Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/115

 Jewish wave came from Germany. Their settlement in the country was opposed by the middle class which was however very weak and had no influence. On the contrary, the ruling class of landed nobles favoured the new settlers, who, unlike the Polish middle class which had never reconciled itself totally to the new order of things, did not struggle against the exclusive rule of the country by the nobility. Poland had had Jews since the Middle Ages, but their numbers were no larger than in other European countries. They were Polish Jews speaking the language of the country, but now she became the home of the largest Jewish population in the world, and the new settlers brought with them and preserved a German dialect, called Yiddish, which they speak to the present time.

Such were the factors which contributed to the formation of the Old Poland of the second half of the seventeenth and the first three-quarters of the eighteenth century—of the Poland which was going to lose her independence towards the end of the eighteenth century. Territorially she was one of the largest countries in Europe. Pohtically she had the most democratic constitution: the gentry, her ruling class, formed eight per cent, of the population and represented all degrees of wealth, from the great magnates, whose properties were like kingdoms, down to the small landholders and even the quite landless and poor gentry. That gentry was nearly all Polish in language and ideas, for the nobles of Lithuania and the West Russian