He threw down their mud hovels and built comfortable villages; he
furnished them with seed, cattle, and implements of husbandry, and
calling their families together, laid before them the deed of their
enfranchisement; but before he signed it, he expressed a fear that
they would abuse this liberty of which they had not had experience,
and become licentious.
"No," returned a venerable peasant; "when we were ignorant men, and
possessed no property of our own except these staffs in our hands, we
were destitute of all manly motives for propriety of conduct; but you
have taught us to read out of the Holy Book, how to serve God and
honor the king. And shall we not respect laws which thus bestow on
us, and ensure to us, the fruits of our labors and the favor of
Heaven!"
The good sense and truth of this answer were manifested in the event.
On the emancipation of these people, they became so prosperous in
business and correct in behavior, that the example of the palatine
was speedily followed by the Chancellor Zamoiski [Footnote: This
family had ever been one of the noblest and most virtuous in Poland.
And had its wisdom been listened to in former years by certain
powerful and wildly ambitious lords that once great kingdom would
never have exchanged its long line of hereditary native-princes for
an elective monarchy--that arena of all political mischiefs.
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