n Poland, Pu ai and Present. [JAN. 



uncultured powers, which are tbinul among the heroes of semi-barbarian 

 lite. The chief p;irt of his reign was passed in war, in which he was 

 generally successful, defeating the Teutonic knights, who invaded him 

 from Prussia, the Russians, and the wild tribes who were perpetually 

 making irruptions into the states of their more civilized neighbours. 

 Casimir was memorable for having been the first to give the Jews those 

 privileges which make Poland their chief refuge to this day. After the 

 loss of his first wife, Ann of Lithuania, he had married the daughter of 

 the Landgrave of Hesse. But like humbler men, he had found the yoke 

 matrimonial too heavy for his philosophy. His queen was a shrew, and 

 in the license of the age he took the beautiful Esther, a Jewess, to supply 

 her place. The Jewess, who was a woman of striking attainments as 

 well as of distinguished personal attractions, obtained an unequalled 

 ascendancy over the king ; he suffered her to educate his two daughters 

 by her, as Jewesses, and gradually gave way to all her demands for pro- 

 tection and privilege to her unfortunate people. 



But he had the higher merit of being the legislator of Poland, or 

 rather the protector of those feelings by which nature tells every human 

 being that he is entitled to freedom. The abuse and the reform are less 

 a part of the history of Poland than of human wrong and its obvious 

 remedy. 



For a long course of years the lords of the Fiefs had pronounced the 

 people born on their estates to be slaves, incapable of following their own 

 will, or removing from the Fief without the permission of their masters. 

 Casimir, roused by the complaints of his subjects, and justly indignant 

 at the usurpation, abolished those claims, and declared every farmer at 

 liberty, if injured by the proprietor of the soil, to sell his property and 

 go where he pleased. A formidable part of the abuse was the right 

 claimed by the proprietors of giving their tenants as pledges to each other 

 for their debts; which had produced the most cruel sufferings, for the 

 pledge was a prisoner and an exile, perhaps for life. Casimir indig- 

 nantly broke up this tissue of crime ; framed a code giving the people 

 equality of right w r ith their lords, and while he made the oppressive 

 nobles his enemies, gained from the nation the patriotic and immortal 

 title of " King of the Farmers/' 



It had been the custom of the lords to seize the property of a tenant 

 who died without children. The king declared this to be an abuse, and 

 enacted that the property should go to the nearest relative. A depu- 

 tation from the peasantry, who had come to lay their grievances before 

 him, were asked " Who have assailed you ? were they men ?" " They 

 were our landlords/' was the answer. " Then," said Casimir,, " if you 

 were men too, had you no sticks nor stones ?" 



As he was without sons, he appointed his nephew Lewis, King of Hun- 

 gary, his successor. The deputation of the nobles sent to convey this in- 

 telligence, exhibited that free spirit of the north, which about a century 

 before, on a day never to be forgotten by Englishmen, the famous 19th of 

 June, 1215, had boldly extorted the great Charter from the fears of the 

 bigot and tyrant John. * Lewis was compelled, as the price of his crown, 

 to sign an instrument, exempting the Polish nation from all additional 

 taxes,, and all pretences for royal subsidies; abolishing the old and ruin- 

 ous custom of living at free choice on the people in his journeys : and 

 as an effectual barrier against kingly ambition, the vice of those days of 



