ABSTRACT

There has been lavished upon Poland more false sentiment, deluded sympathy and amiable ignorance than any other subject of the present age'. So argued Richard Cobden in his tract on Russia (1836). He thought that Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cheshire and Staffordshire could, with their skill and industry, 'combat the whole Russian empire'. English liberals like Thomas Campbell, one of the founders of the University of London, and Sir Thomas Wyse, the eminent Irish educationalist, had joined forces to form local pro-Polish groups in places like Hull, Manchester and Birmingham. Poland's cause was Britain's: rights were rights, no matter where the battle was being fought. When further Polish and Hungarian refugees arrived in Liverpool in 1851, a committee was formed to find work for them in the North. Some went to Newcastle where they were assisted by the wealthy young Joseph Cowen, who began to devote himself to the Polish Democratic Society in London.