[216] [It consisted of the present Governments of Moghilev and Vitebsk.]
[217] [After the first partition of Poland the Government of the country was placed in the hands of a Permanent Council consisting of thirty-six members, who were to be elected by the Diets, and were to take charge of the five departments of the administration: foreign affairs, police, war, justice, and finance. The king was to be the president of the Council. The Diet, which assembled on October 6, 1788, abolished this Permanent Council, and set out to elaborate a modern Constitution, which was finally presented on May 3, 1791. While, according to Polish law, the Diets met only once in two years for six weeks (see above, p. [76], n. 1), the Diet of 1788 declared itself permanent. It sat for four years—hence its name, the Quadrennial Diet—until the adoption of the new Constitution in 1791 led to civil war and to the intervention of Russia.]
[218] [Popular Polish form of the Jewish name Hirsch.]
[221] [Kollontay (in Polish, Kollontaj) was a radical member of the Polish Chamber. See p. [291].]
[222] See p. [272] and p. [273].
[223] [Lukov (in Polish, Lukow) is a district town in the province of Shedletz, not far from Warsaw. Castellan is the Polish title for the head of a district.]
[224] Chatzki's project is reproduced in his famous book Rozprawa o Zydach, "Inquiry Concerning the Jews" (edition of 1860), pp. 119-134.
[225] The Jewish communities of Poland were burdened with enormous debts, representing loans made by them in the course of many years, to pay off their arrears in taxes, to meet extraordinary expenditures, and so on. The creditors of the Jews were the municipal magistracies, the Catholic monasteries, as well as private persons. The question of liquidating these debts cropped up time and again at the sessions of the Polish Diets during the latter half of the eighteenth century.