in some places, particularly in Lithuania, even in corn-growing. The economic activity of the Jews, entwined with the material life of the country by numerous threads, was bound to produce a similar variety of form also in their legal condition. Considering the peculiar caste structure of the Polish state and the relative political freedom enjoyed in that semi-constitutional country by the "governing classes"--the landed nobility, the clergy, and partly the burghers--the legal position of the Jews was of necessity determined by the conflict of political and class interests. Bridled by an oligarchic constitution, the royal power was bound to clash with the vast privileges of the landed magnates, the big Shlakhta. The latter, in turn, on the one hand fought the claims of the petty rural Shlakhta, and on the other resisted the advance of the Christian urban estates, the business men, and craftsmen, who were a powerful factor, owing to their municipal autonomy and their well-organized guilds. The fight was carried on in the Diets, municipalities, and law courts. Within this conflict of economic interests the clergy of the dominant Catholic Church pursued its own line of attack. Having been weakened during the Reformation, it now renewed its strength in consequence of the Catholic reaction and the arduous endeavors of the Jesuits. These estates differed in their relation to the Jews, each in accordance with its own interests. Medieval ideas had already taken such deep root in the Polish people that, despite the constitutional character of the country, a humane and lawful attitude towards the Jews was out of the question. They were appraised according to the advantages they could bestow upon this or that class, and since in many cases what was advantageous to one class was disadvantageous to another, a conflict of interests was unavoidable, with the result that the Jews were the objects of protection on the one side and the targets of persecution on the other.