POOR POLAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 5997, 5 February 1881, Page 7

POOR POLAND.

The celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Polish revolution of IS3O, recalls the deep, though, to a certain extent, sentimental interest which used to be felt and paraded in thi4 country up to twenty-five or thirty years a»o. Probably as much sympathy is felt as ever with the wrongs of the oppressed and persecuted kingdom, but the conviction has probably settled upon the national mind that any further attempt to secure independence is hopeless. The Poles are so very few compared with the Prussians, Russians, and Austnans, who have three times despoiled their country, that they seem to have no chance of regaining their rights. But Europe is very unsettled, and the future is full' of meuances to anything like autocracy. Prussia, Austria and Russia arc on so very ill terms, despite efforts to make it appear otherwise, that it hardly seems possible that, in the event of any forthcoming upheaval, those three nations would or could unite, as they have clone hitherto, to keep Poland in subjection. The demoralization of the continent

appears to be ultimately inevitable ; the people are steadily growing in power, and the endeavours of Prussia and Russia to resist the growth proves that they see and appreciate the danger to the reactionary principles they have laboured and are still labouring to establish. At the final partition of Poland in 1559, Russia absorbed 10,000,000 Poles; Austria, 5,000.000 ; Prussia, 3,000,000; and as a vast majority of the Poles, wherever their

lot may be cast, keep alive their patriotism and transmit it to their children, they must always have a prospect of independence. They have suffered so much and so intensely in the cause of independence, they have been so foully wronged that they are not likely to forget the past or believe that they are deprived of a future. Revolution is always a cherished possibility to the Polish heart, which, after generations of heroic fortitude, still watches for and hides its loived-for opportunity. Sim-o IS3O there had been repeated insurrections, and they in iy vceurany 'lay. In the general shaking up of kingdoms which is threatened in Europe it would be singular indeed if Poland should remain at the bottom. She has been for more than a

century the under dog in the old world fight, and millions of liberals on both sides of the sea are anxious to see her once more on top. New York Times.