The aberrations of a few individuals cannot have changed these paternal feelings, and the delinquents have been delivered to the tribunal which the Constitution has exclusively provided for them. The judgment of this tribunal (it would appear) is of a nature to displease* your Majesty; but, previously to superseding its sentence, your Majesty asks of your council to what motive can be attributed this defective decree, in a matter which had threatened the institutions of which your Majesty has declared yourself the inviolable guardian. Finally, amid the toils of a destructive war, a benevolent feeling escapes your Majesty on behalf of your Polish subjects. Your Majesty has desired that a monument, erected in Warsaw, should prove that an affront received under the walls of Varna by a king of Poland has been recently washed out in Ottoman blood by one of his successors.† These, Sire, are the auspices under which the Poles have learnt to know their monarch. From whom could they possibly expect greater benefits? To rebel against such a master would be the height of ingratitude, or an undoubted symptom of insanity, whether we consider the subject with reference to their personal interests or political rights.

In this matter, as in that of the finances, the Imperial

* The eight persons accused were acquitted; but the "displeasure" of the Emperor still followed them; two were carried off to Siberia, and the remainder were placed under the surveillance of the police. Their judges— the Polish senate-were placed under arrest in Warsaw.

+ Prince Lubecki here alludes to some cannon taken by the Turks from the Poles, in the year 1444, under the King Ladislas Jagello, who was killed in the battle in which they were lost before Varna They were retaken by the Russians in the campaign of 1828. Nicholas, in a fit of magnanimity or vanity, caused a column composed of these cannon to be erected in the arsenal. This act deserves to be recorded, for it is the only one in which he ever condescended to seek popularity, by appealing to the national feelings of the Poles.

Commissioner endeavours to give an authentic character to that which is erroneous; but events which are past afford a correct index to those which are present, inasmuch as I have always observed the Imperial Commissioner pursuing the same dissatisfied and suspicious course. Permit me to cite a

few instances.

In 1821, at a moment when the cutting remarks of the decision of the 25th of May still rang in our ears, and when an empty treasury, squandered deposits, and arrears of pay, indicated sufficiently the wounds which had been inflicted on the public welfare, those who pointed them out were called alarmists, and the prudence which retrieved the finances was represented as a means adopted to compromise the government. Who conveyed these false impressions to the sovereign? THE IMPERIAL COMMISSIONER.

In 1822, I submitted for the sanction of the supreme government a Budget, in which the receipts exceeded the expenditure, accompanied by a plan to augment the resources of the treasury. The monarch was pre-admonished that this Budget had not attained a degree of maturity which would secure any practicable results, and that the plan proposed was only calculated to excite enemies against the government. Who, against all evidence, advanced these assertions, the erroneousness of which was established by the decisions of the supreme authority? THE IMPERIAL COMMISSIONER.

In 1823, the Administrative Council had already sketched a petition supplicating the sovereign to annul the Constitution, as no means could be found to carry the 146th

The Administrative Council was the executive government, composed of officers of state, appointed by the Emperor during pleasure, and paid by the Treasury!

article into execution.

Who discovered this unheard

of plan to remove an imaginary obstacle? THE IMPERIAL COMMISSIONER.

In the following years, the system of public credit to individuals, and the introduction of licenses, were warmly opposed. By whom? BY THE IMPERIAL COMMISSIONER.

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Finally, in the matter of the High Court, I will not again recall all that the Imperial Commissioner has asserted, because I believe the written documents which I deposited in the council for transmission to your Majesty sufficient to counterbalance the suggestions and criminations, which spring continually from his opinions. Doubtless it would be a very interesting inquiry to endeavour to discover the motives which prompt the Imperial Commissioner to sow the seeds of disunion between the monarch and his children. It may be assumed that interests the most powerful, or a blindness the most complete, must have contributed to render it a pleasure to falsify the paternal language of the first, and to criminate even the very thoughts of the second. As for myself, I do not undertake to expose these motives; I content myself with stating facts.

And now, Sire, I ought to tell your Majesty that I should perhaps have maintained silence, as I had done up to the present day, if the errors of the Imperial Commissioner were alone in question; because a deliberate inquiry would have protected the throne in this instance, as it has done in so many others. But, when I perceive that these errors have

The following is the 146th Article: "There shall be civil tribunals and tribunals of the police in every commune, and in every town, to take cognizance of transactions not exceeding 500 florins." Well may Prince Lubecki exclaim against the abolishing of the constitution, because some formal difficulties were experienced in carrying such an article into operation!

been of sufficient weight to produce an untoward effect on the loyal feelings of his Imperial Highness, my duty is to speak out. The representative of an august prince, who professes so ardent an affection for truth, would throw too great a weight into the opposite balance; and I perceive but too clearly in how deplorable a dilemma the monarch would be placed between that natural confidence which he reposes in his people and the criminations of so august and beloved a personage. But, when once the tendency to error in the Imperial Commissioner's disposition is unveiled, the effects of such conduct are no longer to be feared. They will exercise no greater control over the mind of the sovereign than over the feelings of gratitude and devotion of his people. An unmerited distrust will not open the door to the instigations of a foreign influence.

PRINCE METTERNICH AND "THE PORT

SIR,

FOLIO."

To the Editor of the Portfolio.

Frankfort, 20th July, 1836.

I hasten to transmit to you, as soon as possible, the details of an event which personally interests the Editor of the "Portfolio," and which ought, doubtless, to interest, in the same degree, the whole British Public, since it is of a character to throw a great deal of light on many eminent personages in Austria; on the policy of that power; and particularly on the efforts of Russia to increase her influence at Vienna.

Some time ago, Prince Metternich, pressed by the solicitations of the Russian Embassy, formally prohibited the introduction and the perusal of the "Portfolio." Up to that period, your publication had neither been put forward by the booksellers, nor announced in the lists of publications; it was to be found amongst the works which the booksellers are in the habit of reserving for the privileged purchasers, particularly for the nobility, and the higher order of merchants of Vienna; but, in consequence of a pressing note from the Russian Embassy, Prince Metternich ordered the police to declare to the booksellers that the sale of the "Portfolio" would be punished with a fine of a thousand florins (about £100), and that the booksellers would run the risk of seeing their trade suppressed.

This prohibition at first transpired nowhere but at Court; but there it produced a great sensation; and perhaps wounded very sensibly the feelings of many persons of that Court, which, from their having been often represented as the uncompromising allies of the Russians, apparently contains men who have the power of being good Austrians, without yielding to all the caprices of M. de Tatistcheff and his Embassy.

VOL. III.NO. XXVII.

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