' The diet which thus assembled on the death of a king of Poland to elect a sovereign to occupy the vacant throne was not unfrequently characterised by the most sanguinary proceedings. This assembly, which consisted of the senate, of the representatives of districts, uf the clergy, and the nobles — the latter a most numerous body — met on horseback in a plain adjoining the village of Wohla in the neighbourhood of Warsaw. Though the electors were prohibited from appearing at the meeting attended by any body guard, they yet uniformly came armed with pistols and sabres, prepared to perpetrate the greatest excesses. Every member of the diet, as previously mentioned, was entitled to call for a division of the assembly on any question, or to put an end to the deliberations, or even the existence of the assembly, merely by protesting against its proceedings. This singular and absurd privilege, which was frequently exercised in those meetings of unenlightened and violent men, was productive of the most fatal consequences. It often led the stronger party to attack, on the spot, their antagonists, sword in hand j and it not unfrequently formed the origin of civil wars, by which the resources and the stability of the nation were undermined, patriotism extinguished, and the progress of liberal knowledge retarded. Before the successful candidate was proclaimed king, he had to sign the Pacta C'jnventa, or the conditions on which he obtained the crown, which, on his knees, he had to swear never to violate.
'Such was the ancient constitution of Poland, — monarchy blended with aristocracy, in which, for several centuries previously to its dissolution, the latter prevailed. The Poles, indeed, denominated their government a republic, because the king, so extremely limited in his prerogative, resembled more the chief of a commonwealth than the sovereign of a monarchy. But it wanted one of the necessary characteristics of a republic: The people were kept in a state of slavery and vassalage, and enjoyed not even the semblance of any civil privilege: the whole power was engrossed by the nobles; and thus the Polish constitution possessed not that community of interests, that general diffusion of political privileges which are the very life and stamina of a republic, as well as of a mixed monarchy, and with which, in spite of much internal misrule, and of the agressions of foreign enemies, Poland might have flourished to this day.
' The administration of justice, and the execution of the law in Poland, was characterised by the grossest abuses. The judges, nominated by the king, were chosen without the most remote regard to their talents or integrity; the decision of the courts of law were openly and unblushingly sold to the highest bidder; and no cause, whatever its merits, could be successful, unless supported by the allprevailing power of money. Nor was this corruption, for which no redress could be obtained, confined to cases in which the litigants were wealthy, or in which, as resulting from some base and unprincipled transaction, the most ample arid liberal payment ought to have been demanded. Actions for which a man deserved the thanks of the state, were, when brought before a legal tribunal, the source of much unjust expense to the person performing them. " If a man apprehended a murderer," says a writer quoted by Malte-Brun, " and brought him before the proper officer, he was charged ten ducats for his trouble, which, if he were unable or unwilling to pay, the murderer was immediately set at liberty." Had he submitted to this payment, the sums that would, on some pretence or other, have been exacted of him, ere the offender was brought to justice, no man unacquainted with the history of Poland could conjecture. " It has cost," says the same writer, " a merchant of Warsaw 14,000 ducats for apprehending two thieves." Nor was the expense of a plea more to be execrated than the duration of it. No litigation, even the simplest— one, for example, between a debtor and creditor — could be brought to a termination in less than four years. In so short a time, however, was almost no case decided. Vautrin mentions that he knew cases which had been pending for sixty years, and which, so far as he could foresee, might continue undetermined "till the last generation." The nobles, disgusted with this fatiguing tediousness, not unfrequently withdrew their pleas from the decision of the courts of law, and settled tliem by force of arms, — of which some instances occurred even so recently as the middle of the last century/