The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

241 RUSSIA IN EUROPE.East. Yet at that very time the state was on the point of making shipwreck.With a view to the centralization of its power, it had become the defender ofRoman Catholicism against the Protestant and Russian Churches, according toLelewel the true cause of its ruin. The Cossacks and the Ukranian peasantryrevolted,and the state wasted its energies in repressing them. So early as 1661Ring John Casimir foretold that the commonwealth would become the inheritanceof aliens: a century thereafter his forebodings had been fulfilled.A greater disadvantage even than her geographical position was the want ofcohesion amongst her inhabitants, especially in the Polish provinces proper.Owing to the absence of good frontiers on the east and west, the warlike elementof the small gentry, the szlachta, or knights of heraldry, had been developed tothe highest pitch, and without any further relation to the lower orders.The wantof a middle class between these two extremes was later on supplied by the Jews,who are here still more numerous than in any other European country. But,however attached to the Polish soil, these strangers still remained in other respectsa distinct people, with interests entirely opposed to those of the rest of theinhabitants, while still serving as the medium of communication for all, and thusconstituting a sort of burgess class in the country.Through them the economicallife of the people was promoted, and yet they were not of the people.In times ofdanger they disappeared, and the distinct classes and communities that had beenkept apart by them remained divided and distracted.This source of disorganizationthus aggravated that which was caused by the division of the nation into twohostile classes, the nobles and serfs. What ruined Poland was not so much thewant of discipline as privilege. The peasantry, formerly owners of the land incommon, had gradually lost both land and rights. The nobles had becomeabsolute masters, and the exiled Stanislaus Leszczynski might well exclaim," Poland is the only country in which the people have forfeited all human rights."The state, which bore tho name of " Commonwealth," was, nevertheless, nothingmore than a confederacy of a thousand despotic monarchies. The lords refused totake their share of the public burdens, and although there was a poll tax universallybinding, the landed proprietors were always able to avoid it. The state hadnever developed a financial system, and the opposition of the aristocracy renderedit impossible to obtain statistical returns of the least value.Doubtless the bravery of the Poles often rose to the sublime, and no nationproduced more heroes in misfortune. During the wars men and women devotedthemselves to exile, torture, and death with a singleness of purpose neversurpassed ;yet even then they still remained as a people divided into two hostilocamps. The very champions of Polish freedom could not or dared not free thePoles themselves. The serfs still remained bound to the glebe. Kosciuskodoubtless desired the abolition of serfdom ; but the peasantry who followed him tothe field enjoyed freedom only during the war, and his decree of emancipation wasso vaguely worded that it remained inoperative.Later on, under the constitutionof the ephemeral Duchy of Warsaw, the enfranchisement of the peasantry wasofficially proclaimed, but they received no land, and their status was changed only