All the distilleries throughout Poland are farmed out to Jews, who pay large sums to the nobles for the privilege of poisoning and intoxicating their serfs. Mr. Burnett states, that when he was in Poland, a company of Jews paid to Count Zaymoski the sum of three thousand pounds sterling annually for the mere privilege of distilling spirituous liquors on the largest of his estates, which, to be sure, comprehends at least four thousand square miles. Hence some estimate may be formed of the enormous quantity that is consumed.
When Joseph II. obtained possession of Galicia, that judicious prince perceived the necessity of limiting the privileges of the Jews. He took from them the power of cultivating the lands belonging to the serfs subject to contributions, and prohibited them from keeping inns and distilling spirits: but at his death these regulations ceased to be enforced, and the Jews have since been silently regaining their former influence.
The inns, as has been already observed, are now altogether in their hands, as well as the fabrication of ardent spirits and liqueurs. They have all the traffic in peltry, the precious metals, diamonds and other jewels, and they are also the principal agents in the corn-trade. Of late years many of these Jewish families who had amassed great wealth by commerce, having affected to abjure their religion and to embrace the Catholic faith, have been ennobled and permitted to purchase extensive estates: still true, however, to their own nation, they have built large towns and villages on these estates, and peopled them exclusively with Jewish families; for from a singular instinct the Poles seem to detest their fellowship, and generally herd together in their own miastas.
The enjoyment of liberty and civil rights seems to have produced a strong effect on the physical constitution and physiognomy of the Hebrew race, and to have bestowed on them a dignity and energy of character, which we may look for in vain in the Jews of other countries. The men, clothed in long black robes reaching to their ankles, and sometimes adorned in front with silver agraffes, their heads covered with fur caps, their chesnut or auburn locks parted in front, and falling gracefully on their shoulders in spiral curls, display much manly beauty. In feminine beauty, the women are likewise distinguished; but beauty is not uncommon among the Jewesses of other countries. When looking at them, says Dr. Neale, seated, according to their usual custom, on a wooden sofa, by the doors of their houses, on the evenings of their sabbath, dressed in their richest stuffs and pearl head-dresses, I have imagined that I could trace a strong resemblance between their present head-ornaments and those sculptured on the heads of the Egyptian sphynxes. Nor do I think it at all improbable, that the dresses of the Hebrews of both sexes in Poland, are at this day nearly the same as those of their ancestors when they quitted the “house of bondage.”
Without having visited Poland, and had ocular demonstration of the filth and abominable uncleanliness of the inhabitants, it seems difficult to believe the accounts which have been given of them. The floors of the houses of the lower classes consists of clay or earth always damp, and from which the heat of the stove draws up a perpetual vapour of the most offensive odour, which, as their windows are never opened, circulates continually. Both sexes sleep together like pigs on the straw or furs, upon the sides and tops of their ovens, without undressing themselves. They eat few vegetables, and their diet consists of every putrescent animal food, with bad bread, diluted copiously with spirituous liquors. Such a diet necessarily predisposes them to imbibe readily every contagious poison, which, when once received, is propagated among them with the rapidity of combustion itself. Thus it is related, that when the plague was brought into the country in 1770, in consequence of the hostilities between the Turks and Russians, all the peasants of a village belonging to Prince Adam Czartoriski were swept off by it in one day.
Generally without medical assistance, the wretched creatures are abandoned to their fate; and such is the callous selfishness of the great majority of the Polish nobles, that instead of attempting to meliorate the condition of their serfs, all their ingenuity is exhausted in ministering to their debaucheries and increasing their own overgrown incomes, by throwing the temptations of drunkenness in their way. Bishops and nobles are joint proprietors of all the inns, and the greater the drunkenness of the peasantry, the larger are the returns to the lord of the soil.
THE END.