It would not be in my power to give the reader a just idea of the tyranny and persecution to which the Polish provinces united to Russia were subjected. If the kingdom was oppressed, it has always had some glimmer of constitutional right, but in the provinces the only constitution was absolute power. Those provinces, abounding in resources, and which, had they been protected by free laws, would have been, as they formerly were, the granary of Europe, presented every where traces of misery, being exposed to the abuses of the Russian administration and its agents, who wrung them to the last drop, to enrich themselves. Justice was unknown. Sometimes the governors, or sprawnaks, men of most depraved conduct, changed the laws at their own will, and not to obey that will was to be subject to be sent into Siberia. All those provinces were submerged by the Russian military, who were quartered in every village; and those soldiers, receiving only the small compensation of a groat a day, which was altogether insufficient for their subsistence, levied upon the inhabitants the means of their support. But the cause of the greatest suffering in Lithuania, was, that, in order to prevent all sympathy between the soldiers and peasantry, and all national feeling in the Lithuanian soldiers, most of the levies from that province were sent to serve on the barbarian frontiers of Asia, while Russian soldiers were substituted for them, who were without any sympathy with the inhabitants, and who would be regardless of their feelings in their deportment towards them, and merciless in their exactions. It was not so under Alexander,--the arrangement was made by Nicholas. No idea can be given of the distress which it caused. Many a family was obliged to deny themselves their necessary food, to supply the demands of the military tyrant who was quartered upon them. The peasantry in those provinces were treated like brutes. No civilization, not the least glimmer of light, not a school was permitted. That poor race were kept in a state so degraded, that the elements of civilization seemed to be lost in them, and the possibility of their being recovered seemed almost hopeless.