[The Commonwealth, No. 159, March 24, 1866] 

Sir,— Wherever the working classes have taken a part of their 
own in political movements, there, from the very beginning, their 
foreign policy was expressed in the few words— Restoration of 
Poland. This was the case with the Chartist movement so long as it 
existed;- this was the case with the French working men long 
before 1848, as well as during that memorable year, when on the 
15th of May they marched on to the National Assembly to the cry 
of “Vive la Pologne!”—Poland for ever!'°° This was the case in 
Germany, when, in 1848 and ’49, the organs of the working class * 
demanded war with Russia for the restoration of Poland.” It is 
the case even now;—with one exception—of which more anon— 
the working men of Europe unanimously proclaim the restoration 
of Poland as a part and parcel of their political programme, as the 
most comprehensive expression of their foreign policy. The 
middle-class, too, have had, and have still, “sympathies” with the 
Poles; which sympathies have not prevented them from leaving 
the Poles in the lurch in 1831, in 1846, in 1863,'° nay, have not 
even prevented them from leaving the worst enemies of Poland, 
such as Lord Palmerston, to manage matters so as to actually assist 
Russia while they talked in favour of Poland. But with the working 
classes it is different. They mean intervention, not non- 
intervention; they mean war with Russia while Russia meddles 
with Poland; and they have proved it every time the Poles rose 
against their oppressors. And recently, the International Working 
Men’s Association has given a fuller expression to this universal 

instinctive feeling of the body it claims to represent, by inscribing 
on its banner, “Resistance to Russian encroachments upon 
Europe—Restoration of Poland.” '° 

This programme of the foreign policy of the working men of 
Western and Central Europe has found a unanimous consent 
among the class to whom it was addressed, with one exception, as 
we said before. There are among the working men of France a 
small minority who belong to the school of the late 
P. J. Proudhon. This school differs in toto from the generality of 
the advanced and thinking working men; it declares them to be 
ignorant fools, and maintains, on most points, opinions quite 
contrary to theirs. This holds good in their foreign policy also. 
The Proudhonists, sitting in judgment on oppressed Poland, find 
the verdict of the Staleybridge jury, “Serves her right.” They 
admire Russia as the great land of the future, as the most 
progressive nation upon the face of the earth, at the side of which 
such a paltry country as the United States 1s not worthy of being 
named. They have charged the Council of the International 
Association with setting up the Bonapartist principle of 
nationalities, and with declaring that magnanimous Russian people 
without the pale of civilised Europe; such being a grievous sin 
against the principles of universal democracy and the fraternity of 
all nations. These are the charges.'!? Barring the democratic 
phraseology at the wind-up, they coincide, it will be seen at once, 
verbally and literally with what the extreme Tories of all countries 
have to say about Poland and Russia. Such charges are not worth 
refuting; but, as they come from a fraction of the working classes, 
be it ever so small a one, they may render it desirable to state 
again the case of Poland and Russia, and to vindicate what we may 
henceforth call the foreign policy of the united working men of 
Europe. 

But why do we always name Russia alone in connection with 
Poland? Have not two German Powers, Austria and Prussia, 
shared in the plunder? Do not they, too, hold parts of Poland in 
bondage, and, in connection with Russia, do they not work to keep 
down every national Polish movement? 

It is well known how hard Austria has struggled to keep out of 
the Polish business; how long she resisted the plans of Russia and 
Prussia for the partition. Poland was a natural ally of Austria 
against Russia. When Russia once became formidable, nothing 
could be more in the interest of Austria than to keep Poland alive 
between herself and the newly-rising Empire. It was only when 
Austria saw that Poland’s fate was settled, that with or without her, 

the other two Powers were determined to annihilate her, it was 
only then that in self-protection she went in for a share of the 
territory. But as early as 1815 she held out for the restoration of 
an independent Poland; in 1831 and in 1863 she was ready to go 
to war for that object, and give up her own share of Poland, 
provided England and France were prepared to join her. The 
same during the Crimean war. This is not said in justification of 
the general policy of the Austrian Government. Austria has shown 
often enough that to oppress a weaker nation is congenial work to 
her rulers. But in the case of Poland the instinct of self- 
preservation was stronger than the desire for new territory or the 
habits of Government. And this puts Austria out of court for the 
present. 

As to Prussia, her share of Poland is too trifling to weigh much 
in the scale. Her friend and ally, Russia, has managed to ease her 
of nine-tenths of what she got during the three partitions.''' But 
what little is left to her weighs as an incubus upon her. It has 
chained her to the triumphal car of Russia, it has been the means 
of enabling her Government, even in 1863 and ’64, to practise 
unchallenged, in Prussian-Poland, those breaches of the law, those 
infractions of individual liberty, of the right of meeting, of the 
liberty of the press, which were so soon afterwards to be applied 
to the rest of the country; it has falsified the whole middle-class 
Liberal movement which, from fear of risking the loss of a few 
square miles of land on the eastern frontier, allowed the 
Government to set all law aside with regard to the Poles. The 
working men, not only of Prussia, but of all Germany, have a 
greater interest than those of any other country in the restoration 
of Poland, and they have shown in every revolutionary movement 
that they know it. Restoration of Poland, to them, is emancipation 
of their own country from Russian vassalage. And this, we think, 
puts Prussia out of court, too. Whenever the working classes of 
Russia (if there is such a thing in that country, in the sense it is 
understood in Western Europe) form a political programme, and 
that programme contains the liberation of Poland—then, but not 
till then, Russia as a nation will be out of court too, and the 
Government of the Czar will remain alone under indictment. 

II. 
TO THE EDITOR OF THE COMMONWEALTH. 

{The Commonwealth, No. 160, March 31, 1866] 

Sir,—It is said that to claim independence for Poland is to 
acknowledge the “principle of nationalities”, and that the principle 
of nationalities is a Bonapartist invention concocted to prop up the 
Napoleonic despotism in France. Now what is this “principle of 
nationalities” ? 

By the treaties of 1815 the boundaries of the various States of 
Europe were drawn merely to suit diplomatic convenience, and 
especially to suit the convenience of the then strongest continental 
Power—Russia. No account was taken either of the wishes, the 
interests, or the national diversities of the populations. Thus, 
Poland was divided, Germany was divided, Italy was divided, not 
to speak of the many smaller nationalities inhabiting south-eastern 
Europe, and of which few people at that time knew anything. The 
consequence was that for Poland, Germany, and Italy, the very 
first step in every political movement was to attempt the 
restoration of that national unity without which national life was 
but a shadow. And when, after the suppression of the revolution- 
ary attempts in Italy and Spain, 1821-23, and again, after the 
revolution of July, 1830, in France, the extreme politicians of the 
greater part of civilised Europe came into contact with each other, 
and attempted to work out a kind of common programme, the 
liberation and unification of the oppressed and subdivided nations 
became a watchword common to all of them.'” So it was again in 
1848, when the number of oppressed nations was increased by a 
fresh one, viz., Hungary. There could, indeed, be no two opinions 
as to the right of every one of the great national subdivisions of 
Europe to dispose of itself, independently of its neighbours, in all 
internal matters, so long as it did not encroach upon the liberty of 
the others. This right was, in fact, one of the fundamental 
conditions of the internal liberty of all. How could, for instance, 
Germany aspire to liberty and unity, if at the same time she 
assisted Austria to keep Italy in bondage, either directly or by her 
vassals? Why, the total breaking-up of the Austrian monarchy is 
the very first condition of the unification of Germany! 

This right of the great national subdivisions of Europe to 
political independence, acknowledged as it was by the European 
democracy, could not but find the same acknowledgment with the 
working classes especially. It was, in fact, nothing more than to 

recognise in other large national bodies of undoubted vitality the 
same right of individual national existence which the working men 
of each separate country claimed for themselves. But this 
recognition, and the sympathy with these national aspirations, 
were restricted to the large and well-defined historical nations of 
Europe; there was Italy, Poland, Germany, Hungary. France, 
Spain, England, Scandinavia, were neither subdivided nor under 
foreign control, and therefore but indirectly interested in the 
matter; and as to Russia, she could only be mentioned as the 
detainer of an immense amount of stolen property, which would 
have to be disgorged on the day of reckoning. 

After the coup d’état of 1851, Louis Napoleon, the Emperor “by 
the grace of God and the national will”, had to find a 
democraticised and popular-sounding name for his foreign policy. 
What could be better than to inscribe upon his banners the 
“principle of nationalities”? Every nationality to be the arbiter of 
its own fate—every detached fraction of any: nationality to be 
allowed to annex itself to its great mother-country—what could be 
more liberal? Only, mark, there was not, now, any more question 
of nations, but of nationalities. . 

There is no country in Europe where there are not different 
nationalities under the same government. The Highland Gaels and 
the Welsh are undoubtedly of different nationalities to what the 
English are, although nobody will give to these remnants of 
peoples long gone by the title of nations, any more than to the 
Celtic inhabitants of Brittany in France. Moreover, no state 
boundary coincides with the natural boundary of nationality, that 
of language. There are plenty of people out of France whose 
mother tongue is French, same as there are plenty of people of 
German language out of Germany; and in all probability it will 
ever remain so. It is a natural consequence of the confused and 
slow-working historical development through which Europe has 
passed during the last thousand years, that almost every great 
nation has parted with some outlying portions of its own body, 
which have become separated from the national life, and in most 
cases participated in the national life of some other people; so 
much so, that they do not wish to rejoin their own main stock. 
The Germans in Switzerland and Alsace do not desire to be 
reunited to Germany, any more than the French in Belgium and 
Switzerland wish to become attached politically to France. And 
after all, it is no slight advantage that the various nations, as 
politically constituted, have most of them some foreign elements 
within themselves, which form connecting links with their neigh- 

bours, and vary the otherwise too monotonous uniformity of the 
national character. 

Here, then, we perceive the difference between the “principle of 
nationalities” and the old democratic and working-class tenet as to 
the right of the great European nations to separate and 
independent existence. The “principle of nationalities’ leaves 
entirely untouched the great question of the right of national 
existence for the historic peoples of Europe; nay, if it touches it, it 
is merely to disturb it. The principle of nationalities raises two 
sorts of questions; first of all, questions of boundary between these 
great historic peoples; and secondly, questions as to the right to 
independent national existence of those numerous small relics of 
peoples which, after having figured for a longer or shorter period 
on the stage of history, were finally absorbed as integral portions 
into one or the other of those more powerful nations whose 
greater vitality enabled them to overcome greater obstacles. The 
European importance, the vitality of a people is as nothing in the 
eyes of the principle of nationalities; before it, the Roumans of 
Wallachia, who never had a history, nor the energy required to 
have one, are of equal importance to the Italians who have a 
history of 2,000 years, and an unimpaired national vitality; the 
Welsh and Manxmen, if they desired it, would have an equal right 
to independent political existence, absurd though it would be, 
with the English.'’* The whole thing is an absurdity, got up in a 
popular dress in order to throw dust in shallow people’s eyes, and 
to be used as a convenient phrase, or to be laid aside if the 
occasion requires it. 

Shallow as the thing is, it required cleverer brains than Louis 
Napoleon’s to invent it. The principle of nationalities, so far from 
being a Bonapartist invention to favour a resurrection of Poland, 
is nothing but a Russian invention concocted to destroy Poland. Russia 
has absorbed the greater part of ancient Poland on the plea of the 
principle of nationalities, as we shall see hereafter. The idea‘ is 
more than a hundred years old, and Russia uses it now every day. 
What is Panslavism but the application, by Russia, and in Russian 
interest, of the principle of nationalities to the Serbians, Croats, 
Ruthenes,''* Slovaks, Czechs, and other remnants of bygone 
Slavonian peoples in Turkey, Hungary, and Germany? Even at 
this present moment, the Russian Government have agents 
travelling among the Lapponians in Northern Norway and 
Sweden, trying to agitate among these nomadic savages the idea of 
a “great Finnic nationality”, which is to be restored in the extreme 
North of Europe, under Russian protection, of course. The “cry 

of anguish” of the oppressed Laplanders is raised very loud in the 
Russian papers—not by those same oppressed nomads, but by the 
Russian agents—and indeed it is a frightful oppression, to induce 
these poor Laplanders to learn the civilised Norwegian or Swedish 
language, instead of confining themselves to their own barbaric, 
half Esquimaux idiom! The principle of nationalities, indeed, 
could be invented in Eastern Europe alone, where the tide of 
Asiatic invasion, for a thousand years, recurred again and again, 
and left on the shore those heaps of intermingled ruins of nations 
which even now the ethnologist can scarcely disentangle, and 
where the Turk, the Finnic Magyar, the Rouman, the Jew, and 
about a dozen Slavonic tribes, live intermixed in interminable 
confusion. That was the ground to work the principle of 
nationalities, and how Russia has worked it there, we shall see 
by-and-by in the example of Poland.* 

II. 

THE DOCTRINE OF NATIONALITY APPLIED 
TO POLAND. 

[The Commonwealth, No. 165, May 5, 1866] 

Poland, like almost all other European countries, is inhabited by 
people of different nationalities. The mass of the population, the 
nucleus of its strength, is no doubt formed by the Poles proper, 
who speak the Polish language. But ever since 1390 Poland proper 
has been united to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania,'!? which has 
formed, up to the last partition in 1794, an integral portion of the 
Polish Republic. This Grand Duchy of Lithuania was inhabited by 
a great variety of races. The northern provinces, on the Baltic, 
were in possession of Lithuanians proper, people speaking a 
language distinct from that of their Slavonic neighbours; these 
Lithuanians had been, to a great extent, conquered by German 
immigrants, who, again, found it hard to hold their own against 
the Lithuanian Grand Dukes. Further south, and east of the 
present kingdom of Poland, were the White Russians, speaking a 
language betwixt Polish and Russian, but nearer the latter; and 
finally the southern provinces were inhabited by the so-called Little 
Russians,” whose language is now by most authorities considered as 
perfectly distinct from the Great Russian (the language we 

commonly call Russian). Therefore, if people say that, to demand 
the restoration of Poland is to appeal to the principle of 
nationalities, they merely prove that they do not know what they 
are talking about, for the restoration of Poland means _ the 
re-establishment of a State composed of at least four different 
nationalities. 

When the old Polish State was thus being formed by the union 
with Lithuania, where was then Russia? Under the heel of the 
Mongolian conqueror, whom the Poles and Germans combined, 
150 years before, had driven back east of the Dnieper. It took a 
long struggle until the Grand Dukes of Moscow finally shook off 
the Mongol yoke, and set about combining the many different 
principalities of Great Russia into one State. But this success 
seems only to have increased their ambition. No sooner had 
Constantinople fallen to the Turk,* than the Moscovite Grand 
Duke” placed in his coat-of-arms the double-headed eagle of the 
Byzantine Emperors, thereby setting up his claim as_ their 
successor and -future avenger; and ever since, it is well known, 
have the Russians worked to conquer Czaregrad, the town of the 
Czar, as they call Constantinople in their language. Then, the rich 
plains of Little Russia excited their lust of annexation; but the 
Poles were then a strong, and always a brave people, and not only 
knew how to fight for their own, but also how to retaliate; in the 
beginning of the seventeenth century they even held Moscow for a 
few years.'!” 

The gradual demoralisation of the ruling aristocracy, the want 
of power to develop a middle class, and the constant wars 
devastating the country, at last broke the strength of Poland. A 
country which persisted in maintaining unimpaired the feudal 
state of society, while all its neighbours progressed, formed a 
middle class, developed commerce and industry, and created large 
towns—such a country was doomed to ruin. No doubt the 
aristocracy did ruin Poland, and ruin her thoroughly; and after 
ruining her, they upbraided each other for having done so, and 
sold themselves and their country to the foreigner. Polish history, 
from 1700 to 1772, is nothing but a record of Russian usurpation 
of dominion in Poland, rendered possible by the corruptibility of 
the nobles. Russian soldiers were almost constantly occupying the 
country, and the Kings of Poland, if not willing traitors 
themselves, were placed more and- more under the thumb of the 

Russian Ambassador. So well had this game succeeded, and so 
long had it been played, that, when Poland at last was annihilated, 
there was no outcry at all in Europe, and, indeed, people were 
astonished at this only, that Russia should have the generosity of 
giving such a large slice of the territory to Austria and Prussia. 

The way in which this partition was brought about, is 
particularly interesting. There was, at that time, already an 
enlightened “public opinion” in Europe. Although the Times 
newspaper had not yet begun to manufacture that article, there 
was that kind of public opinion which had been created by the 
immense influence of Diderot, Voltaire, Rousseau, and the other 
French writers of the eighteenth century. Russia always knew that 
it is important to have public opinion on one’s side, if possible; 
and Russia took care to have it, too. The Court of Catherine II 
was made the head-quarters of the enlightened men of the day, 
especially Frenchmen; the most enlightened principle was pro- 
fessed by the Empress and her Court, and so well did she succeed in 
deceiving them that Voltaire and many others sang the praise of 
the “Semiramis of the North”, and proclaimed Russia the most 
progressive country in the world, the home of liberal principles, 
the champion of religious toleration. 

Religious toleration—that was the word wanted to put down 
Poland. Poland had always been extremely liberal in religious 
matters; witness the asylum the Jews found there while they were 
persecuted in all other parts of Europe. The greater portion of 
the people in the Eastern provinces belonged to the Greek faith, 
while the Poles proper were Roman Catholics. A considerable 
portion of these Greek Catholics had been induced, during the 
sixteenth century, to acknowledge the supremacy of the Pope, and 
were called United Greeks ''*; but a great many continued true to 
their old Greek religion in all respects. They were principally the 
serfs, their noble masters being almost all Roman Catholics, they 
were Little Russians by nationality. Now, this Russian Government, 
which did not tolerate at home any other religion but the Greek, 
and punished apostasy as a crime; which was conquering foreign 
nations and annexing foreign provinces right and left; and which 
was at that time engaged in riveting still firmer the fetters of the 
Russian serf—this same Russian Government came soon upon 
Poland in the name of religious toleration, because Poland was 
said to oppress the Greek Catholics; in the name of the principle 
of nationalities, because the inhabitants of these Eastern provinces 
were Little Russians, and ought, therefore, to be annexed to Great 
Russia; and in the name of the right of revolution arming the 

serfs against their masters. Russia is not at all scrupulous in the 

selection of her means. Talk about a war of class against class as 
something extremely revolutionary;—why, Russia set such a war 
on foot in Poland nearly 100 years ago, and a fine specimen of a 
class-war it was, when Russian soldiers and Little Russian serfs 
went in company to burn down the castles of the Polish lords, 
merely to prepare Russian annexation, which being once accom- 
plished, the same Russian soldiers put the serfs back again under 
the yoke of their lords. 

All this was done in the cause of religious toleration, because the 
principle of nationalities was not then fashionable in Western . 
Europe. But it was held up before the eyes of the Little Russian 
peasants at the time, and has played an important part since in 
Polish affairs. The first and foremost ambition of Russia is the 
union of all Russian tribes under the Czar, who calls himself the 
Autocrat of all the Russias (Samodergetz vseckh Rossyiskikh), and 
among these she includes White and Little Russia. And in order to 
prove that her ambition went no further, she took very good care, 
during the three partitions, to annex none but White and Little 
Russian provinces; leaving the country inhabited by Poles, and 
even a portion of Little Russia (Eastern Galicia) to her accomplices. 
But how do matters stand now? The greater portion of the 
provinces annexed in 1793 and 1794 by Austria and Prussia are 
now under Russian dominion, under the name of the Kingdom of 
Poland, and from time to time hopes are raised among the Poles, 
that if they will only submit to Russian supremacy, and renounce 
all claims to the ancient Lithuanian provinces, they may expect a 
reunion of all other Polish provinces and a restoration of Poland, 
with the Russian Emperor for a King. And if at the present 
juncture Prussia and Austria came to blows, it is more than 
probable that the war will not be, ultimately, for the annexation of 
Schleswig-Holstein to Prussia, or of Venice to Italy, but rather of 
Austrian, and at least a portion of Prussian, Poland to Russia. 

So much for the principle of nationalities in Polish affairs.