erious remedies of some old village crone, for there was no
apothecary in the whole country. Any one who needed a coat, did well to
be able to use a needle himself, for no tailor was to be found for many
miles, unless one passed through the country on a venture.[22] He who
wished to build a house, had first to ascertain whether he could get
labourers from the west. The country people still kept up a weak
struggle with hordes of wolves, and there were few villages in which
men and beasts were not decimated every winter.[23] If the small-pox
broke out, or any other infectious illness came into the country, the
people saw the white figure of the pestilence flying through the air
and settling down on their huts; they knew what such appearances
betokened; it was the desolation of their homes, the destruction of
whole communities; with gloomy resignation they awaited their fate.
There was hardly any administration of justice in the country; only in
the larger cities were powerless courts. The Starosts inflicted
punishment with arbitrary power; they beat and threw into horrible
jails, not only the peasant, but even the citizens of the country towns
who rented their houses or fell into their hands. In their quarrels
amongst themselves they contended by bribery, in any of the few courts
that had jurisdiction over them. In later years, even that had almost
fallen into disuse, and they sought revenge with their own hands.

It was indeed a forlorn country, without discipline, without law, and
without a master; it was a wilderness, with only a population of
500,000 on 600 square miles--not 850 to the mile. And the Prussian King
treated his acquisition like an untenanted prairie; almost at his
pleasure he fixed boundary stones, or removed them some miles further.
And then he began, in his admirable way, the culture of the country;
the very rottenness of its condition was attractive to him, and West
Prussia became, as Silesia had hitherto been, his favourite child, that
he washed and brushed, and dressed in new clothes, sent to school,
controlled, and kept under his eyes, with incessant care like a true
mother. The diplomatic contention about the acquisition still
continued, but he sent a troop of his best officials into the
wilderness; the districts were divided into small circles; the whole
surface of the country valued in the shortest time, and equally taxed;
and every circle provided with a provincial magistrate, a judicature, a
p