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IV. Page 85.

Burnet's View of the Present State of Poland, p. 85.When a young peasant marries, his lord assigns him a certain quantity of land, sufficient for the maintenance of himself and family in the poor manner in which they are accustomed to live. Should the family be numerous, some little addition is made to the grant. At the same time, the young couple obtain also a few cattle, as a cow or two, with steers to plow their land. These are fed in the stubble, or in the open places of the woods, as the season admits. The master also provides them with a cottage, with implements of husbandry, in short, with all their little moveable property. In consideration of these grants, the peasant is obliged to make a return to the landholder of one half of his labour; that is, he works three days in the week for his lord, and three for himself. If any of his cattle die, they are replaced by the master; a circumstance which renders him negligent of his little herd, as the death or loss of some of them is a frequent occurrence. When a farmer rents a farm, the villages situated on it, with their inhabitants, are considered as included in the contract; and the farmer derives a right to the same proportion of the labour of the peasants for the cultivation of that farm, as by the condition of their tenure they are bound to yield the lord. If an estate be sold, the peasants are likewise transferred, of course, with the soil, to a new master, subject to the same conditions as before. The Polish boors, therefore, are still slaves; and relatively to their political existence, absolutely subject to the will of their lords, as in all the barbarism of the feudal times. They are not privileged to quit the soil, except in a few instances of complete enfranchisement; and if they were, the privilege, for the most part, would be merely nominal: for whither should they go? They may retire, indeed, into the recesses of the forest, where it is possible they may not be traced; and it is probable, that in times past many resorted to this expedient to escape from the cruelties of a

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tyrannical master. To fly from a mild master would be obviously against their interest. To quit the territory of one grandee for that of another, must commonly, if not always, have been impracticable: for what landholder would choose to admit a fugitive peasant, and thus encourage a spirit of revolt? Again, it is not in their power, from the circumstances of their condition, to sell their labour indifferently to this or that master; and if such obstacles did not oppose, the very extent of the Polish farms, and the consequent want of a second contiguous employer, would suffice in most cases to preclude a change of masters.

It is said that a few of the peasants improve the little stock which is committed to their management, accumulating some small property; but their conduct is far more frequently marked by carelessness and a want of forecast. Instances, however, of this accumulation, begin to multiply: for one effect of the partition has been, that the peasants are less liable to be plundered. Generally speaking, it does not appear that this allowance of land and cattle either is, or designed to be, more than enough for their scanty maintenance. I was once on a short journey with a nobleman, when we stopped to bait at the farm-house of a village, which I have before mentioned as a common custom in Poland. The peasants got intelligence of the presence of their lord, and assembled in a body of twenty or thirty, to prefer a petition to him. I was never more struck with the appearance of these poor wretches, and the contrast of their condition with that of their master. I stood at a distance, and perceived that he did not yield to their supplication. When he had dismissed them, I had the curiosity to enquire the object of their petition; and he replied, that they had begged for an increased allowance of land, on the plea that what they had was insufficient for their support. He added, "I did not grant it them, because their present allotment is the usual quantity; and as it has sufficed hitherto, so it will for the time to come. Besides, (said he,) if I give them more, I well know that it will not, in reality, better their circumstances."

Poland does not furnish a man of more humanity than the one who rejected this apparently reasonable petition ; but it must be allowed that he had good reasons for what he did. Those degraded and wretched beings, instead of hoarding the small surplus of their absolute necessities, are almost universally accustomed to expend it in that abominable spirit, which they call schnaps. It is incredible what quantities of this pernicious liquor are drunk, both by the peasant men and women. I have been told, that a woman will frequently drink a pint, and even more, at a sitting, and that too in no great length of time. I have myself often seen one of these poor women led home between two men, so intoxicated as to be unable to stand. can be no question, that the excessive use of this whiskey (were it not to libel whiskey thus to style it) ought to be enumerated among the chief proximate causes of the deficient population of Poland. It is indeed so considered by the Poles; and the Count Zamoyski has lately established a porter brewery in Galitzia, in the hope of checking eventually so hurtful a habit, by the substitution of that wholesome beverage.

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The first time I saw any of these withered creatures, was at Dantzic. I was prepared, by printed accounts, to expect a sight of singular wretchedness; but I shrunk involuntarily from the contemplation of the reality; and my feelings could not be consoled by the instantaneous and inevitable reflection, that I was then in a region which contains millions of miserable beings of the description of those before me. Some involuntary exclamation of surprize mixed with compassion escaped me. A thoughtless and a feelingless person (which are about the same things) was standing by. "Oh sir! (says he) you will find plenty of such people as these in Poland; and you may strike them and kick them, or do what you please with them, and they will never resist you; they dare not." Thus, this gentleman, by the manner in which he spoke, seemed to think it a sort of privilege, that they had among them a set

of beings on whom they may vent with impunity the exuberance of their spite, and gratify every fitful burst of capricious passion. Far be it from me, to ascribe the feelings of this man to the more cultivated and humanized Poles; but such incidental and thoughtless expressions betray but too sensibly the general state of feeling which exists in regard to these oppressed men.

Some few of the boors are found about every large mansion. They are employed by the domestics in the most dirty menial offices. These have never any beds (however mean) provided them; so that in the summer-nights, they sleep like dogs, in any hole or corner they can find, always without undressing. But the winter's cold drives them into the hall, where they commonly crouch close to the stoves which are stationed there. Here, too, several of the domestics spread their pallets, and take up their night's abode. Frequently, as I have retired to my room after supper, I have stumbled over a boor sleeping at the foot of the stairs a curious and a melancholy spectacle! to see these poor creatures, in all their unmitigated wretchedness, lodging in the halls of palaces!

In giving orders or directions of any sort to these torpid beings, though the sentiment of the speaker be not disgraced by the slightest admixture of unkind feeling, it is customary to address them in a certain smart and striking manner; as if to stimulate their stupid senses into sufficient action to prompt the performance of the most ordinary There is no circumstance more deplorable in slavery than that dead-palsy of the faculties, which bereaves its possessor even of the comfort of hope; or capacitates him only to hope that he may live without torment, and mope out his existence in joyless apathy! If to a contiguous person you give utterance to any compassionating remark, you are commonly answered with the most indifferent air imaginable, "It is very true; but they are used to it;" something in the same way, I have thought, as eels are used to skinning alive.

Ibid. p. 84. Their diet is very scanty; they have rarely any animal food. Even at the inns, in the interior of Poland, which are not situated in a pretty good town, scarcely any thing is to be procured. Their best things are their milk and poor cheese, were they in sufficient abundance; but the principal article of their diet is their coarse rye-bread above mentioned, and which I have sometimes attempted in vain to swallow.

Ibid. p. 102. Till the reign of Casimir the Great, about the middle of the fourteenth century, the Polish nobles exercised over their peasants the uncontrouled power of life and death. No magistrate, not even the King himself, had authority to punish or restrain barbarities which outraged humanity. If an act of brutal cruelty were committed by one grandee on the slave of another, he was then liable to be called to an account by the possessor, as the violator of his property, not as the perpetrator of crime. This barbarous power in the nobles over the condition and lives of the boors, even Casimir was forced to recognize in the year 1366. Yet Casimir had a soul which felt for their hard lot, and he earnestly endeavoured to mitigate its severity. The peasants, finding him their friend, would often go to him with complaints of the injuries they received. "What! (says he with indignation on these occasions) have you neither stones nor bludgeons with which to defend yourselves?"

Casimir was the first who ventured to prescribe a fine for the murder of a peasant. And, as it had been the custom, on the death of a peasant, for the master to seize his trifling effects, he also enacted, that on his decease his next heir should inherit; and that if his master should plunder him, or dishonour his wife or daughter, he should be permitted to remove whithersoever he pleased. He even decreed, that a peasant should be privileged to bear arms as a soldier, and be considered as a freeman.

These humane regulations, however, were ill observed in the sequel; for of what avail are laws, if authority be

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