petersburg for the direction of affairs at Warsaw, and had put forward a candidate for the throne on the late vacancies, was physically unable, on this occasion, to resist the ascendancy of the Czarina. England had never interfered in the affairs of Poland, and took little or no interest in a country so far removed from the sphere of her influence. Austria, indeed, justly jealous of her ambitious neighbour, was sufficiently occupied in guarding against the encroachment of Frederick upon her own territory; while Frederick himself, already in complicity, with Catherine, engaged by treaty to support her in imposing Stanislaus on the Poles, in preventing the re-establishment of hereditary monarchy, and, above all, in keeping alive the religious dissensions, which left that unhappy people an easy prey to foreign ascendancy.

Poniatowski.

The extinction of the liberties of Poland may be dated from the compulsory election of Compulsory Poniatowski. This is not the place to election of dwell on the convulsive struggles for freedom which this generous nation underwent during eight years of agony. It has been said, that the scheme of partition was first propounded by Catherine to the Prussian monarch. Whether this be the fact or not, is merely a point of historical curiosity; there can be little doubt that the ultimate disposition of the country, of which they had virtually made conquest, had long been pondered in both those sagacious and unscrupulous minds. Neither could hope to grasp the whole of this vast dominion; but each might have a share; and if Austria could be propitiated, a partition might be effected without difficulty. The proposal was made at Vienna; and no great doubt could be entertained of its reception by the Empress Queen, who had only two years before

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SIGNING AT PETERSBURG OF

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CH. XVII.

appropriated, without a semblance of right, a portion of the territory of Poland, the small but fertile county of Zipps, adjacent to her hereditary dominions. A letter from Maria Theresa to her minister Kaunitz has been quoted, for the purpose of showing her abhorrence of the scheme to which she became a party. But if her mind had really been sensible of the enormous iniquity about to be perpetrated, she might have refused to be party to it; especially after having assured the Polish Government of her resolution to maintain the Republic in all its rights, prerogatives, and possessions;' at least, she would have shrunk from profiting by it, however much 'great and learned men would have it so.' I am at a loss to understand why professions so contrary to actions should have more credit attributed to them in the case of the Empress Queen, than in the case of the Czarina, or of the King of Prussia. Catherine, throughout all these transactions, solemnly protested that she had adopted as an invariable maxim, never to desire any aggrandisement of her states.'* And Frederick declared, that he should constantly labour to defend the states of the Republic in their integrity.' But the professions of these sovereigns were never regarded in any other light than as ebullitions of gratuitous hypocrisy. They deceived nobody, nor was it necessary that anybody should be deceived.

signed.

In August, 1772, the Partition Treaty was exePartition Treaty cuted at Petersburg; and in the following month the demands of the alliance were communicated formally to the Government at Warsaw. The time for dissimulation had gone by; and the pretexts, therefore, under which these claims were veiled, hardly afforded a decent covering for rapacity. The Empress Queen and the King of Prussia invented or revived some fabulous preten

* See Appendix to Lord Stanhope's History of England, vol. v.

1772.

THE PARTITION TREATY.

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sions of their predecessors five hundred years before to the several portions of the territory of the Republic, which they respectively appropriated. Catherine, indeed, disdaining the vulgar pretexts of invaders, was content to urge a practical ground, which, on the surface, appeared not wholly untenable. She said that the anarchy of Poland was dangerous to neighbouring states. But if anything could aggravate the outrage, it was rendered more poignant by this cruel and insulting mockery. During her whole reign, Catherine had laboured by every art and intrigue, and when these were ineffectual, by open violence, to perpetuate those very disorders, the existence of which she now affected to make the justification of her crime. The elective monarchy, the liberum veto, the religious discords which every Pole who desired regular government sought to abolish, had been kept up by the machinations of the Czarina, as evils which could not fail to work the ruin of the Republic, and secure the triumphs of her policy.

By the scheme of spoliation which the confederated powers concluded with the solemn for- Apportionment malities of public law, each appropriated of territory. an extent of territory proportioned to his dominions. Russia acquired Livonia and other provinces covering more than 3,000 square miles. Austria had Galicia with part of Podolia and Cracow, comprising 2,500 square miles. Frederick obtained no more than 900 miles of territory, but including Pomerania and the country of the Vistula, which enabled Prussia to assume the position of a first-rate power. The armies of each potentate immediately occupied the soil of the Republic according to their allotted divisions.

Thus was accomplished, by regular compact, without any resistance on the part of the helpless victim, and with the passive assent of Europe, this act of audacious rapine. I can add nothing to, I would

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Policy of France.

CONDUCT OF THE

CH. XVII.

abate nothing from, the language of execration with which every friend of freedom, nay, every lover of truth and honesty, has loaded the Treaty of Partition. My immediate concern is to inquire whether any part of the infamy which covers the principals in this transaction can justly attach to the other powers of Europe, and more especially to England, who may have seemed to sanction it by a tacit acquiescence. France, indeed, had done her utmost to frustrate the designs of Russia; and, by instigating the Ottoman Porte to declare war against the Czarina in 1768, she had in fact created a diversion which retarded the fate of Poland for a few years. But it was hardly by regard to the balance of power, still less by sympathy with the liberties of the Republic, that the Court of Versailles was actuated in taking this course. The preponderance of Russian influence in Poland seems to have been but little considered as a question affecting the independence of other European states; France herself had, for the last two hundred years, competed with Russia for the government of Poland, and would doubtless have been restrained by no sentiment of compunction from sharing in the spoil of that country, had circumstances favoured such a design. The ruling motive of French policy at that time, was the prospect of retaliating upon England the humiliation and reverses of the late war; and it was on account of the friendly relations which subsisted between Petersburg and London, rather than from any speculations as to the balance of power, that France endeavoured to thwart the policy of Russia.

Policy of

The policy of this country was determined by similar considerations. The humiliation England. of the house of Bourbon was the single aim of British diplomacy, as it had been the sole object of the late war, which, but for domestic jealousy, would, in the general opinion, have accom

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