Page:Constitutional Charter of the Kingdom of Poland, In the Year 1815.pdf/43

 from this time only passive instruments of the will of the grand duke. What the king’s lieutenant could never have done, because his ordinances to be valid required to be countersigned by a responsible minister, the grand duke, under the direction of his Russian counsellors, effected by orders from the head of his council of officers, the Russian general, Courouta. He laid it down as a principle, that according to all military law, the police ought to be dependent upon the commander-in-chief of the forces. After this, every affair in which the grand duke was disposed to intermeddle was an affair of police. The most arbitrary arrests passed under the name of cautionary police measures. The Secretary of State, Kossecki (infamous for his malversations) has consecrated this principle in his official replies to those who complained of the abuses of which they were the victims. These abuses had provoked resistance, even under the reign of the emperor Alexander, but the emperor had never failed to enjoin a blind obedience to the orders of his brother. At the accession of the emperor Nicholas, the power of the grand duke was yet farther developed; and from all this, there resulted a state of things truly tremendous. The constitutional power of the lieutenant and of the council of administration was set in motion by an authority modelled on the despotic forms of the Russian government.

The introduction of Russian troops was only to be admitted in particular cases; instead of which a body of 10,000 Russian troops was permanently settled in the country. The greater part of this force was quartered at Warsaw, and served to support the encroachments upon Polish liberty. This was nothing less than treating Poland as a conquered province, in direct violation of the stipulations in the treaties. For this reason the Poles now require that it shall be provided by way of amendment to their constitution, that Russian troops shall not be introduced without the consent of the Diet.