With manufacture and commerce it stood not a whit better.

What little there was, was in the hands of the Jews and foreigners, the nobles not being allowed to meddle with such base matters, and the degraded descendants of the industrious and enterprising ancient burghers having neither the means nor the spirit to undertake anything of the sort.

Hence the strong contrast of wealth and poverty, luxury and distress, that in every part of Poland, in town and country, struck so forcibly and painfully all foreign travellers.

Of the Polish provinces that in 1773 came under Prussian rule we read that-- the country people hardly knew such a thing as bread, many had never in their life tasted such a delicacy; few villages had an oven.

A weaving-loom was rare; the spinning-wheel unknown.