dhesion to the Act among thousands of signatures. The levy
of the military forces, the arrangements for the taxation and the
necessary business of the Rising, were at once set on foot, and
Kosciuszko spent the rest of March 24th in these affairs and in his
heavy correspondence. On the same day he sent out four more special
addresses, one to the Polish and Lithuanian armies, a second to the
citizens of the nation, a third to the Polish clergy, and a fourth to
the women of Poland.

In the manifestos that Kosciuszko issued all through the course of the
Rising there is not only the note of the trumpet-call, bidding the
people grapple with a task that their leader promises them will be no
easy one; there is something more--a hint of the things that are beyond,
an undercurrent of the Polish spirituality that confer upon these
national proclamations their peculiarly Polish quality, emanating as
they do from the pen of a patriot, whose character is typically and
entirely Polish.

Kosciuszko appeals always to the ideal, to the secret and sacred faiths
of men's hearts; but with that strong practical sense with which his
enthusiasm was tempered and ennobled.

"Each of us has often sworn to be faithful to our mother country"--thus
runs his manifesto to the Polish and Lithuanian armies. "Let us keep
this faith with her once more, now when the oppressors, not satisfied
with the dismemberment of our soil, would tear our weapons from us, and
expose us unarmed to the last misery and scorn. Let us turn those
weapons against the breasts of our enemies, let us raise our country out
of slavery, let us restore the sanctity of the name of Pole,
independence to the nation, and let us merit the gratitude of our native
land and the glory dear to a soldier.

"Summoned by you I stand, comrades, at your head. I have given my life
to you; your valour and patriotism are the surety for the happiness of
our beloved country. ... Let us unite more strongly, let us unite the
hearts, hands, and endeavours of the inhabitants of the whole land.
Treachery thrust our weapon from our hands; let virtue raise again that
weapon, and then shall perish that disgraceful yoke under which we
groan.

"Comrades, can you endure that a foreign oppressor should disperse you
with shame and ignominy carry off honest men, usurp our arsenals, and
harass the remainder of our unhappy fellow-countrymen at will? No,
comrades, come with me; glory and the sweet consolation of b