With some insignificant exceptions, the land not belonging to the state or the church was in the hands of the nobles, a few of whom had estates of the extent of principalities.

Many of the poorer amongst the nobility attached themselves to their better-situated brethren, becoming their dependents and willing tools.

The relation of the nobility to the peasantry is well characterised in a passage of Mickiewicz's epic poem Pan Tadeusz, where a peasant, on humbly suggesting that the nobility suffered less from the measures of their foreign rulers than his own class, is told by one of his betters that this is a silly remark, seeing that peasants, like eels, are accustomed to being skinned, whereas the well-born are accustomed to live in liberty.
Nothing illustrates so well the condition of a people as the way in which justice is administered.

In Poland a nobleman was on his estate prosecutor as well as judge, and could be arrested only after conviction, or, in the case of high-treason, murder, and robbery, if taken in the act.

And whilst the nobleman enjoyed these high privileges, the peasant had, as the law terms it, no facultatem standi in judicio, and his testimony went for nothing in the courts of justice.