ENGLAND AND POLAND.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 266, 28 February 1877, Page 3

ENGLAND AND POLAND.

In Ffpeec\ tifricL Afr. Bright delivered recently in Maneht-s ,>.r. lie reminded Lis andii-nec of some d.:-Uisi<>ns which helped, as he conceived, t<. tempt England into tiuj folly '>f the Crimean war. One of these was the notion that hy a war " with Russia Poland would be liberated. The notion in question had not, we think, any bhare in determining the English policy. The liberation of Poland was spoken of at the time, but spoken of only as a means of weakening the Russian enemy —as a strategic measure, in fact: not as a tiling to he desired on any large and general grounds. The England of 1854 cared as little for the oppressions practised on the Poles, or for the extinction of their national existence, as the Lord Beaconsfield of to-day cares for the Bui-, garian atrocities. When she saw her way tp the reduction of Sebastopol without the aid of a Polish insurrection, she turned her thoughts from the enterprise and dissuaded from it her ally, Isapoleon 111., who was really anxious to effect it. It appears now, however, that had the liberation of Poland taken place, as proposed in 1855, it would have been a good stroke of policy both for England and France. A Polish nation, ten millions strong. and grateful to France for her liberation, would have been a formidable check on the German invasion of France in 1870. The same nation would be a hook :u ihe jaws of the Russian leviathan new. !i! leaving Poland under, the feet of tin. iluss, England lost an opportunity ■ ciU'c-cualiy redressing the balance ' of pV.vir in Europe. "Russia would, of cm-si . -till be a great power, but she won!!! ii,.r. be ifi such a position as to threaten the occupation of Turkey", the seizure of Constantinople, the exclusion of England from this short cut to India. Naturally sympathising with her kindred, the Slavs of Bulgaria and Servia, she would hinder Austria, from occupying those provinces for the purpose of keeping them in bondage to the Turk. Her existence as one of the pfetefhpod qf Eur' pean nations would deliver England froJii all danger on the side? of Russia, and inake it possible for English Ministers to pursue a pol'cy at once honorable and safe. There would be no fatal charm separating her interests from her duties, and forcing her to fnaijitain an. ignominious alliance with an effete despotism lest she should yield up the keys of the Bosphoru3 to a rival i c ~ -rr Af%iio Umpire,