1794. CHAP. most ancient abbeys of the Benedictines in the country. XVII. On one side is seen the picturesque mount of Kosciusko; to the south, the distant summits of the Carpathian range. Less hilly, but by no means level, is the land north of Cracow, towards the upper Vistula. It consists of a plateau, eight or nine hundred feet above the sea, intersected by deep and precipitous ravines, like those of Saxon Switzerland in Germany, clothed with sable woods, and often surmounted by princely castles and noble chateaus now in ruins. On one of the precipices, surrounded by rich foliage, stands Oycow, once the splendid residence of Casimir the Great. Near the sources of the Pilica, in the middle of a vast forest, stands Ogrodzeniec, formerly the seat of the mighty Firley. Every thing in this romantic region reminds the traveller of departed greatness; and in traversing these deserted halls or ruined fanes, the mournful motto of the Courteneys recurs to the mind, Quomodo lapsus : quid feci ?”1* 1 Roepell, Geschichte Polens, i. 3, 4, 7. 7. in Poland. 66 Overrun by Jews, and but little supported either by Small cities the industry of their own inhabitants, or the wealth of the adjacent country, the towns of Poland exhibit a melancholy proof of the extent to which the folly of man can render unavailing all the choicest gifts of nature. Though the total population of the country, after the partition of 1772, was still above fourteen millions, Warsaw, Lublin, and Cracow, were the only towns in it which deserved the name of cities, the first of which contained at that period only ninety thousand inhabitants, the second, twenty-five, the third, twelve thousand. At this time, notwithstanding the great increase in every branch of * How am I fallen! what have I done! The following is the present population of the principal Polish towns: XVII. 1794. industry which has taken place under the severe but CHAP. regular and steady government of Russia, the Polish towns, considering the prodigious natural resources of the country, exhibit a deplorable picture of squalid misery, of useless pride, and general idleness. Such activity as does exist among them is almost entirely to be ascribed to the Jews, who form, as it were, a nation by themselves encamped in Poland, and have gradually, from their industrious habits, engrossed all the lucrative employments in it. The kingdom of Poland, properly so called, now entirely absorbed by Russia, contains 50,960 geographical miles— an extent of surface greater than that of England and Wales together, which contain 46,000, but which is thinly peopled by only 4,582,000 inhabitants. Such is the last remnant, and it under foreign dominion, of the once mighty empire of Poland; of the conquests of Boleslas, and the dominions of the Jagellons; of a country which, in the days of its greatness, carried its victorious arms from the Baltic to the Euxine, and from 543. Moscow to the Elbe.1 1 Malte Brun, vii. 527, 530, 8. disasters. This extraordinary decline has all arisen from one cause -that Poland has retained, till a very recent period, Causes of its the independence and equality of savage life. It has nei- continued ther been subjugated by more polished, nor has it itself vanquished more civilised states. The restlessness and valour of the pastoral character have remained unchanged during fifteen hundred years, neither grafted on the stock of urban liberty, nor moulded by the institutions of civilised society. Poland shows what in its original state was the equality of the shepherd life. Neither the resistance, nor the tastes, nor the intelligence, nor the blood of vanquished nations, have altered in its inhabitants the inclinations and passions of the savage character. We may see in its history what would have been the fate of all the Northern nations, if their fierce and unbending temper had not been tempered by the 2 Salv. i. 29. blood, and modified by the institutions,2 of a more advanced XVII. CHAP. civilisation, and in the anarchy of its diets, what would have been the representative system had the opinion of Montesquieu been well founded, that it was found in the woods. 1794. 9. It has retained the character unmixed. The shepherds who wandered in the plains of Sarmatia were, like all other pastoral tribes, inflamed by the strongpastoral and est passion for that savage freedom which consists in independent leading a life exempt from control-in roaming at will over boundless plains, resting where they chose, and departing when they wished. In their incursions into the Roman provinces they collected immense troops of captives, who were compelled to perform the works of drudgery, in which their masters disdained to engage; to attend the cattle, drive the waggons, and make the arms. Their imperious lords, acknowledging no superior themselves, knew no restraint in the treatment of their inferiors. They exercised a grievous tyranny over that unhappy race, with the same energy with which they would have resisted any attempt to encroach on their own independence. Such as Poland then was, it has ever since continued-a race of jealous freemen and iron-bound slaves; a vast and wild democracy ruling a captive people; 10. The representative from the Christian councils. It is a mistake to suppose that the representative system was found in the woods. What was found there was not system arose any thing resembling parliaments, but Polish equality. The pastoral nations of the North, equally with the citizens of the republics of antiquity, had no idea of the exercise of the rights of freemen but by the concourse of all the citizens. Of course, this privilege could only be exercised by a small number of them when the state became populous; and hence the narrow base on which, with them, the fabric of liberty was framed. The assemblies of the Champ-de-Mai, accordingly, like the early convocations "An iron yoke And senseless forum." XVII. 1794. ii. 286. of the Normans in England, were attended by all the CHAP. freemen who held of the king; and sixty thousand Norman horsemen assembled at Winchester, to deliberate with the Conqueror concerning the vanquished kingdom. 1 1 Thierry, This was the original system in all the European states, and this is what the Polish diet always continued to be. It was the Christian Church, the parent of so many lofty doctrines and new ideas, which had the glory of offering to the world, amidst the wreck of ancient institutions, the model of a form of government which gives to all classes the right of suffrage, by establishing a system which may embrace the remotest interests; which preserves the energy, and avoids the evils of democracy; which maintains the tribune, and shuns the strife of the forum. The Christian councils were the first example of representative assemblies; there were united the whole Roman world; there a priesthood, which embraced the civilised earth, assembled by means of delegates to deliberate on the affairs of the Universal Church. When Europe revived, it adopted the same model. Every nation by degrees borrowed the customs of the Church, then the sole depositary of the traditions of civilisation. It was the religion of the vanquished people-it was the clergy, who instructed them in this admirable system, which flourished in the Councils of Nice, Sardis, and Byzantium, centuries before it was heard of in Western Europe, and which did not arise in the woods of Germany, but in the catacombs of Rome during the sufferings of the primitive 108. Church. 2 2 Salv.i. 107, mixture of toms in Vienna was the frontier station of the Roman empire. 11. It never extended into the Sarmatian wilds; and hence the No interchief cause of the continued calamities of the descendants foreign cusof their first inhabitants. It was the infusion of the free Poland. spirit of the Scythian tribes into the decaying provinces of the Roman empire, and the union of barbaric energy with ancient and worn-out civilisation, which produced the glories of modern Europe. In Poland alone, savage XVII. 1794. CHAP. independence has ever remained unmodified by foreign admixture; Scythian descent, unchanged by foreign blood; barbaric passions, untamed by foreign wisdom ;and the customs of the earliest ages have continued the same down to the partition of the monarchy. After representative assemblies had been established for centuries in Germany, France, and England, the Poles adhered to the ancient custom of summoning every man to discuss, sword in hand, the affairs of the republic. A hundred thousand horsemen met in the field of Volo, near Warsaw, to deliberate on public affairs; and the distractions of these stormy diets weakened the nation. 1 Salv.i. 109. even more than the attacks of its foreign enemies. Among them was established, to their sorrow, the real system which was invented in the woods.1 Rulh. i. 10, 14. 12. differently constituted Europe. war. In Poland, accordingly, the structure of society was Its society essentially different from that which obtained in any other part of Europe. The feudal system, the chain of from any in military dependence from the throne to the cottage, has in every age been there unknown. The republic was composed entirely of two classes, both numerous and mutually hostile: the one destined to labour, dejection, and servitude; the other to independence, activity, and The iron band of a resident and firmly based body of foreign proprietors, which has so powerfully held together the discordant elements of modern society-which united the vanquished, strong in their civilisation, their laws, and their religion, and the victors, strong in their power, their valour, and their conquests; which bound alike the nobility and the priesthood, the municipalities and the throne; which in the wisdom of Providence, amidst many evils, produced innumerable blessings-was wanting to the Poles. Thence it is that Poland is no more. Thence it is that she has ever exhibited the spectacle of a nation without a people, since the numeRulh. i. 14. rous class of slaves could not deserve that name; of armies alike without discipline, infantry, or artillery; 2 of 2 Salv. i. 31. |