particular house to acquire it in the honest way of marriage. This was
particularly annoying to its immediate neighbours, Prussia, Russia, and
Austria, all of whom had grown into great powers while Poland, torn by
internal dissension, sank lower and lower in the political scale. It is
significant that the earliest suggestion of partition came from Frederick
the Great of Prussia, who was obliged to take Russia and Austria into his
counsels, as he knew that they would never allow him to annex the whole
country himself. Indeed, from first to last, the story of the Polish
partitions is a good example of Prussian _Realpolitik_. At length, after
much hesitation on the part of Russia and Austria, the Powers agreed among
themselves in 1772 to what is known as the First Partition, whereby the
three monarchs enriched their respective territories by peeling, as it
were, the unfortunate republic on all its frontiers. Perhaps the most
remarkable fact about the whole disgraceful concern is that it did not
appear in the least disgraceful, either morally or politically, to the
public opinion of the age. Meanwhile Poland by a heroic effort converted
herself in self-defence into a hereditary constitutional monarchy on the
model of England. Prussia, playing the part of Judas, pretended to welcome
these reforms at first and lent the Poles its encouragement; but when
Russia took up arms on behalf of the Polish reactionary party, and the
country turned to Prussia to aid it in defending the constitution, the
treacherous Frederick William not only declined to do so, but began to
send his troops to occupy Polish territory. The upshot was the further
dismemberment of Poland known as the Second Partition (1793). "No sophistry
in the world," writes Mr. Nisbet Bain, "can extenuate the villainy of the
Second Partition. The theft of territory is its least offensive feature. It
is the forcible suppression of a national movement of reform, the hurling
back into the abyss of anarchy and corruption of a people who, by
incredible efforts and sacrifices, had struggled back to liberty and order,
which makes this great political crime so wholly infamous. Yet here again