government which, we presume, even an O'Connell would decline. This is just the case with our sympathisers. They take it for granted that, because there is revolt, there must be a struggle for freedom, and they are perfectly ready to accept, without the slightest examination, any legend that may be coined for the nonce. Gullible as a considerable number of the British public may be, especially that section of the public which delights in platform oratory, we really could not have believed that any assemblage could be so utterly ignorant, as to receive a statement to the effect that the old constitution of Hungary bore a close resemblance to our own! We are tempted here to insert an extract from the works of a popular writer regarding the constitution of Poland, because it expresses, in excellent language, the opinions which we are attempting to set forth in this article, and denounces the folly of those who confound the term freedom with its just and rational application. Will the reader favour us by perusing the following passage with attention?--when he has done so, we shall state from whose eloquent pen it proceeded. "Of how trifling consequence it must be to the practical minded and humane people of Great Britain, or to the world at large, whether Poland be governed by a king of this dynasty or of that--whether he be lineally descended from Boleslas the Great, or of the line of the Jagellons--contrasted with the importance of the inquiries as to the social and political condition of its people--whether they be as well or worse governed, clothed, fed, and lodged in the present day as compared with any former period,--whether the mass of the people be elevated in the scale of moral and religious beings,--whether the country enjoys a smaller or a larger amount of the blessings of peace; or whether the laws for the protection of life and property are more or less justly administered. These are the all-important inquiries about which we busy ourselves; and it is to cheat us of our stores of philanthropy, by an appeal to the sympathy with which we regard these vital interests of a whole people, that the declaimers and writers upon the subject invariably appeal to us on behalf of the oppressed and enslaved _Polish nation_--carefully obscuring, amidst the cloud of epithets about 'ancient freedom,' 'national independence,' 'glorious republic,' and the like, the fact that, previously to the dismemberment, the term _nation_ implied only the nobles;--that, down to the partition of their territory, about nineteen out of every twenty of the inhabitants were slaves, possessing no rights, civil or political; that about one in every twenty was a nobleman--and that that body of nobles formed the very worst aristocracy of ancient or modern times; putting up and pulling down their kings at pleasure; passing selfish laws, which gave them the power of life and death over their serfs, whom they sold and bought like dogs or horses; usurping, to each