the condition of this immense and unfortunate class is bad enough.[1]
The abject misery of a great part of her inhabitants was probably a chief cause of the downfall of Poland. It was called a Republic, because the monarchy was elective: but what sort of a republic was that, in which but 100,000 of the citizens were freemen, and the remaining eleven millions, serfs or slaves — whose only spur to industry was the master’s lash? We deplore the misfortunes of that oppressed country, and are apt to wonder that an overruling Providence should permit such wrong. But if we look more deeply into the state of the case, we shall find that in this as in most other instances, it is man’s own evils that bring upon him what are called misfortunes. The partition of Poland could never have taken place had it been united within itself, and had its people been bound together by the firm bands of truth. and justice. Ninety-nine hundredths of the people were bondmen, with no voice whatever in the government, and with
- ↑ "Alexander Herzen, a Russian, writing in one of the London journals, in November, 1853, says: "It is an established and constant practice to sell serfs, if not separately, at least by family. — The lord is under no obligation to his servants beyond supplying them with just enough food and clothing to prevent their perishing with hunger and cold — The lord has the right to have them flogged, only not to death." The writer adds, somewhat tartly: "Shall these monstrosities continue, without an incessant, universal protest? The mask must be torn from these Slaveholders the North, who go lounging over Europe, mingling with your affairs, assuming the rank of civilized beings, — nay, of liberal-minded men, who read ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ with horror, and shudder when they read of sellers of black flesh. Why, these same brilliant spies of the salons are the very ones who on their return to their domains, rob, flog, sell the white slave, and are served at table by their living property."
