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Some twenty years before the dismemberment of Poland, this disgraceful act was foretold by Lord Chesterfield, in Letter CCCIV., dated Dec. 25, 1753, commencing with “The first squabble in Europe that I foresee, will be about the crown of Poland.” The leading data of the fall of Poland will show how far this prediction was realized. Poland was dismembered by the Emperor of Germany, the Empress of Russia, and the King of Prussia, who seized the most valuable territories in 1772.

At the bottom of the Convention signed on the 17th Feb., 1772, we read this declaration of the Empress Queen Maria-Theresa of Austria, dated the 4th March, 1772: “Placet, since so many learned personages will that it should be so; but long after my death it will be seen what will be the result of having thus trampled under foot all that has been hitherto held to be just and sacred.”

The royal and imperial spoliators, on various pretexts, poured their armies into the country in 1792. The brave Poles, under Poniatowski and Kosciusko, several times contended against superior armies, but in the end were defeated. Then followed the battle of Warsaw, Oct. 13, 1794; and Suwarrow’s butchery of 30,000 Poles, of all ages and conditions, in cold blood. We can scarcely believe such wholesale atrocities to have been perpetrated upon European soil within seventy years of the time we are writing. Poland was finally partitioned and its political existence annihilated in 1795. The transaction, in its earlier stage, is detailed in the Annual Register for 1771, 1772, and 1773, supposed to have been written by Edmund Burke. Professor Smythe says, diffidently:—“After all, the situation of Poland was such as almost to afford an exception (perhaps a single exception) in the history of mankind to those general rules of justice that are so essential to the great community of nations. I speak with great hesitation, and you must consider the point yourselves; I do not profess to have thoroughly considered it myself.”—(Lectures on Modern History.) Sir James Mackintosh contributed to the Edinburgh Review a valuable paper on Poland.