The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864: Devoted to Literature and National PolicyVarious
Religion
The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864: Devoted to Literature and National Policy
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; United States -- Politics and government -- 19th century -- Periodicals
The Graeco-Rossian Church is kept under the
same discipline as the army, and an offending pope is sent, with the
rank of private, to some remote regiment.
The author of the letter from Paris somewhat contradictorily asserts
that the women, being superior in Poland, govern the men, but are
themselves governed entirely by the priests. This scarcely tallies with
strict logic; but, for the sake of truth and of a just respect for our
mothers, who taught us to love our country and freedom, who gave us
strength in exile, and faith through persecution, and who instructed us
how to think, and inspired us with those noble sentiments, seemingly
denied to the mothers of the 'fashionable civilization' (of St.
Petersburg), among whom there is not one lady writer--we will thank this
writer for the refutation offered by him to an impudent slander,
emanating from a contributor to _Chambers' Magazine_, of January last.
We repeat that we thank him for his just tribute to Polish women,
however inimical he may be to the Polish cause, and however much he may
depreciate our sex. Yet it seems strange that, while accusing Polish
women of being entirely under the control of the priests, and hence to
have been chiefly instrumental in fomenting the last insurrection, the
author did not notice, or is purposely silent regarding, a fact which,
as he appears to have been longer in a Galician chateau than elsewhere,
must have fallen under his notice, namely, that in Galicia, the Polish
priest was the _most decided opponent_ to any insurrection. How, then,
could the active Polish women-patriots be instruments of the action
condemned by the apologists of the absolute government of Rossia?
The admonition to France, on the ground that, after the revolution of
1789, she is committing a contradictory error by showing sympathy toward
a revolution gotten up by priests, is but a consequence of the first
judgment, and we may leave to France and her sense of her own interests
to do what she may think right and profitable. We will simply mention
that, for French glory, and for this error, as the author calls it, two
hundred thousand Poles were slain in Egypt, Italy, San Domingo, Spain,
Germany, Holland, and on the plains of Mozajsk, Kraslaw, Boryssow,
Eylau, Friedland, etc. The monument seen from the balcony of the
Tuileries has the names upon it, which we scarcely can suppose to have
been inscribed for the sole purpose of filling space.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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