Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/67

 this answer, which throws a flood of light on the deplorable action which Mr. Cowen has seen fit to take with regard to the Eastern question.

For years his house at Blaydon Burn, near Newcastle, had been an asylum for the victims of Russian tyranny. For years he had spent two-thirds of an ample income in keeping alive the patriotism of the Polish insurgents and other enemies of the White Tsar. To him Poland was and is a land of heroes and mart3'rs; Russia every thing that is the reverse. So thoroughly indentified [sic] was Mr. Cowen with the anti-Russian sentiments of the Polish and Hungarian exiles, that orders were issued by all the despotic powers of Europe—by Russia, Prussia, France, Spain, and Italy—for his arrest should he venture to set foot on their soil.

Not able to catch the son, the police twice arrested his father, the late Sir Joseph Cowen, in his stead. His home at Blaydon Burn was incessantly watched by the spies of continental governments.

When Cowen and Mazzini met, it was neither in Newcastle nor London, but generally in some quiet midway town or village, where they could not readily be subjected to espionage. The despots of the continent had, in point of fact, very good reason to regard Mr. Cowen as a dangerous personage. He was not merely a wealthy Englishman who gave of his substance freely in order that the axe might be laid by others to the root of the upas-tree of their authority, but one who did not scruple, when occasion offered, to levy war against the oppressors, so to speak, on his own account.

During the last rising in Poland he fitted out, at his