chambers were deprived of their just prerogatives; the national customs,
habits, and feelings were hourly insulted; the citizens were beset with
an infamous police, an deprived even of the melancholy consolation of
complaint; thus, in short, every Polish right was violated--every
article of the charter broken--and the whole efforts of an imperial
savage, at the head of a strong military force, directed to efface from
the countrymen of the Sobieskis and Kosciuszkos all the remains of the
Polish character.

"This, it must be allowed, is a picture of tyranny and misgovernment
sufficiently appalling to justify the resistance of any people, but more
especially that of a people which had long been accustomed to even a
licentious freedom, which was proud of its national honour and ancient
renown; which entertained such a veneration for its laws and usages as
to preserve for two centuries the _liberum veto_ and the rights of
elective monarchy, the source of all its calamities; and which had the
positive stipulations of its sovereign for the preservation of its
national rights. But, like most general pictures, its impression may
be diminished by its generality. We shall therefore make no apology for
introducing, on the authority of an Englishman who had been twelve years
in Poland, a few facts to give the character of precision and truth
to the outline. In the fortress of Zamosc twelve state prisoners were
found, some of whom had been incarcerated for six years without having
undergone a trial, and whose names were only known to the commander
of the castle. In the dungeons of Marienanski, in Warsaw, was found a
victim of the Russian police, who had been kept in solitary confinement
for ten years, and whose fate was entirely unknown to his friends and
relatives. Respectable inhabitants of Warsaw were often taken and
flogged before the grand duke without the formality of a trial, or the
specification of a charge. Some were even, in the same unlawful manner,