Part 5

Evidently then, there has been a mistake here. History and poetry have forgotten to mention a fact supremely important.

The people of Poland are, after all, not free--not equal. The voting is not voting by the people. Freedom and the suffrage are for serf-owners,--equality is between them.

No one can deny that in this governing class were many, very many noble specimens of manhood--yielding ease and life for ideas--readily.

Emperor Henry the Fifth of Germany had tried in vain to overcome them by war. When the Polish ambassador came into his presence, the Emperor pointed to his weapon, and said, "I could not overcome your nobility with these;"--then pointing to an open chest filled with gold, he said, "but I will conquer them with this." The ambassador wore the chains and jewels befitting his rank. Straitway he takes off every ornament, and flings all into the Emperor's chest together.

Yet myriads of such men could not have averted ruin. Polish history proved it day by day.

It was not that these nobles were especially barbarous,--it was not that they were effeminate. It was simply that they maintained one caste above another--allowing a distinction in civil and political rights. The system gave its usual luxuriant fruitage of curses.

First in the material condition. Labor and trade were despised. If, in the useful class, a genius arose, the first exercise of his genius was to get himself out of the useful class. Labor was left to serfs; trade was left to Jews. Cities were contemptible in all that does a city honor. Villages were huddles. The idea thus implanted remains. Of all countries, called civilized, Poland seems to-day, materially, the most hopeless.

It may be said that this results from Russian invasions;--but it was so before Russian invasions. It may be said that it results from Russian oppression,--but the great central districts of Russia are just as much under the Czar, and they are thriving. It may be said that Poland has been wasted by war;--but Belgium and Holland and the Rhine Palatinate have been far more severely wasted, yet their towns are hives, and their country districts gardens.

Next, as to the Political condition.

A man-mastering caste necessarily develops the individual will morbidly and intensely. The most immediate of political consequences is, of course, a clash between the individual will and the general will.

Trouble then breaks forth in different forms in different countries. In Spain we saw it take shape in Secession;--in Italy we saw it lead to fearful territorial Disunion;--in Poland it first took the form of Nullification.

The nullifying spirit naturally crystallized into an institution. That institution was the Liberum Veto.

By this, in any national assemblage--no matter how great, no matter how important,--the veto of a single noble could stop all proceedings. Every special interest of every petty district or man had power of life and death over the general interest. The whim, or crotchet, or spite of a single man could and did nullify measures vital to the whole nation. In 1652, Sizinski, a noble sitting in the national diet, when great measures were supposed to be unanimously determined upon, left his seat, signifying his dissent. The whole vast machinery was stopped, and Poland made miserable.

Closely allied to this was another political consequence.

Constant, healthful watchfulness over rights is necessary in any republic; but there is a watchfulness which is not healthful; it is the morbid watchfulness--the jealousy which arises in the minds of a superior caste, living generally in contact with inferiors, and only occasionally in contact with equals.

The Polish citizen lived on his estate. About him were inferiors,--beings who were not citizens--depending on him--doing him homage. But when the same citizen entered that Assembly on the Plains of Volo all this was changed. There he met his equals. Pride then clashed with pride,--faction rose against faction.

The result I will not state in my own words, for fear it may be thought I warp facts to make a historical parallel. I shall translate word for word from Salvandy:

"Confederations were now formed--armed leagues of a number of nobles who chose for themselves a Marshal or President, and opposed decrees to decrees, force to force; contending diets which raised leader against leader, and had the King sometimes as chief, sometimes as captive; an institution deplorable and insensate, which opened to all discontented men a legal way to set their country on fire."

From the political causes I have named logically flowed another.

In that perpetual anarchy, some factions must be beaten. But a class with traditions and habits of oppression is very different, when beaten, from a society swayed by manufacturing, commercial, and legal interests. These last try to make some arrangement. They yield, and fit matters to the new conditions. They are anxious to get back to their work again. But a class with habits of domineering has its own peculiar pride to deal with. It has leisure to brood over defeat, to whine over lost advantages, to fret over lost consideration, and you generally find it soon plotting more insidiously than before.

So it was with Poland. The beaten factions did what fighting aristocracies always do when fearful of defeat, or embittered by it,--the vilest thing they can do, and the most dangerous--they intrigued for foreign intervention.

Of all things, this is most fatal to nationality. Going openly over to the enemy is bad; but intrigues with foreign powers, hostile by interest and tradition, are unutterably vile.

Yet there is not a nation where a class pursuing separate and distinct rights is tolerated, where such intrigues have not been frequent. More than this, such intrigues have generally been timed with diabolic sagacity.

The time chosen is generally some national emergency--when the nation is writhing in domestic misfortunes, or battling desperately against foreign foes. The Spanish nobles chose their time for intriguing with the Moors for their intervention, when the Spanish nation were in the most desperate struggle--not merely for temporal power, but even for the existence of their religion.

In France, the nobles chose such periods as those when Richelieu was leading the nation against all Europe and a large part of France. In Poland, the nobles chose the times when the nation was struggling against absolute annihilation.

History, to one not blinded by Polish bravery, is clear here. The real authors of the partition of Poland were not Frederick of Prussia, and Maria Theresa of Austria, and Catherine of Prussia, but those proud nobles who drew surrounding nations to intervene in Polish politics.

The Social condition was also affected naturally. Poland went into the inevitable narcotic phase. Her court during the reigns of its later Kings was a brothel, and her nobles its worthy tenants.

What followed was natural. When the light of the last century streamed in upon this corrupt mass, Zamoiski and men like him tried to purify it,--to enfranchise the subordinate caste,--to work reforms. The Polish Republic refused. Then Providence began a work radical and terrible.