Great Britain; Foreign Office
Published: 2015-07-09
Total Pages: 510
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Excerpt from Confidential Correspondence of the British Government Respecting the Insurrection in Poland 1863 This volume is a reprint of confidential documents of the British Foreign Office concerning the diplomatic action relating to the Polish insurrection of 1863. The original copy of the collection reprinted here has the same title and date as the Parliamentary Paper (C. 3150) published by the British Government in the year 1863, and covers the same subject. But the volume which we reproduce differs from the Parliamentary Paper in its contents, and, in the particulars of the title page, by the remarks: "Printed for the use of the Foreign Office" and: "Confidential." Whereas the Confidential Book presents an unbroken chain of the diplomatic correspondence referring to the events connected with the Polish insurrection for the first quarter of 1863, the Parliamentary Paper, dealing with the same period, contains out of a total of 443 documents only 170, and many of these in fragments. The original copy of the Confidential Book is now to be found in the library of the Academy of Science in Cracow. As far as I was able to ascertain, there is no duplicate of it in any of the great public libraries in London, or in special collections like the Russell Collection in the British Library of Political Science. The documents of the Foreign Office, placed in the Public Record Office, are accessible to the public up to the year 1831, and for those having special permits up to 1861, so that the period of time to which the documents relate remains still sealed by official secrecy. When, in a course of a few years, special permits are extended to the year 1863, students of that period will still be by no means sure of giving to the public all that they think important, as they are expected to submit their notes and extracts to the Foreign Office before being allowed to print them. So far as it appears from the catalogue of the documents in the Public Record Office, the Confidential book is not there, although some letters of Lord Napier, British Ambassador at St. Petersburgh, mentioned in the catalogue but inaccessible to the public, may be those printed in the Confidential Book; but this, of course, I have not been able to verify. The original is, in all probability, a unique volume except for those which are preserved in the archives of the Foreign Office. The reprint is an exact copy of the original; almost too exact, as some obviously misspelt names are left uncorrected. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.