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 LAMARTINE

TO A DEPUTATION OF POLES

(1848)

owes you not only good wishes and tears, but moral and eventual assistance in return for the Polish blood with which you have bedewed every battlefield in Europe during our great wars. France will pay her debt; rely on that; trust to the hearts of thirty-six millions of Frenchmen. Only leave to France that which exclusively belongs to her—the season, the moment, and the form, of which providence shall determine the choice and suitability, to restore you, without aggression or bloodshed, to that place which is your due in the catalog of nations.

You may be acquainted with the principles which the provisional government of the Republic has universally adopted in its foreign policy. In case you are not, let me recapitulate them: The Republic is undoubtedly republican, and she openly proclaims it to the world; but the