however, was rather de jure than de facto; legal decrees could
not fill the chasm which separated families distinguished by
wealth and fame--such as the Sapiehas, Radziwills, Czartoryskis,
Zamoyskis, Potockis, and Branickis--from obscure noblemen whose
possessions amount to no more than "a few acres of land, a sword,
and a pair of moustaches that extend from one ear to the other,"
or perhaps amounted only to the last two items. With some
insignificant exceptions, the land not belonging to the state or
the church was in the hands of the nobles, a few of whom had
estates of the extent of principalities. Many of the poorer
amongst the nobility attached themselves to their better-situated
brethren, becoming their dependents and willing tools. The
relation of the nobility to the peasantry is well characterised
in a passage of Mickiewicz's epic poem Pan Tadeusz, where a
peasant, on humbly suggesting that the nobility suffered less
from the measures of their foreign rulers than his own class, is
told by one of his betters that this is a silly remark, seeing
that peasants, like eels, are accustomed to being skinned,
whereas the well-born are accustomed to live in liberty.

Nothing illustrates so well the condition of a people as the way
in which justice is administered. In Poland a nobleman was on his
estate prosecutor as well as judge, and could be arrested only
after conviction, or, in the case of high-treason, murder, and
robbery, if taken in the act. And whilst the nobleman enjoyed
these high privileges, the peasant had, as the law terms it, no
facultatem standi in judicio, and his testimony went for nothing
in the courts of justice. More than a hundred laws in the
statutes of Poland are said to have been unfavourable to these
poor wretches. In short, the peasant was quite at the mercy of