244 RUSSIA IN EUROPE, 



East. Yet at that very time tlie state was on the point of making shipwreck. 

 With a view to the centralization of its power, it had become the defender of 

 Roman Catholicism against the Protestant and Russian Churches, according to 

 Lelewel the true cause of its ruin. The Cossacks and the Ukranian peasantry- 

 revolted, and the state wasted its energies in repressing them. So early as 1661 

 Kino- John Casimir foretold that the commonwealth would become the inheritance 

 of aliens : a century thereafter his forebodings had been fulfilled. 



A greater disadvantage even than her geographical position was the want of 

 cohesion amongst her inhabitants, especially in the Polish provinces proper. 

 Owing to the absence of good frontiers on the east and west, the warlike element 

 of the small gentry, the szIacJita, or knights of heraldry, had been developed to 

 the highest pitch, and without any further relation to the lower orders. The want 

 of 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 resj)ects 

 a distinct people, with interests entirely opposed to those of the rest of the 

 inhabitants, while still serving as the medium of communication for all, and thus 

 constituting a sort of burgess class in the country. Through them the economical 

 life of the people was promoted, and yet they were not of the people. In times of 

 danger they disappeared, and the distinct classes and communities that had been 

 kept apart by them remained divided and distracted. This source of disorganiza- 

 tion thus aggravated that which was caused by the division of the nation into two 

 hostile classes, the nobles and serfs. What ruined Poland was not so much the 

 want of discipline as privilege. The peasantry, formerly owners of the land in 

 common, had gradually lost both land and rights. The nobles had become 

 absolute 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 the name of " Commonwealth," was, nevertheless, nothing 

 more than a confederacy of a thousand despotic monarchies. The lords refused to 

 take their share of the public burdens, and although there was a poll tax univer- 

 sally binding, the landed proprietors were always able to avoid it. The state had 

 never developed a financial system, and the ojDposition of the aristocracy rendered 

 it impossible to obtain statistical returns of the least value. 



Doubtless the bravery of the Poles often rose to the sublime, and no nation 

 produced more heroes in misfortune. During the wars men and women devoted 

 themselves to exile, torture, and death with a singleness of purpose never 

 surpassed ; yet even then they still remained as a people divided into two hostile 

 camps. The very champions of Polish freedom could not or dared not free the 

 Poles themselves. The serfs still remained bound to the glebe. Kosciusko 

 doubtless desired the abolition of serfdom ; but the peasantry who followed him to 

 the field enjoyed freedom only during the war, and his decree of emancipation was 

 so vaguely worded that it remained inoperative. Later on, under the constitution 

 of the ephemeral Duchy of Warsaw, the enfranchisement of the peasantry was 

 officially proclaimed, but they received no land, and their status was changed only 



