Page:Julian Niemcewicz - Notes of my Captivity in Russia.djvu/150

122 some speeches and protestations which might have rendered him interesting in the eyes of Europe, without, however, compromising him with Russia. From that epoch, with his permanent council, liberum veto, and all those monstrosities which you have established, warranted, and called cardinal laws, and with his fifteen millions of florins of pocket-money, Stanislaus-Augustus, under the shadow of your wing, amidst his mistresses, painters, and sculptors, slept soundly over a space of twelve years. In the year 1788, the Poles, seeing Russia engaged in a war both with the Porte and Sweden, a circumstance which had not occurred for the last sixty years, deemed it a favourable moment for raising their country from the humiliating degradation into which it had fallen. For the first time during the last sixty years, they dared to act as a free nation, and the more intolerable their yoke and degradation were, the longer their voice of indignation had been stifled, the more powerful and energetic was its outburst. At this appeal, Stanislaus, who already saw