For most of these improvements, however, the preparation had already been made, in the last ten years before the dissolution of the republic.  The emancipation of the serfs, who comprised the whole peasantry, one of the fundamental laws of the duchy of Warsaw in 1807, was confirmed at the creation of the kingdom of Poland in 1815.  In the diet of the kingdom, not only the nobility and the government, but also the cities and smaller communities, had their own representatives; and all Christian denominations acquired equal political rights.  To the universities of Cracow, Wilna, and Lemberg,[43] there was added in 1818 a fourth at Warsaw.  The kingdom of Poland contained in 1827, in each of its eight woiwodships, a palatine school, and besides this three other institutions for the higher branches of education; fourteen principal department schools, and nine for sub-departments; several professional seminaries for miners, teachers, agriculturists, and others; a military academy, a school for cadets, and a number of elementary schools, both private and public.[44] The Russian-Polish provinces, i.e. the part of Poland united with Russia in the three successive dismemberments of Poland, participate in all the means of education which the Russian empire affords; the province of West Prussia and the grand duchy of Posen, in those of the kingdom of Prussia, where an enlightened government has made, as is generally acknowledged, the mental improvement of the lower classes one of its principal objects.  The Austrian kingdom of Galicia had in the year 1819 two lyceums, twelve gymnasiums, several other institutions for education of different names and for specific purposes, and also numerous elementary schools.  The Catholic religion is here the only reigning one; although the Protestants, who here are still comprised under the name of dissidents, are tolerated.

The literary activity of the Polish nation occupied in 1827 not less than sixty printing offices and twenty booksellers.  Of the latter, fifteen were in Warsaw, the rest scattered over all the province formerly belonging to Poland.  At Warsaw alone five daily political papers and one weekly were published in the Polish language; besides these there existed only five, viz. one in each of the four larger cities, Cracow, Lemberg, Wilna, and Posen, and a fifth at St. Petersburg.  There are other periodicals for scientific objects published at Warsaw; while in the other cities the German publications of that character are chiefly read.  The periodical published by the national institution, called after count Ossolinski, at Lemberg, is however considered as the most important in the Polish language.