ded myself with a pass from the Polish National Government at Warsaw. They offered very kindly to obtain one for me; but the offer, however tempting, was coupled with conditions which rendered it to me, at any rate, decidedly unacceptable. I should have had to pledge myself, in the event of there being any risk of this document falling into the hands of the Russian authorities, to swallow it bodily like a pill, having carefully chewed it first into a state of pulp. I misdoubted sadly my own faculty of masticating paper in the presence of Cossack soldiers; and I was alarmed at the possible consequences which might result from the failure of the experiment. The Russians, I reflected, might very reasonably consider me an agent of the insurgents, and, in that case, my career would probably have terminated with undesirable brevity; or else the National Government might select me for punishment, as having, however unwittingly, furnished some clue to their discovery. So, on the whole, I resolved to run whatever risk there might be in travelling unindorsed by the insurrectionary authorities. Fellow-countrymen of mine, whom I met in Poland, had been more venturesome, and carried with them a crumpled scrap of paper, closely resembling in size and colour a Prussian thaler note, on which certain cabalistic characters were inscribed, recommending them to the good services of all Polish patriots. However, I could not discover that these documents had ever been of much use to them, or rather no occasion had turned up on which they needed any further protection than that afforded by the obvious and patent fact of their being Englishmen. We may sneer as much as we like at home at the “Civis Romanus” doctrine, but any Englishman who has lived much abroad knows its value fully. If you can rely upon your papers, or, still better, upon your dress and look, to show that you are a British subject, you are pretty safe in any portion of the civilised world. Even if you get murdered, ample redress is certain to be exacted for your death; and though this fact is probably no particular consolation to the sufferer on the eve of military execution, it is an immense guarantee against the risk of any injury being done to you. My passport was duly viséed and in order; and, furnished with that, I considered my safety was tolerably well secured. Such I found the fact to be; and I would recommend all Englishmen placed in my position to follow my example, and keep clear of all dealings with revolutionary governments.
But though I question the “Regulator,” as the Poles call their government, having much assistance to offer strangers, or wielding any great authority in purely rural districts, there is no doubt about its existence, or its power in all the great towns of Poland. To any one acquainted with the mechanism of printing it will seem absolutely inconceivable that newspapers could be composed, printed, published, and circulated regularly, in the midst of a large city, without anybody interested in the matter being able to detect where and by whom the enterprise was conducted. A printing-press, however small, occupies a considerable space of room, and the work of printing is of a nature on which many hands are required. The copies which I saw of the papers of the National Government at Warsaw, were not mere handbills, but regular newspapers of four pages each, about the size of a page of Once a Week. Now the Russian government would assuredly give an enormous reward to anybody who would betray the names of the persons connected with this Polish printing establishment; and yet, in spite of this known fact, papers are printed regularly, under the very nose of the Russian officials, without their being able to lay their hands upon the persons who conduct the operation. This one fact in itself speaks volumes. It is impossible to believe that any one of the thousands, or tens of thousands of Poles, who must have, to say the least, a shrewd suspicion as to the names of the members of this secret organisation, should be of such a heroic type, as to be able to withstand every inducement of terror or avarice. The plain truth is, that fidelity is secured by terrorism. Every Pole knows that to betray this secret to the Russians would be to expose himself to certain and absolute vengeance. Death for death, he prefers to die by Russians rather than by his own countrymen, as a martyr rather than as a traitor. No sum of money is of any value as a bribe, if the receiver knows that he will be stabbed like a dog to-morrow. But, still, this explanation only removes the difficulty one step further off.
The world stands upon the tortoise; but upon what does the tortoise stand? To the question how an unknown and nameless committee, living in daily jeopardy of their own lives, can have it in their power to condemn any traitor to death with the absolute certainty that their order will be executed, I could obtain no sufficient answer. The theory placed before me by persons most likely to be acquainted with the truth, and the one, I own, which commended itself most also to my judgment, was simply this. The National Government exists by sufferance of popular opinion, and is powerful only so long as it acts in consistence with that opinion. Now public sentiment will indorse heartily the assassination of a spy or a traitor; but it will not sanction the infliction of the punishment of death on persons whose only crime is their defencelessness. On various occasions the National Government has endeavoured to forbid petty tradesmen and mechanics from rendering compulsory service to the Russians. The compositors were ordered not to work at the government presses, and the railway servants were ordered to throw up their appointments. Here, however, its authority failed to carry out its edicts. The argument, Il faut vivre, was felt to be irresistible. Over the nobles and over men of wealth and position, the jurisdiction of the secret committee is supreme. Men of this class are expected by public opinion to make any sacrifice required of them for the good of Poland, and if they refuse to do so, popular feeling sanctions any penalty that may be inflicted on them. This sentiment holds good in a far stronger degree of spies and traitors. They have no friends, and their fate, however cruel, is considered well deserved. But when it came to punishing men whose sole fault was that they had paid taxes to the Russian authorities,