When it was not forthcoming, they appealed to foreign Powers--
the Lutherans to Prussia, the Orthodox to Russia.
[Sidenote: Wretched Social Conditions in Poland]
Worst of all were the social conditions in Poland. By the eighteenth
century, the towns had sunk into relative insignificance, leaving
Poland without a numerous or wealthy middle class. Of the other
classes, the great nobles or magnates owned the land, lived in luxury,
selfishly looked out for their own interests, and jealously played
politics, while the mass of the nation were degraded into a state of
serfdom and wretchedness that would be difficult to parallel elsewhere
in Europe. With a grasping, haughty nobility on one hand, and an
oppressed, ignorant peasantry on the other, social solidarity, the best
guarantee of political independence, was entirely lacking.
[Sidenote: Weakness of Polish Political Institutions]
An enlightened progressive government might have done something to
remedy the social ills, but of all governments that the world has ever
seen, the most ineffectual and pernicious was the Polish.
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