476 GALLICIA AND LODOMERIA. 



in every respect as the Roman-catholic subjects of the kingdom. The 

 king gave no answer to the petition of the dissidents ; but the matter 

 was referred to the diet, which was held the following year, when the 

 ministers of the courts of Russia, London, Berlin, and Copenhagen, sup- 

 ported their pretensions. The diet appeared to receive the complaints 

 of the dissidents with great moderation, as to the free exercise of their 

 worship ; which gave some flattering expectations that the affair would 

 be happily terminated. But the intrigues of the king of Prussia ap- 

 pear to have prevented this : for, though he openjy professed to be a 

 zealous defender of the cause of the dissidents, it was manifest, from the 

 event, that his great aim was to promote the views of his own ambition. 

 The intervention of the Russians in the affairs of Poland also gave 

 great disgust to all parties in the kingdom. The whole nation ran 

 into confederacies formed in distinct provinces ; the popish clergy 

 were active in opposing the cause of the dissidents ; and this unfor- 

 tunate country became the theatre of the most cruel and complicated 

 of all wars, partly civil, partiy religious, and partly foreign. The con- 

 fusion, devastation, and civil war, continued in Poland during the years 

 17 i , 1770, and 1771, whereby the whole face of the country was al- 

 most destroyed ; many of the principal popish families retired into fo- 

 reign states with their effects ; and had it not been for a body of Rus~ 

 sian troops, whicn acted as guards to the king at Warsaw, that city 

 had likewise exhibited a scene of plunder and massacre. To those 

 complicated evils were added, in the year 1770, that most dreadful 

 scourge the pestilence, which spread from the frontiers of Turkey to 

 the adjoining provinces of Podolia, Volhynia, and the Ukraine; and 

 in these provinces, it is said, swept off 250,000 people. Meanwhile 

 some of the Polish confederates interceded with the Turks to assist 

 them against their powerful oppressors; and a war ensued between 

 the Russians and the Turks on account of Poland. The conduct of the 

 grand seignior, and of the Ottoman Porte, towards the distressed Poles, 

 was just and honourable, and the very reverse of that of their Christian, 

 catholic, and apostolic neighbours.* 



* In 1764, the empress of Russia transmitted to the court of Warsaw an act of 

 renunciation, signed with her own hand, and sealed with the seal of" the empire ; 

 in which she declares, "That she did by no means arrogate either to herself, her 

 heirs and successors, or to her empire, any right or claim to the districts or terri- 

 tories which are actually in possession, or subject to the authority, of the kingdom 

 of Poland, or great duchy of Lithuania ; but that, on the contrary, her said majesty 

 would guarantee to the said kingdom of Poland and duchy of Lithuania all the 

 immunities, lands, territories, and districts, which the said kingdom and duchy 

 ought by right to possess, or did now actually possess; and would at all times, 

 and for ever, maintain them in the full and free enjoyment thereof, against the 

 attempts of all and every one who should, at any time, or on any pretext, endeav 

 our, to dispossess them of the same." In the same year did the king of Prussia 

 sign, with his own hand, ait act, wherein he declared, " That he had no claims, 

 formed no pretensions on Poland, or any part thereof: that lie renounced all 

 claims on that kingdom, either as king of Prussia, elector of Brandenburg-, or duke 

 of Pomerania" In the same instrument he guarantees, in the most solemn man- 

 ner, the territories and rights of Poland against every power whatever. The 

 empress queen of Hungary, so late as the month of January 1771, wrote a letter 

 with her own hand to the king of Poland, in which she gave him the strongest 

 assurances, " That her friendship for him and the republic was firm and unaltera- 

 ble ; that the motions of her troops ought not to alarm him; that she had never 

 entertained a thought of seizing any part of his dominions, nor would even suffer 

 any other power to do it." From which, according to the political creed of prin- 

 ces, we may infer, that to guarantee the rights, liberties, and revenues of a state, 

 means to annihilate those liberties, seize upon those rights, and appropriate those 

 revenues to their own use. Such is the faith of princes ! 



