the execution of this regulation, sundry
exceptions which are allowed by the law of 1859."

For the future, then, instead of being, as
heretofore, general, the recruitment is to press
upon one portion only of the nation. The
owners of large domains, the peasants entitled
to the privileges of the new law of serfdom, and
farm servants, are exempt from military service.
The contingent is to be torn from the dwellers
in towns, from small yeomen cultivating their
own little patch of land, and from field labourers.
By means of these invidious exceptions, it is
hoped to attach the favoured classes to Russia,
and to sow discord amongst her Polish subjects.
Further, by making the towns bear the weight
of the conscription, it is intended to expatriate
the most enlightened and active portion of the
population.

The substitution of the arbitrary selection of
each individual recruit, for the impartial plan of
drawing by lot, requires a word of comment.
The Emperor Nicholas, who was no apprentice
at despotism, and who wished to dispose of the
destiny of every inhabitant of Poland according
to his own will, could hit upon no better invention
than to suppress the practice of drawing by
lot, replacing it by the special designation of
each recruit. The tiger could thus lay his talons
on whatever victim pleased him best. Alexander
the Second, yielding to a benevolent impulse, for
which even his enemies must give him credit,
spontaneously avowed the tyranny of that
system, and substituted for it drawing by lot, as
more in conformity with humanity and justice.
But, since the promulgation of that change, no
recruitment has taken place in Poland; and it
is at the moment when the population were
about to profit by the only serious amelioration
of the new reign, that the Grand-Duke
Constantine and the Marquis Wielopolski dare to
decree arbitrary selection. There exists,
therefore, a double legislation; one on paper,
intended to lure the population by chimerical
hopes, and another in practice, devised to
torture them. The liberalism of the Marquis
Wielopolski, and the benevolent intentions of
the Grand-Duke Constantine, have been
illustrated by a bitter reduction to practice.

Commissioners chosen by the council of
administration are entrusted with the task of marking
the men who are to be recruits. To weed out
obnoxious individuals, and to hold in hand the
most flexible instrument that government ever
wielded, is the double object kept in view under
the pretext of a recruitment. No easier means
can be conceived of getting rid of persons
suspected of independence and patriotism. And,
to shake off any shackles which might
impede the commissioners' movements, Article 3
of the Rescript authorises the council of
administration to suspend the action of the legal
exemptions stipulated in the decree of 1859.
Consequently, only sons, the eldest sons of
widows, and the guardians of orphans, are no
longer safe from the conscription. In this way,
the whole population, from twenty to thirty years
of age, with the invidious exception of the great
landowners and their peasants, is delivered up
in a mass to the discretional power of the
government. No check or limit is laid down,
either as to the number of the recruits, the
responsibility of the commissioners, or the
duration of their arbitrary proceedings.

But the reader ought to be made aware what
military life in Russia is. He will be greatly
in error if he fancies that there is any
resemblance between the Russian military service
and the career of arms which France opens
to the soldier's ambition. In France, it is
continually boasted that every soldier may carry a
marshal's bâton in his knapsack. In Russia,
all commissions are conferred on the nobility
exclusively. In France, the soldier is respected
by his superiors; corporal punishment is
unknown. In Russia, he is made to suffer the
most barbarous and degrading treatment. In
France, the soldier is affectionately cared for;
nourished with wholesome and abundant food,
excellently taught, conveniently clad, and
salubriously lodged. In Russia, the soldier's
lot is miserable; for he is made a source of
profit by his chiefs, who enrich themselves at
his expense. In France, the duration of military
service is seven years, at its full extent;
the practical average is considerably shorter.
In Russia, it is fifteen years.

Such is the condition of the Russian soldier.
If it be lamentable for him, how much more
lamentable must it be for the Pole, torn from his
native soil and from all his family affections, to be
incorporated in the ranks of a foreign army — the
implacable enemies of his country! Scattered
in the midst of Russian soldiers (instead of
forming distinct regiments, like the Hungarians)
he has for comrades men who speak a different
language, who profess a different religion, and
who are influenced by different aspirations. He
is sent far away to the confines of Asia, and
particularly to the range of the Caucasus. He
receives no news of his friends at home; it is
only by a miracle that here and there one
individual survives fifteen years of physical and
moral torture, to revisit his native village; and
perhaps the bitterest of his trials is, at a
moment's warning to have to fire on his own
fellow-countrymen. There is no difficulty in
conceiving that the Polish women weep for
their sons, their brothers, and their lovers, when
once enrolled in the Russian army, as they
would weep for the dead.

Polish women have always been gifted with a
certain dash of military spirit; and they are
manifesting it now. There are many women in the
insurgent camp taking part in the war. Many
families, who had sought refuge in Gallicia at
the outbreak of the troubles, have returned to
Poland and joined the insurgents. One whole
family is cited; the father, mother, son, and two
daughters, have all enlisted.

Catherine the Second boasted that she had
abolished the punishment of death, and she
buried her victims alive in the mines of Siberia.
The Poles would prefer sacrificing their heads
on the scaffold, to the death by inches inflicted