Full quote If in the subsequent period the Poles are judged to have contributed to the catastrophe themselves it was more by their desperate efforts to ecape from ANarchy than from their supposed desire to wallow in it It should have been clear to all that the despots of StPetersburg and Berlin who denied most civil liberties to their own subjects could never be the genuine champions of any Golden Freedom in Poland The same sort of hypocrisy was current in matters of religion It is true that the Roman Catholic establishment of the Republic despite the long tradition of toleration and freedom of worship had denied the religious minorities Orthodox and Protestant full political rights since  In this Polish practices resembled that of Great Britain or Holland and until bishops were goaded into retaliation in the s had been far more tolerant that that of Russia whose visiting armies had invariably inflicted forcible conversion on the Republics Uniates  This is something completely different from what you claimed by writingDavies says they intervened because Poland had denied the religious minorities Orthodox and Protestant full political rights since Norman Davies Gods Playground A History of Poland Vol  The Origins to   p