The senate, however, which owed its origin (in the eleventh century) to Boleslaus I. formed an intermediate authority between the king and the nobles. This body, composed of the ministers of state, of the representatives of the clergy, of palatines and castellans, consisted of 149 members, until 1767, when four new members were added to the number, as representatives of the province of Li thuania. The senators, except the representatives of the clergy, were nominated by the king, but continued in of fice for life, and after their appointment were totally inde pendent of royal authority, to which indeed they were re garded as a valuable counterpoise. The duty of the senate was to preside over the laws, to be the guardians of liberty, and the protectors of justice and equity, and, conjunctly with the king, to ratify laws made by the nobility. A Diet could not, as previously hinted, be constituted, without the junction of the senate to the national representatives : a portion of the senators, indeed, acted as a committee for facilitating and conducting the public business of that as sembly. The president of the senate was the archbishop of Gnesna, who, during an interregnum, discharged the functions of king, and enjoyed all the royal prerogatives but that of dispensing justice. His duty also was to sum mon the extraordinary diet when the throne became vacant, and to preside at that assembly.
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 characterized by the most sangui nary proceedings. This assembly, which consisted of the senate, of the representatives of districts, of 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 ques tion,or to put an end to the deliberations,or even the exis tence of the assembly, merely by protesting against its pro ceedings. This singular and absurd privilege, w hich was fre quently 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 ; and it not unfrequently form ed the origin of civil wars, by which the resources and the stability of the nation were undermined, patriotism ex tinguished, and the progress of liberal knowledge retard ed. Before the successful candidate was proclaimed king, he had to sign the pacta conventa, 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,—monar chy blended with aristocracy, in which, for several centu ries previously to its dissolutinn, 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 so vereign of a monarchy. But it wanted one of the neces sary 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 dif fusion of political privileges of 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 aggressions of foreign enemies, Poland might have flou rished till this day.
The administration of justice, and the execution of the law in Poland, was characterized 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 unblushingly sold to the highest bidder ; and no cause, whatever its merits, could be successful, unless supported by the all prevailing 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 and 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 expence to the person performing them. " If a man apprehended a murderer," says a writer quoted by Nalte-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 imme diately 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 con jecture. " It has cost," says the same writer," a merchant of Warsaw 14,000 ducats for apprehending two thieves." Nor was the expence 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. Vau trin 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 withrew their pleas from the decision of the courts of law, and settled them by force of arms,—of which some instances occurred even so recently as the middle of last century.