III
Oppression has now reached its greatest height in Russian Poland since the partition of the kingdom. So complete is the gagging of the press that the refutation of the arguments in Bismarck's speeches, or any attack upon them, was strictly forbidden. No one even dared to show that the Polish agitation with which, according to the prince, it was necessary to contend, for very good reasons only consisted in an unbroken determination to maintain the nationality and language against the foreign conqueror, who, on his side, sets the whole machinery of state in operation, and uses all its powers.
The aim of the government in Russian Poland, as already mentioned, is especially directed to two objects: the Russianising of the ownership of the soil, and the eradication of the Polish language.
The ukase of 1865, which has been spoken of, forbade the Poles in the old Polish provinces to devise their land to any others than their children. In March 1886, however, the Russian Courts hit upon a decision of even broader import, since a will in which a Lithuanian proprietor had left his estate to his son was declared invalid, and the land was sold by auction.
In the Kingdom of Poland it is still permitted to speak Polish in the open street, and to write a notice in Polish, provided that above it the same is written in Russian; but anywhere outside of the so-called kingdom—in the whole of Lithuania towards the north, and in the south as far as Odessa—everywhere, where culture and language in the
66
