William James Linton:

10) Help For Poland,

Brantwood, Coniston, Windermere, 1854

One-leaf pamphlet, signed and dated by Linton, Brantwood, April 1854.

“Subscriptions should be sent to Messrs. Worcell etc.” This pamphlet is addressed to the British people, to support the right Polish party; not the monarchical one, which was backed by the English government, but the republican one in exile with its accredited leaders. In the early forties, “Mazzini introduced me to two Polish friends, refugees and exiles like himself, Stanislas Worcell and Karl Stolzman. Worcell had been the owner of large estates, which he forfeited on account of his prominent share in the Polish insurrection of 1830. He raised a troop on his own lands, fought his way into Warsaw, and sat there in the Polish Senate. He was of noble presence, and of most remarkable culture and intelligence, the chief of the Democratic party in the Polish Emigration. (...) He was Mazzini’s closest friend. Stolzman was an old soldier, who in his youth had served under Napoleon. (...) Meeting with Mazzini in Switzerland, he aided in the formation of the Society of Young Europe, founded by Mazzini to bring together the Republicans of the different countries. In 1844, letters from abroad to Mazzini and Stolzman were opened at the English General Post-Office in London. Of course they were in correspondence with Italian and Polish patriots.” (Memories)

Linton refers here to the notorious Mazzini – Letters scandal, in which the English home secretary James Graham had been involved. Linton had earned wide reputation among the radicals through his substantial contributions to the detection of this Victorian Watergate.