Matheus Butrymowicz

Matheus Butrymowicz (1745–1814) was a Polish-Lithuanian statesman and landlord from Pinsk and a liberal member of the Great Sejm or Diet assembled in Warsaw from 1788 to 1792.

In 1789 he elaborated a plan for transforming the Jews into useful citizens, which he set forth in a pamphlet entitled Sposób Uformowania Zydów Polskich w Pozytecznych Krajowi Obywatelow (Warsaw), and which he submitted to King Stanislaus Poniatowsky at the session of the Diet of Dec. 4, asking the king to favor it with his support.

The Jew did not take to agriculture, because he did not care to exchange one kind of misery for another; the law would not permit him to own land, and he had no desire to become a serf and to work for others.

He showed strong inclinations to trade and industry; but the towns either would not admit him at all to these pursuits, or at best allowed him to be only a haberdasher.

"When the Sejm appointed, in June, 1790, a committee "to reform the condition of the Jews," Butrymowicz was one of its most active members.