THE CONSCRIPTION IN WARSAW.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 434, 12 May 1863, Page 5

THE CONSCRIPTION IN WARSAW.

A correspondent of the Daily Telegraph sends from Warsaw an account of some of the scenes witnessed during the recent enforcement of the conscription there, which will be read with interest in the light of the important results of that harsh measure of which we have been informed by telegraph ; —

" On the morning of the 15th inst. at five o'clock, the houses of the Praga suburb of Warsaw were suddenly occupied by the troops. lii tbe twinkling of an eye, companies of infantry rushed through the streats, and, breaking up into pickets of ten men each, entered the doors, with or against the will of the inhabitants. Each picket was attended by three policemen, and an official, acting as a recruiting sergeant of the party. In the vast majority of cases no resistance was offered to the invasion of domestic privacy; but in some cases the doors, being locked and bolted, had to be beaten in by axes and crowbars. With the latter instruments every picket had been provided beforehand. While this movement was being executed against individual houses, the more comprehensive strategy of the generals in command was evinced by j the military occupation of the suburbs as well as the town. At every corner posted a cavalry patrol, each party being placed in sight of the next, and the whole j forming a continuous chain of stationary, yet agile, alarmists all over the capital. The more frequented thoroughfares and the squares formed the focus of this system of scattered outposts. There one might enjoy the sight of entire regiments all ready for attack, murder, and plunder, as the case might be. These men were supported, by batteries of artillery prepared for immediate action ; and last, not least, the division of the Guards, despatched from St. Petersburgh to serve as a living pivot of tyranny, but no longer reliable, and itself a subject of suspicion and a source of uneasiness.

" After describing the steps taken by the Revolutionary Committee to prevent a rising, which may be summed up as an injunction to the people to submit to the conscription, and to join the Russian army as the soldiers of Poland, ready to revolt when opportunity offered, the writer goes on :—Escape, so far as his person was concerned, was the only chance remaining for the individual recruit. Like doves flying before the kite, hundreds of younjc fellows rushed from the houses, and began walking the streets in search of some secret retreat. As the troops advanced, gradually occupying the whole of the town, the majority of these fugitives were probably captured and carried off to head-quarters, while others, with money in their pockets to engage a hackney coach for the whole of the night, may have escaped by bribing every patrol they happened to meet. I have never seen so many carriages driving about in Warsaw as on yesterday night. The pedestrian is while he who drives in a coach has some little chance at least of compromising matters. Such is the Russian view of social differences.

"In the meantime the various stages of the tragedy were rapidly being played out in the houses of the suburbs. The passage once guarded by two soldiers with loaded «uns the rest of the party proceeded upstairs to demand, the surrender of their victims. With them goes a sergeant having a list of the individuals to be carried off from every dwelling. A number of names is down upon the paper, and, at the risk of heavy punishment, he is obliged to seize and deliver up an equal number of individuals. If his prisoners be there in expectation of their jailer, he will be contented with a trifle for not breakihg the furniture and exploring the bed-chambers of the ladies; if not, he may select his hostages from among the male inhabitants of the house, boys and old men included, and even the sick and the lame not excepted. In hundreds of cases this terrible cruelty was practised. With these terrible certainties vividly imprinted on everybody's mind, the jecruitment had not lasted half-an-hour before it assumed the most atrocious character which can well be imagined. To the horrors of the kidnapping became joined the treacheryof relatives and the mutual denunciation of friends. I know of one instance where a father prevented his son from stealing away, lest his younger brother, a mere boy of fourteen years, might be carried off, The young man being on the point,of marrying a lady whose hand he had gained after a struggle with social difficulties, offered personal violence, in the exasperation of the moment, to the father he had long revered with true filial love. A scuffle ent-ued between the unfort nate parent and his enraged child, and when the latter, tearing himself from the arms of his old father, was in the act of rushing down stairs, the soldiers entered the house and knocked him down with the butt-ends of their new Tula rifles. Tnus, the father lay on the floor of the drawing-room, knocked down by his son, that son being stretched all his length in the passage wounded, mutilated, and but with little chance of recovery. In another case, a friend, who happened to be on a visit in the house of a near relative, was bewildered by his anguish into betraying the place of concealment his host had resorted to."

A Happy/ Return. —In a blue-book just issued, relative to the education of pauper children, the following anecdote is recorded: —Five or six years since, sixteen young girls were sent from the workhouse school in the Portsea Island Union to Australia, where they were all soon comfortably settled and turned out well. One of them had the good fortune to marry a tnan of considerable property, and, on her returning to England a shprt time afterwards, one of her first acts was to call in her own carriage at the workhouse for the purpose of expressing her gratitude to the schoolmistress for those kind offices which had enabled her to achieve so favorable a position in life.— Scotsman.

New Substitute for Gis. —M; Mongruel, a French inventor, announces his jntention of freeing us from the tyranny of gas companies and the dangers of gas, and providing a light at once infinitely cheaper and more efficient. This ■is to be accomplished by passing atmospheric air through a fluid termed " photegene," which seems'to be a naptlia of a highly volatile description, burning it with the ordinary gas fittings. The generating apparatus is simple," the light seven times as powerful as gas, and the real question seems to be as to the absence of expensiveuess. The promoters of the invention, however, say that in the case of escjpe, the ''photogene" would precipitate itself on the floor or furniture, and at the worst, only render the latter inflammable when coming in actual contact with fire. Gas, as at present used, may also be passed through photegene with a saving of 40 percent, in consumption, and a gain of five-fold illuminating power. The invention is Raid to hay« been largely adopted ia France.