The Lessons of Poland 323
lately published his Reflections on the Revolution in France. He now took the oc-
casion to show what he meant by a revolution that was good and constructive.
There is, or was, in the archives at Warsaw a series of letters from Burke to King
Stanislas, in which he expressed his enthusiasm.^26 For the English, he expressed it
in his Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.
Anarchy and servitude at once removed... ten millions of men in a way of be-
ing freed gradually.... Everything kept in its place and order; but in that place
and order everything bettered.... Unheard of conjunction of wisdom and for-
tune.... Not one drop of blood spilled.... No studied insults on religion, mor-
als, or manners.... True and genuine, rights and interests of men.... Regular
progress... towards the stable excellence of a British Constitution.^27Burke, of course, like everyone else, was using Poland as a stick with which to
beat his own enemies, particularly the French Revolution and those New Whigs
who felt a certain sympathy toward it. Poland proved that the French Revolution
was entirely unnecessary. Why did these New Whigs, he asked, these people like
Fox and Sheridan and Mackintosh, persist in their partiality to the French Revolu-
tion, and show such embarrassed reservation in their praises of the Polish, unless it
was that they wished to undermine the constitution in England? And he reviewed
the history of the era and of his own opinions, to refute the charge that he had
contradicted imself: he had favored the American Revolution because it made no
demand for new liberties, but was purely defensive, the only issue being novel Par-
liamentary taxation; and it was perfectly consistent for him, as a warm friend of
true liberty, to oppose the instruction of members and the so- called reform of
Parliament, to prevent the introduction of French principles into the Canada Act,
to view with alarm the sprouting of English political clubs, and to see no merit in
the French Revolution (and he might have added the Dutch), while calling atten-
tion to events in Poland as a model of orderly liberation.
In France, the revolutionaries soon perceived that the success of the Polish Rev-
olution, or its alleged success (which was to be brief ), was being used against them.
It was being exploited to represent the French as wildly visionary and wantonly
violent. Prudhomme, of the Révolutions de Paris, changed his tune in one week.
Our enemies harp on Poland to discredit us. “The monarchs, our neighbors, to es-
cape the great revolution that menaces them in their own countries, are going to
provoke little ones themselves. They will reach understandings with their subjects.
To prevent imitation of us, they will take care to exaggerate our losses and to mini-
mize our gains, and will glory like Stanislas in their moderation.”^28 The truth is, he
said, that the Polish revolution is a fraud. There has really been none. The serfs re-
main where they were, and the burghers have been thrown crumbs from the noble
table. The same view was taken by a then well- known revolutionary militant,
Mehée de la Touche, who early in 1792 published his Histoire de la prétendue révo-
lution de Pologne. He poured contempt on Poland and the Poles. He observed that
26 For these letters of Burke’s see Fabre, 679, notes 118–20.
27 Burke, Writings (1901), IV, 195–97.
28 Révolutions de Paris, May 21–28, 1791, VIII, 311–16.