Page:Julian Niemcewicz - Notes of my Captivity in Russia.djvu/115

Rh After three days’ journey from Witebsk, we left White Russia, a province wrested from Poland at the first partition in 1772. So far as a prisoner can judge, who saw only inns and public roads, I must here confess, in consistency with truth, that this province seemed to have improved greatly, in all material points of view, since the partition.

In all the countries through which I have travelled, I have generally observed that the difference between an absolute and a free government consists chiefly in this, that where the former is established, however miserable the condition of the inhabitants may be, everything under public management, such as roads, public conveyances, posting, and police regulations, store-houses, sometimes even hospitals, and especially the army, is in the greatest order, and superintended with the strictest accuracy. In free countries, on the contrary, the inhabitants, enjoying all the advantages which are unknown to those under oppression, and possessing the power of