XVII. a state undefended by frontier towns; of cities without a CHAP. race of burghers, without commerce or industry; of a republic where the supreme power was practically annihilated, for the restraints on it were omnipotent. long 1794. 13. retain the taste and Nomad the habits of the the tribes. The tastes and the habits of the nomad tribes have, almost to our time, predominated among the Poles. They still Their language, their manners, even their dress, remained unchanged. The frequent use of furs, flowing pelisse, caps of the skins of wild beasts, absence of linen, and the magnificence of their arms, are the characteristics of their national costume. Till within these few years they wore the singular crown of hair, which in the time of the Scythians encircled their bare heads. The passion for a wandering life has been transmitted to their latest posterity, and remains undiminished amidst all the refinements of civilisation. To travel in the country, living in tents, to pass from one encampment to another, has been in every age one of the most favourite amusements of the Polish noblesse; and it was in such occupations that the last years of the great Sobieski were employed. This fierce and unbending race of freemen preserved inviolate, as the Magna Charta of Poland, the right to assemble in person, and deliberate on the public affairs of the state. That terrible assembly, where all the proprietors of the soil were convoked, constituted at once the military strength of the nation in war, and its legislature in peace. There were discussed alike the public concerns of the republic, the private feuds or grievances of individuals, the ques- 1 Rulh. i. 15. tions of peace or war, the formation of laws, the division Salv. i. 39. of plunder, and the election of the sovereign.1 and indomi In the eyes of this haughty race, the will of a freeman 14. was a thing which no human power should attempt to Their early subjugate; and therefore the fundamental principle of all table demotheir deliberations was, that unanimity was essential to cratic spirit. every resolution. This relic of savage equality, of which the traces are still to be found in the far-famed jury XVII. 1794. 66 66 CHAP system of England, was productive of incalculable evils to the republic; and yet so blind are men to the cause of their own ruin, that it was uniformly adhered to with enthusiastic resolution by the Poles, and is even spoken of with undisguised admiration by their national historians. But all human institutions must involve some method of extricating public affairs; and as unanimity was not to be expected among so numerous and impassioned a body as their diet, and the idea was not to be entertained for a moment of constraining the will of any citizen by an adverse majority, they adopted the only other means of expediting business, they massacred the recusants. This measure appeared to them an incomparably lesser evil than carrying measures by a majority. Because," said they, acts of violence are few in number, and affect only the individual sufferers; but if once the precedent is established of compelling the minority to yield to the majority, there is an end to any security for the liberties of the people." It may easily be imagined what discords and divisions were nursed up under such a system. Fanned by the flame excited at all their national diets, the different provinces of the republic have in every age nourished the most profound animosity against each other. The waywodes and palatinates into which every province was divided, for the administration of justice, or the arrangements of war, became divided against each other, and transmitted the feuds of the earliest times to their remotest descendants. "That hierarchy of enmities," as the Poles expressed it, descended even to private families in the progress of time, religious discord divided the whole republic into two parties nearly equal in strength, and implacable in hostility; and Poland was transformed into an immense 1 Salv. i. 40, field of combat, destined never to know either tran11, 24, 25. quillity or truce till it passed under the yoke of a foreign master.1 41. Rulh. i. The clergy that important body who have done so XVII. 1794. 15. formed a any in much for the freedom of Europe-never formed a sepa- CHAP. rate order, or possessed any spiritual influence in Poland. Composed entirely of the nobles, they had no sympathy with the serfs, whom they disdained to admit to any of Clergy their sacred offices. Their bishops interfered, not as different prelates, but as barons—not with the wand of peace, but body from with the sword of dissension. The priesthood formed in Europe. their stormy diets a sort of tribunes, subject to the passions of the multitude, but exempt, by reason of their sacred character, from the danger which constituted a check upon their extravagance. This was another consequence of the Poles not having settled in a conquered country. The clergy of the other European states, drawn from the vanquished people, formed a link between them and their conquerors; and, by reason of the influence which their intellectual superiority conferred, gradually softened the yoke of bondage to the vanquished; the Polish priesthood, composed entirely of the nobility, added to the Salv. i. 62 chains of slavery the fetters of superstition.1 16. never en gaged in any profession As if every thing was destined to concur for the disorganisation of Poland, the inequality of fortunes, and Nobility the rise of urban industry, the source of so much benefit to all the other European monarchies, was there produc- or trade. tive only of evil. Fearful of being compelled to divide their power with the inferior classes of society, when elevated by riches and intelligence, the nobles affixed the stigma of dishonour to every lucrative or useful profession. Their maxim was, that nobility is not lost by indigence or domestic servitude, but is totally destroyed by commerce and industry. Their constant policy was to debar the serfs from all knowledge of the use of arms, both because they had learned to fear, and because they continued to despise them. In fine, the Polish nobility, strenuously resisting every gradation of power as a usurpation, every kind of industry as a degradation, every attempt at superiority as an outrage, remained to "Salv. i. 72. the close of their career an idle and haughty democracy,2 CHAP. XVII. 1794. 17. fell into the Jews. at open variance with all the principles on which the prosperity of society depends. As some species of industry, however, is indispensable Which all where wealth has begun to accumulate, and as the vast hands of the possessions of the nobility gave great encouragement to those who would minister to their wants, the industry of towns insensibly increased, and an urban population gradually arose. But as the nobles were too proud, and the serfs too indigent, or too ignorant, to engage in such employments, they fell exclusively into the hands of a foreign race, who were willing to submit to the degradation they imposed for the sake of the profit they brought. The Jews spread like a leprosy over the country, monopolising every lucrative employment, excluding the peasantry from the chance even of bettering their condition by emerging out of it; and superadding to the instinctive aversion of the free citizens at every species of labour, the horror connected with the occupations of that hated race. Thus, the rise of towns, and the privileges of corporations, the origin of free institutions in so many other countries, were there productive only of evil, by augmenting the disinclination of all classes to engage in their pursuits; the Jews multiplied in a country where they were enabled to engross all the industrial occupations; until at last above half of the whole descendants of Abraham were found in what formerly were the Polish dominions.1 1 Salv. i. 84, 85. 18. Five hundred years before liberty and equality became Liberty and the watchword of the French Revolution, they were the equality the early princi- favourite principles of the Polish republic. Anarchy and ples of the disorder did not prevail in the country because the throne people. was elective; but the throne became elective, because the people were too jealous of their privileges to admit of hereditary succession. For a hundred and sixty years the race of the Jagellons sat on the throne of Poland, with as regular a succession as the Plantagenets of England; and the dynasty of the Piasts enjoyed the government for four hundred years; but all the efforts of the monarchs of these houses were unequal to the formation of a regular government. Contrary to what obtained in every other part of the world, it was always the great kings of Poland who were ultimately overthrown, and their reigns which were the most stormy of its annals. This arose from their talents and eminence; for the first rendered them the objects of jealousy, the last of envy. The supreme authority, which elsewhere in the progress of civilisation was strengthened by the spoils of feudal power, became in Poland only weakened by the lapse of time. All the efforts of their greatest monarchs toward aggrandisement were shattered against the compact, independent, and courageous body of nobles, whom the crown could neither overawe by menaces, nor subdue by violence. In the plenitude of their democratic spirit, they would for long admit no distinction among themselves, but that which arose from actual employment; and never recognised, till a very recent period, the titles and honours which, in other states, have long been hereditary. Even when they were established, the jurisdictions were only for life. Democratic equality could not brook the idea of a hereditary body of rulers. Their waywodes or military chieftains, their palatines or leaders of counties, their castellans or governors of castles, from the earliest period down to recent times, enjoyed their authority for a limited period only. These officers, far from being able in Poland, as in other states, to render their dignities hereditary, were not always even nominated by the king. Their authority, especially that of the palatines, gave equal umbrage to the monarchs whom they were bound to obey, as to the nobles whom they were intended to lead. There was thus authority and power nowhere in the state.1 The kings of the Piast race made frequent and able efforts to create a gradation of rank in the midst of that democracy, and a body of burghers by the side of these |