manner, made to break stones or wheel barrows on the streets or highways like galley slaves.  Persons of rank were frequently taken from their homes, immured in prison, and dismissed after several weeks’ incarceration without knowing what alleged offence had provoked such a wanton exercise of power contrary to the charter and the privileges of Poland; state offenders were carried out of the country to Russian prisons and attempts were made to give them a journey to Siberia, which were only prevented by the threat of suicide on the part of the victims.  The resources of the kingdom were squandered entirely for Russian objects; and the people were oppressed to maintain a Polish and a Russian army.  Peculation and pillage was the order of the day.  The president of the town of Warsaw, with a salary of between 500l. and 600l. contrived to amass a fortune of 100,000l. in fifteen years, besides living in splendour and squandering twice his legal income.  The same unprincipled peculation was practised by other municipal or state officers.  The Russian generals were in league with the magistrates and billet-master, to divide the booty received from the inhabitants as the price of exemption from the oppressive quartering of troops on their houses.  Spies were employed by the police to watch every man of the least consequence in society, and the nobility were often driven to the country to avoid such dangerous intruders.  In several instances members of the diet were banished to their estates, and made to pay the troops that guarded them, for having ventured in the assembly, whose discussions ought to have been free, to express a suspicion of the government, or to hint an opinion contrary to the taste of the grand duke.

“The following statement of facts on this head, to which we have seen no allusion made in the public prints, but the authenticity of which may be relied on, will give a better idea of the system of Russian government in Poland than any general description could convey.  We have received it from the quarter to which we have above alluded:—­

“According to the laws of Poland, a commission, chosen by the citizens, has the right of examining and auditing the accounts of the town.  From the tyrannical system adopted by the officers who were continually about the person of the grand duke, they dared not perform their duty from fear of his displeasure, and probably, at the instigation of the miscreants around him, being consigned to a prison; remonstrances were, however, generally made at the half-yearly meeting of the commission; though, up to the period immediately before the revolution, nothing was done to check the evil.  In the month of September a circumstance occurred, not important in itself, but of great weight in the future course of events. Janiszewski, a cidevant officer in the army, had sent several petitions to the president of the town, which were treated with neglect and insult.  He and the president met in