series of solvents, for the problems with which Ireland has presented them. That it was not always so is a thesis which might be maintained with some plausibility. But the advice of one of the greatest of Irishmen may, in this connexion, be recorded and adopted. 'I have always held,' writes Sir Horace Plunkett, that to foster resentment in respect of 'these old wrongs is as stupid as was the policy which gave 'them birth; and, even if it were possible to distribute the 'blame among our ancestors, I am sure we should do ourselves 'much harm, and no living soul any good, in the reckoning. 'In my view, Anglo-Irish history is a thing for Englishmen to ' remember, for Irishmen to forget.' It is finely said. One Englishman has in the foregoing pages endeavoured to recall, for the benefit of Englishmen, some salient facts in the story of Anglo-Irish relations. His own conviction is that the brief recital suggests, on the part of England, not deliberate malignity, still less persistent brutality, but much characteristic unimaginativeness, some crass stupidity, and, above all, a curiously pervasive irony.

'There have been divers good plots devised, and wise counsels cast already about reformation of that realm; but they say it is the fatal destiny of that land that no purposes whatsoever which are meant for her good will prosper or take good effect; which, whether it proceed from the very genius of the soil or influence of the stars, or that Almighty God hath not yet appointed the time of her reformation, or that He reserveth her in this unquiet state still for some secret scourge, which shall by her come into England, it is hard to be known, but yet much to be feared.'

Thus wrote Edmund Spenser, himself one of the colonists of Munster, in 1596. His words are as suggestive at the beginning of the twentieth century as they were at the end of the sixteenth.

To return to the question with which we started. How far does English policy in Ireland supply an appropriate tu quoque to Prussians who seek to vindicate their own treatment of Poland ?

The earlier relations between Prussia and Poland were recently examined, by the present writer, in the pages of this Review. The acquisitions of Prussia in the three partitions of 1772, 1793, and 1795; the dismemberment of the Prussian

* EDINBURGH REVIEW for April 1915.

Kingdom by Napoleon at Tilsit; the formation, largely at the expense of Prussian Poland, of the Grand Duchy of Warsawthese matters call for no further commentary. A word, however, must be said as to the treatment of the Polish question at the Congress of Vienna. The Tsar Alexander was, in 1815, master of the situation, and turned it with great adroitness to the advantage of Russia. Prussia was obliged to acquiesce in the establishment of the Congress Kingdom '-virtually Napoleon's Grand Duchy of Warsaw-under the rule of the Tsar, and thus to relinquish the greater part of the acquisitions secured by her in the second and third partitions. She managed, however, to retain, not only her share of the partition of 1772, but in addition Posen and Gnesen and the great fortresses of Thorn and Danzig.*

Thanks mainly to Lord Castlereagh, there was inserted in the Final Act of the Congress a stipulation which was intended to secure to all the Poles some measure of autonomy. It ran

as follows: The Poles who are respective subjects of Russia, 'Austria, and Prussia shall obtain a Representation and National 'Institution regulated according to the degree of political 'consideration that each of the Governments to which they 'belong shall judge expedient and proper to grant them.' The Treaty of Vienna concluded (3rd of May 1815) between Russia and Prussia further guaranteed the economic unity of Poland. Article 28 of that treaty ran:

'In order to promote agriculture as much as possible in ali parts of ancient Poland, to encourage the industry of its inhabitants and to insure their prosperity, the two High Contracting Parties have agreed that . . . the most unlimited circulation for the future and for ever of all articles of growth and industry shall be permitted throughout their Polish provinces (as it existed in 1772).'* Finally, as regards Prussian Poland (with which alone we are now concerned), we have the rescript addressed by King Frederick William III. to his subjects in the Grand Duchy of Posen on the 15th of May 1815:

'You are incorporated,' it ran, 'in my monarchy, but you need not, therefore, renounce your nationality. You will enjoy all the advantages of the constitution which I mean to grant to my loyal subjects, and you will receive, like the other provinces of

*Hertslet, Map of Europe by Treaty,' i. 113.

my kingdom, a provisional constitution. Your religion shall be respected and its ministers shall receive an endowment suitable to their status. Your personal rights and your property shall be placed under the protection of laws which you will yourselves, in future, have a share in making. The use of your language shall be permitted, equally with German, at public meetings, and you will, each according to his capacity, be eligible for official posts in the Grand Duchy.'*

The sequel will show how far these promises have been fulfilled.

For the first fifteen years after the Congress of Vienna the Prussian Poles had little to complain of. Frederick William III. manifested during that period a real desire to conciliate them. Prince Antony Radziwill, a great Polish nobleman, was nominated to the Viceroyalty of the Grand Duchy of Posen; Zerboni di Sposetti, also a friend to the Poles, became the first Oberpräsident of the new province; a large share in local administration was left to the native aristocracy; the liberal policy of Stein and Hardenberg, by which the serfs of Brandenburg and Prussia had been converted into peasant proprietors, was extended to Posen in 1823, and by 1837 no less than 21,334 peasant freeholds had been created.† Finally, in 1824, a local legislature or Diet was established in Posen.

A sinister change was, however, observable after 1830. The French revolution of that year aroused considerable excitement in Germany. Neither Prussia nor Austria felt the repercussion, but there were outbreaks in Göttingen, in Cassel, in Dresden, in Leipzig and in Brunswick, and not a little ferment in the Liberal south. Metternich dangled the red spectre of revolution before the eyes of Frederick William III. and induced him to embark upon a reactionary policy. Another cause contributed to his fears. In November 1830 a revolution broke out in the Congress Kingdom, and, although there was no actual insurrection in Prussian Poland, some 12,000 Prussian Poles went to the assistance of their brethren in the kingdom. Their action was, needless to say, in no way countenanced by the King of Prussia. On the contrary, the attitude of Frederick William III. was of considerable assistance to the Tsar, and,

*Gesetzsammlung für die Koenigl. Preussisch. Staaten, 1815, p. 47, ap. Moysset, p. 5.

† Phillips, Poland,' p. 182.

according to the most recent historian of Germany, 'contributed 'directly to the recovery of Warsaw by the Russians.'*

The consequences of the abortive rising of 1830 were hardly less grave for the Prussian Poles than for those under the rule of Russia. The Viceroyalty-the most conspicuous emblem of the quasi-independence hitherto enjoyed by Posen-was abolished; and Zerboni was superseded as Oberpräsident by Eduard Heinrich von Flotwell, who was sent to Posen to carry out a policy of thorough Prussianisation. Flotwell lost no time in getting to work, and for ten years (1830-1841) he ruled his province with a rod of iron. The native nobles were deprived of all share in local administration; the bureaucratic methods dear to the Brandenburger were on all sides introduced; the convents and monasteries were suppressed and their property secularised; heavily encumbered properties were bought on a large scale by the government, only Germans were accepted as purchasers, and a deliberate policy of expropriation was initiated.

The accession of Frederick William IV. (1840) brought some relief to the Prussian Poles; but the concessions then made did not survive the upheaval of 1848. The spirit of '48, with its appeal to the nationality principle, could not leave the Poles unmoved. The outbreak of the March revolution in Berlin gave the signal for an insurrectionary movement in Posen. A national' army of 25,000 men was organised; a provisional government was set up, and a formal demand was made for the fulfilment of the pledges given, in 1815, by Frederick William III.

The Polish cause evoked a good deal of sympathy among the German Liberals and even in Prussia itself. Nor is this remarkable in view of the fact that Poles were in the forefront of the battle for political liberty in many parts of Germany, and indeed of other countries. The influence of the Poles of the dispersion upon the movement of 1848, as Mr. H. A. L. Fisher has pointed out, has been curiously ignored. They were to be

'found in the Saxon riots of '48; in the Berlin barricades; in the struggle for the Republic in Baden; in the Italian and Hungarian wars of liberation. . . . Homeless and fearless, schooled in war

* Sir A. W. Ward, 'History of Germany,' p. 232.

and made reckless by calamity, they have been the nerve of revolution wherever they have been scattered by the wind of misfortune.'*

This being so it can occasion little surprise that the Prussian authorities should have hastened to repress the insurrectionary movement in Posen-still less that Bismarck should from the very outset of his career have regarded Poland with a jealous eye. No one can doubt that an independent Poland would 'be the irreconcilable enemy of Prussia, and would remain so ' until they had conquered the mouth of the Vistula and every 'Polish-speaking village in West and East Prussia, Roumania, ' and Silesia.' Thus wrote Bismarck as far back as 1848. His conviction was not weakened by the abortive insurrection which broke out in the Congress kingdom in 1863. 'The Polish ' question,' said Bismarck in that year to Sir Andrew Buchanan, 'is a matter of life and death to us.' The help afforded by Bismarck to Russia during the Polish insurrection of 1863 laid the foundation of his whole diplomatic edifice. Not only was it a matter of life and death' to Bismarck that the Russian Poles should be suppressed; it was not less important that Russia should be laid under an obligation to Prussia. The fruits of the friendship then established were gathered in Schleswig-Holstein, at Sadowa, and at Sédan.

Not until those fruits were safely garnered had Bismarck leisure to deal with his own Poles. His Polish policy wears more than one aspect. One is suggested by a story told by M. Moysset. A Polish grande dame visiting a sick peasant was amazed to see side by side the portraits of Pope Leo XIII., Kosciusko, and Bismarck. 'Is Bismarck,' she asked, 'held in equal honour in your house with the 'Holy Father and our national hero?' 'Certainly,' was the reply, for that is the great man who has revealed to me, a poor peasant, that I have indeed a Polish fatherland.' † To Bismarck more perhaps than to any other single man the Prussian Pole owes the realisation of the fact that the Poles possess a real national unity, a real national identity. How did Bismarck succeed in evoking that sentiment ?

* 'The Republican Tradition in Europe,' by H. A. L. Fisher, p. 213.

† Op. cit. p. 30-an admirable study, to which my obligations are numerous and heavy.