' When the kingdom is threatened with any irruption the pospolite, or the whole body of the nobility, are armed and mount their horses. Besides the palatines of each province, who appear at the head of their respective nobility, this body is commanded by a general, even when the king himself is present. The nobility who compose these troops are very magnificent and courageous; they are covered in their march with the skins of tigers, leopards, and panthers; their horses are full of mettle, and their furniture is very splendid; but the gentlemen pay no extraordinary obedience to the orders of their chiefs. They neglect with impunity to assemble at the place appointed by the letters of convocation, and when they happen not to be paid, which is generally the case, they disband themselves without any previous discharge. Their march is altogether as irregular, they commit a thousand disorders in the kingdom, and as there are never any settlers in the Polish army, and as no care is taken to erect magazines, they make no scruple to pillage whereever they come.
' The peasants are in a slavish subjection to the gentry, They have no property of their own, and all their acquisitions are made for their masters. They are indispensably employed in the culture of the earth, and they live in an absolute state of servitude. They are incapable of engaging in any state of life which would procure them their freedom, without the permission of their lords, and they are exposed to ail the effects of the ill-disposition of their tyrants who oppress them with impunity.
' The general diets are usually held either at Warsaw or at Grodno, in the Lithuanian palatinate of Troki. These are always preceded by dietines, or particular assemblies of palatinates, in which they choose their nuncios, or deputies for the general assembly; and their several instructions, with the demands they are to form, in the name of the province, are regulated in these dietines.
' The king convokes the diet by dispatching letters, which are called Universalia, to all the palatinates; and yet the nobility assembled in the reign of John Casimir the second, without the orders of that prince, and the Polish pospolite, marched into the Ukraine, in order to subdue the Cossacks, contrary to his desire.
'The nuncios, who are elected in the dietines, meet at the place specified by letters of convocation, and take their seats in the assembly, according to the order and dignity of the palatines which they represent. They afterwards proceed to the election of a marshal of the nuncios, who is alternatively chosen out of the lords of Great and Little Poland and Lithuania.
'This officer has a very extraordinary power in the diet. No member whatever can speak without his permission, and he is empowered to impose silence on whom he pleases. He is the organ of the nobility, and transmits to the senate and the sovereign all complaints against exorbitant proceedings, abuses in Government, and injurious treatment of particular persons; he is attentive to the protection and safety of the deputies, whose chief he is constituted by his office, and he punishes all offences that are committed in the assembly.
1 The general diet for the election of a king is that wherein strangers are interested the most. When an interregnum has been declared, either in consequence of the death, abdication, or deposition of the king, the primate, who is then the chief of the republic, dispatches his universalia to the several provinces, for a general assembly. A deputation of senators is likewise sent to the army to assist the generals with their counsels, and an exact inventory is taken of the treasure of the Crown. All the tribunals are then discontinued, and every jurisdiction, except those of the marshals, entirely ceases.
' The assembly is at last held near Warsaw, in the open field, which is surrounded with ditches, and covered over with boards. The Poles call it the Szopa or the Colo. On the day fixed for opening the diet, the senators and the nuncios are present at the celebration of a mass of the Holy Ghost in the church of St John in Warsaw, after which they repair to the Colo, and when they have elected a marshal of the nuncios they form a confederation or a treaty, by which the members of the diet take an oath not to separate till they have elected a king, and not to acknowledge any candidate, if he has not been elected by their unanimous approval, nor render to him any act of obedience, till he has sworn to observe the Pacta Conventa, and the other laws of the kingdom.