This strong condemnation proceeded, of course, from the West of Europe;
the Powers of the Centre, Prussia and Austria, were not likely to admit
that this spoliation fell into the category of acts morally reprehensible
and carrying the taint of anti-social guilt. As to Russia, the third
party to the crime, and the originator of the scheme, she had no national
conscience at the time. The will of its rulers was always accepted by
the people as the expression of an omnipotence derived directly from God.
As an act of mere conquest the best excuse for the partition lay simply
in the fact that it happened to be possible; there was the plunder and
there was the opportunity to get hold of it. Catherine the Great looked
upon this extension of her dominions with a cynical satisfaction. Her
political argument that the destruction of Poland meant the repression of
revolutionary ideas and the checking of the spread of Jacobinism in
Europe was a characteristically impudent pretence. There may have been
minds here and there amongst the Russians that perceived, or perhaps only
felt, that by the annexation of the greater part of the Polish Republic,
Russia approached nearer to the comity of civilised nations and ceased,
at least territorially, to be an Asiatic Power.
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