34 NAROD
Surely you see, my young confreres,
There is nothing much in dreams and swordplay
It is all a waste of time and energy.
The sabre snaps; and the song fades away.
Take instead a different road,
And count on gains that are lasting,
On triumphs quiet and unassuming
Which give your children breadAnd so to the work-bench, to the trowel
To the plough, and to the spirit-level!
Although the work is hard and long
We will come through it, bold and strong.^34Swidziriski's aversion to poetry may be apparent in the quality of his verse; but
his priorities were perfectly clear — Work before Battle, Science before Art,
Careful Thought before Rash Action. This sober, practical programme was par-
ticularly admired in the second half of the nineteenth century when Positivism
and Scientism were sweeping Europe. But it has had its counterparts in Poland
on many occasions, both before and after.
In so far as the Conciliators were sceptical about demands for Polish
Independence, and opposed to the violent designs of the insurrectionists, they
are sometimes characterized as being passive, if not downright reactionary. In
fact, they possessed a highly developed sense of national duty, and not infre-
quently a genuine commitment to radical social change. They strove to restrain
not only the conspirators on the one side but also the unashamed
loyalists, careerists, and 'castle Catholics' on the other. They concentrated their
efforts on cultural, economic, and social enterprises, preferring to ensure grad-
ual advance in these spheres at the cost of limited political progress. In their own
view, they were practising 'the art of the possible', and as such were the only real
politicians. Their achievements, though piecemeal, were considerable. Staszic,
for example, who freed the serfs on his private estate at Hrubieszow and gave
them the land in communal tenure, was the first man to survey Poland's mineral
deposits and to open a colliery at Dabrowa. From 1808, he was president of the
Society of Friends of Science in Warsaw, disseminating the benefits of
the scientific and agricultural revolutions, and from 1815, a member of the
Commission of Education and Religion, which founded the University of
Warsaw. His colleague, Drucki-Lubecki, was equally energetic. As Minister of
Finance, in the Congress Kingdom, he launched the Bank of Poland, and
planned the country's first steps towards industrialization. His faith was pinned
on the liberal proclivities of Alexander I. Wielopolski, who took office as head
of the Civil Administration of the Congress Kingdom forty years later, enter-
tained similar hopes about Tsar Alexander II. He initiated the rentification of
serf tenures and set aside the civil disabilities on Jews and the barriers to the pro-
motion of Poles in the Tsarist bureaucracy. In particular, he restored the system