their horſes, hounds, and vaſſals, will run down the king as they would hunt a deer, wiſhing for nothing ſo much as to be in at the death.
The philoſophical king Staniſlaus felt moſt ſeverely this want of a people. In his obſervations on the government of Poland, publiſhed in the Œuvres du Philoſophe bienfaiſant, tom. iii. he laments, in very pathetic terms, the miſeries to which they were reduced.
"The violences," ſays he, "which the patricians at Rome exerciſed over the people of that city, before they had recourſe to open force, and, by the authority of their tribunes, balanced the power of the nobility, are a ſtriking picture of the cruelty with which we treat our plebeians. This portion of our ſlate is more debaſed among us than they were among the Romans, where they enjoyed a ſpecies of liberty, even in the times when they were moſt enſlaved to the firſt order of the republic. We may ſay with truth, that the people are, in Poland, in a ſtate of extreme humiliation. We muſt, nevertheleſs, confider them as the principal ſupport of the nation; and I am perſuaded, that the little value we ſet on them will have very dangerous conſequences.—Who are they, in fact, who procure abundance in the kingdom? who are they that bear the burthens, and pay the taxes? who are they that furniſh men to our armies? who labour our fields? who gather in the crops? who ſuſtain and nouriſh us? who are the cauſe of our inactivity? the refuge of our lazineſs? the reſource for our wants? the ſupport of our luxury? and indeed the ſource of all our pleaſures? Is it not that very populace that we
