In 1669 it was resolved, that no
king should be allowed to abdicate.]
[Footnote 39: _Korona Polska_, Lemberg 1728-1743.]
[Footnote 40: In 1764; it was the first periodical ever published in
Poland.]
[Footnote 41: See page 227 above.]
[Footnote 42: The Polish serfs were indeed never regular slaves; but
merely _glebae adscripti_, i.e. they could not be sold separately as
mere things, but only with the soil they cultivated, which they had no
right to leave. They were not reduced even to this state before the
fifteenth or sixteenth century; for one of the statutes of Casimir the
Great allows them the privilege of selling their property and leaving
whenever they were ill treated. Of the present state of the Polish
peasantry, the author of "Poland under the dominion of Russia," (Bost.
1834,) says: "The Polish peasant might perhaps be about as free as my
dog was in Warsaw; for I certainly should not have prevented the
animal from learning, had he been so inclined, some tricks by which he
could earn the reward of an extra bone. The freedom of the wretched
Polish serfs is much the same as the freedom of their cattle; for they
are brought up with as little of human cultivation," etc. p. 165. And
again: "The Polish serf is in every part of the country extremely
poor, and of all the living creatures I have met with in this world,
or seen described in books of natural history, he is the most
wretched.
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