After a great deal of discussion the Treaty of Reichenbach was
set aside, and the arrangements of the Treaty of Vienna were made. I
suppose this is what led the hon. member to his statement that
Austria would join with us, because in 1814 she was favourable to the
re-establishment of Poland as a separate kingdom, as one alternative
in contradiction to her partition; for any other ground than this I
cannot conceive for his assertion. If Austria were favourable to the
Polish insurrection subsequently, I can only say that it is a fact as
unknown to me as was the existence of the four days of danger, and
I am inclined to place both assertions on the same foundation. The
interest of Austria was in fact quite different; and it was owing to
her feeling respecting Poland, that the Russians ultimately succeeded
in crushing the insurrection. But then, says the hon. and learned
member, you should have accepted the offers of France. I have often
argued the question before, and what, I said before I say again. If
France had gone to the extent, of proposing to England to join, with
her against Russia, this would have been nothing more nor less than
the offer of a war in Europe, which, as our great object was to keep
down such a war, we should never have thought of accepting. It would
have been a war without the chance of anything but a war, for let us
look to the position of the kingdom of Poland--let us consider that it
was surrounded by Austria, by Russia, and by Prussia, that there was a
large Russian army actually in Poland, and that there was a Prussian
army on her frontiers--and we shall at once see that at the very first
intimation that England was about to take up arms with France for the
independence of Poland, the three armies would have fallen on the
Poles, the insurrection would have been crushed, the spark of Polish
independence extinguished; and all this having been done, the three
Powers would have marched their armies to the Rhine, and said: 'We
shall now make France and England answer for their conduct.
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