No doubt the preservation of Cracow is a question of profound European importance,-nay, one of the most important of European questions. Her institutions were guaranteed by solemn treaties, and cannot be abrogated, save by common consent of all the contracting parties. To the protecting Powers she was of importance enough to lead them, at the Congress of Vienna, to give her an independent existence, that the balance might not be disturbed between their respective states. To England she both was and is of importance, even in no higher than a commercial point of view; and the interests of England, which have fallen with the destruction of her franchises, would rise with their reestablishment. The annual amount of English imports into Cracow falls not far short of eighty thousand pounds at this moment. And if the importance of Cracow in diplomatic or commercial respects is great to other European powers, what must it be to Poland, who sees in the Republic the last lingering traces of her own vitality, the last vestiges of a Polish nationality, everywhere else trampled down beneath the hoofs of a conqueror? One of the last important parliamentary demonstrations in favour of Cracow took place exactly a year ago. The French House of Peers, contrary to its usual custom, inserted a paragraph in defence of the rights of the republic, in the address carried in answer to the king's speech: one of the last Foreign Ministers in France, the Duke de Broglie, thought fit to renew the declaration, that the Government of France had protested against the violation of the indestructible rights of Poland and Cracow: that such remonstrances from one cabinet to another are not empty words, or such protests mere waste-paper; that they sanction the complaints of the oppressed and convert them into rights the moment the favourable opportunity occurs; that they authorize the action which, without them, could not be permitted to take place; that they authorize us to refuse what otherwise we should be compelled to grant; and thus, step by step, we recover the lost ground,-seeing that true political wisdom consists in understanding how to proportion means to ends, the sacrifice made to the advantage to be gained, and knowing how to Universel, Dec. 28th, 1838.) On the 8th of January, 1839, one of the present French Cabinet Ministers made a similar declaration in the Chamber of Deputies. On the 13th of January in the same year, Count Molé, President of the Council, on being warmly pressed, announced to the Chamber of Deputies his firm hope that Cracow would speedily be evacuated; and on the 18th, the ex-president of the Council, M. Thiers, reminded the Chamber of Deputies of the promises made by the Three Courts at the time of the occupationwhich was only to last for a few months. Could all this, we now ask, have occurred, had France and England, instead of meagre demonstrations in their own popular assemblies, an accredited organ in the Republic itself,-could their voice be there made known by means of representatives, whom they have a perfect right to send? And let it not be forgotten that Cracow was to enjoy all the privileges of a Free Town; that according to the tenor of the treaties, she was to be even more independent of the Residents, than Frankfort is of the Germanic Confederation: now Frankfort not only has Residents, but has even concluded treaties of commerce, in direct opposition to the wishes of the Prussian Envoy. On all these grounds we still do and shall continue to insist upon the immediate appointment of an English Resident at Cracow. If in 1836 even Lord Palmerston admitted the necessity of this step, and admitted it so far as to engage himself to make such an appointment, it has become only the more urgent in 1840, when successive encroachments have destroyed almost the last traces of nationality in the republic. Let us hope, for the honour and the material interests of this country, that the Government will not persist in abjuring the solemn rights which England herself has guaranteed; that it will no longer remain a passive spectator of the ruin of Cracow, and that it will send a diplomatic agent to that city. It is high time for us to redress the wrongs which have resulted from our almost total and most culpable ignorance of the situation of affairs in Poland, and which we again assert is mainly owing to our neglect of establishing official channels of I.-1. The Canton Register. 1839. 3. Address of British Merchants trading at Can- ton to the Right Honourable Lord Viscount Palmerston, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Canton: May 23rd, 1839. 4. The Iniquities of the Opium Trade with China; being a developement of the main causes which exclude the Merchants of Great Britain from the advantages of an unrestricted Commercial Intercourse with that vast Empire. By the Rev. A. S. THELWALL, M.A. of Tri- nity College, Cambridge. London: W. H. Allen and Co. Leadenhall-street. 1839. 5. The Opium Question. By SAMUEL WARREN, Esq., F.R.S., of the Inner Temple, Barrister- at-Law. London: James Ridgway, Piccadilly. 6. The Chinese Vindicated, or Another View of the Opium Question; being in reply to a pam- phlet, by Samuel Warren, Esq., F.R.S., &c. ARTICLE Page II.-1. Reinaert de Vos, naer de oudste Beryming, 2. Reinaert de Vos, Episch Fabeldicht van de 3. Le Roman du Renard, traduit pour la première III.-1. Journal af Petrus Læstadius för första Aret 2. A Winter in Iceland and Lapland. By the IV.-1. Lebensnachrichten über Barthold George Nie- buhr aus Briefen desselben und aus Erinner- ungen seiner nächsten Freunde. 3 Bände. 2. Reminiscences of an intercourse with Niebuhr. By FRANCIS LIEBER. London: 1835. 3. A Vindication of Niebuhr's History of Rome, V.-1. Correspondence relative to the affairs of Ca- nada. Presented to both Houses of Parlia- ment by command of Her Majesty, 1840. 2. Papers respecting Emigration. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed March 3. Correspondence with the Secretary of State relative to New Zealand. Presented to the House of Commons by the Queen's com- |