No. 001 - THE PENNY MAGAZINE - Mar. 31, 1832

DESCRIPTION OF POLAND.

THE kingdom of Poland, which has lately been the theatre of so disastrous a war, was established in 1815, by the treaty of Vienna, and was composed of four territories placed respectively under the following sovereignty, viz.:—

  1. Gallicia; assigned to Austria.
  2. The Grand Duchy of Posen, including the Western Palatinates bordering on Silesia; surrendered to Prussia.
  3. The city and district of Cracow; constituted a free republic; and
  4. The remainder of ancient Poland, comprising the bulk of what was before the Grand Duchy of Warsaw; made to revert to Russia.

The kingdom was divided into eight palatinates: viz., Masovia, Cracow, Sandomir, Kalisz, Lublin, Plotsk, and Augustowa. The population, according to the last census of 1829, was, exclusive of the army, 4,088,290, which have been thus classed:—

Employed in agriculture (householders)1,871,259
Their families and servants2,221,188
In manufactures140,377
Their families358,035
Tradesmen49,888
Their families131,331
Landed Proprietors4,205
Copyholders1,886
Freeholders in towns41,654
Employed under government8,414
Patients in the 592 public hospitals5,376
Prisoners in the 6 prisons7,926

The population of the towns is, to that of the country, as one to five. The towns are small and far removed from each other, which has been a main cause of retarding the progress of civilization, commerce, and manufactures. There are only thirteen towns in Poland containing upwards of 10,000 people each: viz., Warsaw, containing about 120,000; Dantzic, about 50,000; Wilna, 30,000; Lemberg, 29,000; Cracow, 28,000; Kiev, 20,000; Posen, 20,000; Brady, 15,000; Witepsk, 13,000; Lublin, 13,000; Mahiliv, 12,500; Kalisch, 12,000; Kharkof, 11,000; the population of the whole thirteen being equalled by the aggregate population of three or four of the Lancashire or Yorkshire towns. The maps contain a multitude of names of miserable wooden villages, inhabited merely by the peasant cultivators of the soil, and by a few shop-keeping Jews. Of the 451 towns of the kingdom, 353 are more than half, and 83 wholly, of wood; and but a very few towns contain a supply of the ordinary articles of consumption by persons in easy circumstances The common articles of ladies' wearing apparel are obliged to be procured either from Warsaw or Vienna, and it is common, in great families, to keep memorandum-books, in which the inmates of the family enter their wants, from time to time, which are supplied altogether at intervals of some months. In respect of all those comforts and conveniences of life which denote the progress of refinement, Poland is, perhaps, behind all other nations of Christian Europe.

The rate of increase of the Polish population, since, 1815, has been stated at 100,000 individuals annually, or about two and a half per cent.

The Catholic religion is specially protected by the government, without imposing any disabilities on the members of other faiths. The Catholic establishment consists of an archbishop of Warsaw, eight bishops, and 2,740 clergy. The Greek Catholics have a bishop, and 354 priests. Next to the Roman Catholics, however, the Jews are of the most importance, and their numbers are stated to be fast increasing. They have, of late, been very unpopular, and have been charged with many malpractices, in monopolizing trade, and otherwise. The native writers have, for some time past, been in the habit of reproaching them as the ruin of their country, but sometimes, possibly, with more prejudice than reason. The religious statistics are as follows:—

Roman Catholics3,400,000
Greek Church100,000
Lutherans150,000
Calvinists5,000
Jews400,000
Other Sects5,000
4,060,000
The class of nobles in Poland is to that of the plebeians as one to thirteen. But this class is composed of persons of such various degrees of wealth, that the poorer nobles are often glad to be employed as stewards by the richer, and their wives and daughters take occupations as humble as nurses and ladies' maids. The peasantry are still in a state of modified slavery, or villeinage, cultivating the land for the benefit of their lords, and not being allowed to remove from it without giving up their tenements. They are assigned a certain portion of the produce of the estate; the whole live and dead stock upon which belongs to the landlord, who lends the use thereof to the peasants, compelling them to take care of, and account for, it. The peasantry in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw have been nominally emancipated; but their condition has hitherto hardly been sensibly ameliorated thereby.

The exports of Poland consist chiefly of corn, cattle, timber, and other articles of raw produce; and the imports are wines, colonial produce, and articles of luxury. The manufactures of woolen cloth, linens, carpets, and leather have increased since 1815, and the breweries and distilleries are on a very extensive scale. Agriculture is, however, by far the largest source of occupation for the people; but suffers, at the present time, from a depression of prices, and has permanently to contend against the effects of a six months' winter of frost and snow. The proximity to the cold regions of Russia, and the exposure to the sharp north-east winds from Siberia and the polar regions, render the climate incomparably colder than that of England, though the situation of Poland is not more northwards. In the summer the heat is very great, the forests obstructing the free circulation of air.

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