sign a _voluntary_ petition, expressing their
ardent wish to be received into the pale of the orthodox Russian
Church. The names of those who could not write were signed by
others, and whoever showed the slightest manifestation of his
desire to remain a Catholic, after having performed this
_voluntary_ act, was treated as one guilty of high treason. The
same proceedings as at Worodzkow were adopted in a hundred other
places, whose _voluntary_ petitions were obtained with bloody
stripes of the knout. The unfortunate petitioners were, in order
to perform this operation, dragged from their homes, sometimes to
a distance of 18 or 20 versts (1-1/2 verst to an English mile), and
those who steadfastly refused to sign were treated by the Russian
papas with the utmost cruelty and indignity. They were put into
irons, barred up in cold prisons without any fire, starved, thrown
into large tubs filled with an icy and stinking water, and most
mercilessly beaten, so that many, in order to escape from such
torments, signed the _voluntary_ petition, with hearts as bleeding
as their bodies. Many succumbed under these fearful persecutions,
which were not much inferior to that which the Christians had
suffered under the reign of Diocletian. The Papa Stratanovich
extorted the signatures made by the feverishly agitated hands of
the clerical victims, whilst his lay associate, Waimainich
Zokalinski, performed the same charitable office to other
unfortunate individuals. Some of these miserable persons were
reduced by starvation and every kind of ill-treatment to such a
condition, that they were almost unconscious of what they did in
signing the _voluntary_ petitions for the reception into the pale
of the Russian Church, all of which were obtained by more or less
similar means.

"It appears from a great mass of documentary evidence, containing
the names of localities and persons, that the proselytism of 1841
was carried out in the following manner:--Military authorities, and
Russian papas or priests, visited Catholic villages, and having
called together the Catholic peasantry and landowners of the
neighbourhood, declared that they must join the Russian Church,
throwing into prison those who resisted the summons. In the most
part of cases, a petition for this object was signed by some hired
wretches