Note 28 — Front matter (continued 2)

Some letters of the Emperor Nicholas were found among the papers of Chlopicki, in which the Emperor expressed his thanks to him for having taken the Dictatorship, and for the service which he had done to him, by the preservation of public tranquillity. The emperor exhorted him to follow 'the conditions which had been prescribed to him.' The conditions here referred to could not be found. The reader will permit me to dwell, for a moment, upon the mode of conduct, on the part of the Emperor Nicholas, which is here indicated.

What conditions could Nicholas propose to the Dictator, which the nation should not know of? If those conditions were compatible with justice and with the honor of the nation, why was all this secrecy necessary? If they were incompatible with justice and our honor, the Dictator certainly could not have it in his power to make the nation accept of them. On the contrary, the nation who had given him its confidence, the moment that it should have been convinced that the Dictator had intended to compromise its honor, would have despised him as a traitor, and he would have fallen a sacrifice to its indignation. To wish to induce him, on his own responsibility, to commit acts contrary to the honor of the nation, is to be willing, for selfish ends, to induce him to do that which would render him infamous in history.

Is this a course becoming a King? A conduct so insincere, Machiavelian, and even malignant, is based on the system of intrigue, and is in correspondence with the accustomed policy of the Russian cabinet,—a policy which has always brought divisions and misery upon the nations who have been under her power. Such a system, however, is far from being ultimately favorable to the interests of Russia herself, for it can never lead to a sure result. Sooner or later duplicity will be discovered, and the more a nation has been deceived, the deeper will be its determination of vengeance.

The letters referred to, which, I believe, are now in the hands of some of our countrymen, will be, in the eyes of the world, a new justification of our revolution.