DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
147 
 
r country to the countries whose rights have long been attacked, and 
we are fighting with Prussia. Surrounded by the representatives of 
 
my empire, I douby rejoice at thne success with which heaven has blessed
the 
arms of Austria, and at the glorious victories to whi h it has conducted
our flag, 
for I know that my faithful people are united with me in a sentiment of joy
for 
the proper appreciation of the brave men wko have shed their blood for our

honor, united everywhere where the name of Ausfria has to be upheld. In the

face of the world you have rendered out of your own mouths this testimony
to 
our union, and that union we will preserve as a precious treasure, for impreg-

nable power is based upon it. Austria has shown that in her reinvigorated

form she has preserved the good old spirit, and carried with her into the
new 
liberal paths of her- governmentallife the inheritance of her strength and
her 
glory. 
Mr. Motley to Mr. Seward. 
No. 47.]                        LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES, 
'Vienna, March 7, 1864. 
SIR: I send you herewith a translation of the document by which Austrian

Poland is declared to be in a state of siege. 
This measure has taken few people in these regions by surprise, although
it 
would seem to have been unexpected in foreign countries. 
By a reference to many of my despatches, and especially to No. 39, of date

November 24, 1863, with the accompanying documents, you will observe that

:something very like a state of siege has for a long time existed in Galicia
and 
Cracow. The formal proclamation of this condition is not generally thought

here to be premature, nor is it connected, as I believe, with any secret
political 
combinations with other powers. 
It has been notorious that the "national government," concerning
whose 
doings I have often spoken in this correspondence, had extended its net-work

almost as thoroughly over the Austrian as over the Russian portion of Poland.

Taxes have been levied, troops enlisted, tribunals erected, capital punishment
de- 
creed and inflicted by secret and wonderfully constructed machinery, in tlefiance

of the legal authorities, with a precision almost without a parallel in history.
An 
orgafnized assassination, directed by unseen authority, makes the whole popula-

tion shudder. In brief, although the religious strife which is so envenomed
in 
Russian Poland is absent in Gallicia-although the disaffected portion of
the 
population is supposed to be a minority of the whole, and although the wrongs

which have driven the Poles into revolt against the Russian government have

not been committed by the Austrian authorities, yet the difference, after
all, is 
only in the comparative intensity and extent of the revolutionary fever in
the 
one and the other territory. 
With so much of danger and of disaffection in its own domains, it may well

be supposed that the imperial royal government has not been proceeding very

cheerfully in the crusade against Denmark. To rescue one nationality in the

northwest of Europe from oppression by its sovereign does not seem the most

logical or congenial of tasks for an empire which'is itself compounded of
a 
dozen different nationalities, many of them in a state of chronic discontent,
and 
one of. them in a state of rebellion, so far advanced as to require the application

of martial law. These reflections are so obvious as to suggest themselves
to 
every mind, and hardly require to be dwelt upon. Neveheless, Austria seems

to be wading every day, but against its will, into deeper and deeper water.
If. 
the military process now on foot, which is expressly declared not to be war,

although some thousands have already been killed and wounded, foreign terri-