thought it necessary to publish some defence of
their conduct; and, in separate pamphlets, they attempted to prove that
they had legitimate claims on Poland, and that their present violent
seizures were only just resumptions of their own territory or equivalent
to it.

Rulhiere says that Catharine only made her claim as a just
indemnification for the trouble and expense which she had devoted to
Poland; this, however, it will be found by referring to her defence, is
not the case. She sets forth the great kindness she had shown the
republic by insuring the election of a Piast (Stanislaus), and uses
these remarkable words on the subject: "That event was necessary to
restore the Polish liberty to its ancient lustre, to insure the elective
right of the monarchy, and to destroy foreign influence, which was so
rooted in the state, and which was the continual source of trouble and
contest." She then exclaims against the confederates:

"Their ambition and cupidity, veiled under the phantom of religion and
the defence of their laws, pervade and desolate this vast kingdom,
without the prospect of any termination of this madness but its entire
ruin." She then proceeds with her "Deduction," endeavoring to prove,
from old authors, that it was not till 1686 that the Polish limits were
extended beyond the mouth of the Dwina and the little town of Stoika on
the Dnieper, five miles below Kiow. The following is a specimen of the
lawyer-like sophistry which the Empress employs to establish her claim
to the Russian territory, which remained in the hands of the Poles after
the treaty in 1686:

"The design of such a concession being only to put an end to a bloody
war more promptly, and by a remedy as violent as a devastation (_aussi
violent qu'une devastation_), to insure tranquillity of neighborhood
between two rival and newly reconciled nations, it necessarily follows
that every act on the part of the subjects of the republic of Poland,
contrary to such intention, has, _ipso facto_, revived Russia's
indisputable and unalienated right to all that extent of territory. It
must be observed, also, that this arrangement about the frontier was
only provisional and temporary, since it is expressly said that it shall
only remain so _until it has been otherwise amicably settled_.

"The object was, therefore, to give the nations time to lay aside their
inveterate hatred; and to remove immediate causes of dispute between the
different subjects, an