ons
therein authorized in favor of one or other class of pupils. In schools
then they enjoyed all privileges in common, and these were great--a
separate jurisdiction, and the facilities of reaching higher ranks.
Kromer, Janicki, Poniatowski, great names in Polish history, can show no
other origin than one nearer to the Ziemianin than to any other class.

If the current of fashion did not warp all judgments in favor of Rossia,
the writers of 'Tardy Truths' from Paris and elsewhere would have
reflected a little longer, and would soon have discovered that the
ignorance and poverty of the Polish peasantry were not due solely to the
Poles themselves. Polish schools were formerly all completely free, and
each school even had funds for the poor, called _purses_, foundations,
etc. Rossia, in the last fifty years, charged as high as $625 for
inscription alone in the higher classes, and about $25 for elementary
beginners. How could a poor family rise in prosperity if this school was
often the first cause of losing the favorite son; if they did send the
child to school they might lose him as a recruit for the army or navy,
as designated by the whim of the treacherous teacher and recruiting
officer; and this did not exempt from public burdens, as they were still
obliged to pay taxes for him during ten years, and contribute to all
public services, as stations (stoyki), wagons and teams (rozgony),
repairing and making public and private roads, extra post service,
besides innumerable services imposed for his own personal benefit by a
spravnik, straptschy, zasiedatel, sotnik, etc. Add to this the thwarting
of intercourse and commerce by every imaginable means under the system
of the famous M. Kankrin.

Could the peasant or the master become wealthy when a measure called _a
ton_, weighing about eight hundred and forty pounds, of wheat brought
the enormous sum of $4.25? a load of hay, drawn by one horse,
seventy-five cents when well paid, and _nothing_ when wanted by ulans or
hussars garrisoned in the neighborhood? A hen, with a dozen and a half
well-grown chickens, hardly brought enough to pay the value of the
commonest apron.

Such things as these were never known in ancient Poland, now so
unanimously accused and condemned by fashionable philanthropy. Even
eighty years ago such abuses would have been vainly looked for. We
remember, in our younger days, when conversing with an old sowietnik
(counsellor), to have heard him relate his