Among these rural arendars there were many Jews, who principally leased from the pans the right of "propination," or the sale of spirituous liquors. These leases had the effect of transferring to the Jews some of the powers over the Russian serfs which were wielded by the noble landowners. The Jewish arendar endeavored to derive as much profit from the nobleman's estate as the owner himself would have derived had he lived there. But under the prevailing conditions of serfdom these profits could be extracted only by a relentless exploitation of the peasants. Moreover, the contemptuous attitude of the Shlakhta and the Catholic clergy towards the "religion of khlops," and their endeavors to force the Greek Orthodox serfs into Catholicism, by imposing upon them an ecclesiastic union, gave a sharp religious coloring to this economic antagonism. The oppressed peasantry reacted to this treatment with ominous murmurings and agrarian disturbances in several places. The enslaved South Russian _muzhik_ hated the Polish pan in his capacity as landlord, Catholic, and _Lakh_.[122] No less intensely did he hate the Jewish arendar, with whom he came in daily contact, and whom he regarded both as a steward of the pan and an "infidel," entirely foreign to him on account of his religious customs and habits of life. Thus the Ukrainian Jew found himself between hammer and anvil: between the pan and the khlop, between the Catholic and the Greek Orthodox, between the Pole and the Russian. Three classes, three religions, and three nationalities, clashed on a soil which contained in its bowels terrible volcanic forces--and a catastrophe was bound to follow. The South Russian population, though politically and agriculturally dependent upon the Poles, was far from being that patient "beast of burden" into which the rule of serfdom tried to transform it. Many circumstances combined to foster a warlike spirit in this population. The proximity of the New Russian steppes and the Khanate of the Crimea, whence hordes of Tatars often burst forth to swoop down like birds of prey upon the eastern provinces of Poland, compelled the inhabitants of the Ukraina to organize themselves into warlike companies, or Cossacks,[123] to fight off the invaders. The Polish Government, acting through its local governors or starostas, encouraged the formation of these companies for the defense of the borders of the Empire. In this way Ukrainian Cossackdom, a semi-military, semi-agricultural caste, came into being, with an autonomous organization and its own _hetman_[124] at the head.