BOOK XVII. 1776. sia, the whole kingdom, divided into opposite CONFEDERACIES, became for a succession of years a scene of the most dreadful misery and confusion; nor would the blind rage characteristic of civil and religious discord permit the infatuated Poles to perceive that, by these senseless and horrid contentions, they were exhausting the vital strength of their country, and offering themselves up an easy prey to the rapacity of foreign invaders. In an excellent memorial presented by Mr. Wroughton, the English resident at Warsaw, November 1766, the memorialist says, "Although the rights and privileges of the dissidents are founded on a doctrine whose principles of charity and benevolence make it characteristic of Christianity, yet it is this religion of which the exercise is disturbed, and of which the professors are excluded from all honourable employ, and deprived of all means of serving their country; and the ambassador urges in the name of the king his master, that, with regard to their ecclesiastical and civil rights, the dissidents may be re-established on the sacred foundations of the treaty of Oliva."-Happy would it have been had England herself adhered to that wise policy which she so earnestly recommended to Poland, But while she was thus laudably solicitous to extend the shield of her protection to the Polish XVII. 1776. dissidents, she forgot that her own code of laws BOOK inflicted the most cruel and oppressive penalties upon the same class of citizens within her own dominion; and that the dissidents of England also were the objects of a legal proscription. That the same direful consequences did not result from these laws was to be imputed solely to that prevailing spirit of lenity, characteristic till a recent period of the temper of the times, which forbade or impeded their exécution. If any certain conclusion can be deduced from reason, experience, and the uniform tenor of history, it is, that toleration in its fullest extent is a principle in the highest degree salutary and beneficial; and that intolerance in any shape or mode never yet appeared without producing a correspondent measure of animosity, discord, and misery *. *On the theory and practice of government, unbiassed by views of personal aggrandizement, there can be no greater authority adduced than that of the king of Prussia. On the subject of toleration he says, "De sombres politiques vous diront, Tout le monde doit être de la même opinion, pour que rien ne divise les citoyens. Le théologien ajoute, Quiconque ne pense pas comme moi est damné; il faut donc les détruire dans ce monde pour qu'ils prospèrent d'autant mieux dans l'autre. Mais si l'on remonte à l'origine de la société, il est fout-à-fait évident que le souverain n'a aucun droit sur la façon de penser des citoyens. Ne faudroit-il pas être en DEMENCE pour se figurer que des hommes ont dit à un homme leur semblable-Nous vous élevons au dessus de nous parceque nous aimons l'esclavage, et nous vous donnons la puisVOL. VI. Q XVII. BOOK. It is not to be imagined that Turkey, who regarded the growing greatness of Russia with anxious and envious apprehension, could be satisfied to remain a mere spectator of the troubles in Poland. Repeated demands were made by the Porte to the court of Petersburg, to withdraw her armies from the territories of the republic, and to maintain that neutrality which the Porte itself had religiously observed. These remon strances were either wholly neglected, or produced only vague and evasive declarations; and in the frequent conflicts which took place between the Russian troops and the Catholic confederates near the borders of the Turkish empire, the rights of sovereignty were occasionally violated, and many causes of complaint occurred. At length matters were brought to a crisis by the sack of the town of Balta in Lesser Tartary, to which a party of the confederates had fled for sance de diriger nos pensées à votre volonté? Ils ont dit, au contraire, Nous avons besoin de vous pour maintenir les lois, auxquelles nous voulons obéir, pour nous gouverner sagement, pour nous défendre. Du reste, nous exigeons de vous que vous respectiez notre liberté. Voilà la sentence prononcée ; ELLE est SANS APPEL; et même cette tolérance est si avantageuse aux sociétés où elle est établie qu'elle fait le bonheury de l'état. Dès que tout culte est libre tout le monde est tranquille: au lieu que la persécution a donné lieu aux guer res civiles les plus sanglantes, les plus longues, et les plus destructives."-Œuvres de Frederic III. tome iv. XVII. 1776. refuge, and which was immediately attacked and BOOK carried sword in hand by the Russians, who massacred great numbers of the inhabitants. On receiving intelligence of this event at Constantinople, M. Obrescow, resident of the court of St. Petersburg, was at an extraordinary meeting of the divan required to sign articles, importing satisfaction for the injuries sustained, and the immediate withdrawing of the Russian troops from Poland; and on his refusal, the ambassador was committed (October 1768) prisoner to the castle of the Seven Towers. The war which ensued between the two empires exhibits an almost continued series of triumphs on the part of the Russians*. After the reduction of the provinces north of the Danube, the Russian commander, marshal Romanzoff, passed that great river, and carried his victorious arms into the kingdom of Bulgaria, where the * When M. de Vergennes, ambassador from France to Constantinople, wrote in reply to the orders he had received to use his utmost influence to make the Porte declare war against Russia; "I will make the Turks take arms when ever you please, but I must previously inform you they will be beaten; that this war will turn out contrary to your intentions, by rendering Russia more glorious and more powerful;" he shewed himself, undoubtedly, a greater politician than the duc de Choiseul.-Private Life of Louis XV. BOOK Turkish crescent, elevated on the ruins of the XVII. christian cross, had reigned for centuries unmo lested. By sea the efforts of the court of St. Petersburg were no less extraordinary. A fleet under count Orloff, with many able English officers on board, sailing from the Gulph of Finland in the summer of 1770, entered the Mediterranean, and totally defeated the Turkish fleet in the channel of Scio; the shattered remains of which retiring for safety to the harbour of Chesme, on the coast of Natolia, were by means of fire-ships in the night after the battle entirely destroyed, and all Europe saw with astonishment the Russian Eagle flying triumphant over the Archipelago, and menacing with attack the city of Constantinople itself. The Turkish government was at the same time alarmed by a general revolt of the Greeks in the Morca; by a rebellion in Egypt, headed by the famous Ali Bey; by another in Syria, conducted by Cheik Daher; and a fourth in Georgia, under prince Heraclius; so that the enormous fabric of that unwieldly and ill-compacted empire seemed to totter to its fall. These various insurrections were however finally suppressed, and peace concluded with Russia at Kainardgi, July 1774, on the humiliating terms of ceding to Russia the whole country between the Bog and the Nieper; of consenting to the absolute independency of the Crimea; and of |