Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 March 1886 — The Poles in Prussia. [ARTICLE]

The Poles in Prussia.

The Prussian Government, in the summer of 1835, issued an order for the expulsion of all Poles from the country. They were to be allowed a certain time to dispose of their effects, and at the end of that time were obliged to depart, whatever their circumstances or condition of health. As the Russian Government refused to admit these banished people unless they could prove that they were born in that country, their hapless condition aroused much sympathy in the German states, and upon the meeting of the Reichstag, or German Parliament, a resolution was passed requesting an explanation of this action. To this Chancellor Bismarck replied that the matter was a Prussian affair wholly, and as he could not admit the right of the Reichstag to concern itself in those affairs that were exclusively the province of the states, he could give no explanation. Subsequently, liowever, a similar resolution was passed by the Prussian Landtag, or Local Assembly. To this Bismarck replied, Jan. 28, 18SG, at some length. He said ihat the primary cause of the Government’s action was the disloyalty of the Poles to the German crown. They were always, he said, engaged in intrigues, endeavoring to set foreign states against Prussia, and keeping up a continual agitation against the Government. The Government had therefore decided to banish the evil element that made all this trouble. The Government had decided to purchase all the real estate owned by the Polish nobles in Prussian Poland, and place German colonists on the land hitherto occupied by the expelled people. None of the Poles were to be allowed to repossess the land, even by renting it, and to make its colonization more permanently valuable to the German Empire, the colonists were to be forever prohibited from marrying Poles.. While it is admitted that the Government will have some difficulty in carrying out these extreme measures if they are not concurred in by a majority of the Prussian Assembly, it is certain that neither Bismarck nor the King is likely to concede a single point of the plan, and their influence is quite powerful enough to bear down all opposition to these measures.— Inter Ocean.