312 Chapter XIII
tion, but force the dissolution of the diet itself. Forty- eight of fifty- five diets held
between 1652 and 1764 were thus arbitrarily dissolved by minority or indeed indi-
vidual interests. There was a general atrophy of institutions of government.
The Polish scholar, Konopczynski, in his study of the Liberum Veto, has made
some observations so enlightening for constitutional theory, and for the history of
self- government, that even in a condensed account it seems well to make room for
them. The free veto meant the principle of unanimity, or the denial of majority rule
in deliberative bodies. Acceptance of majority rule, Konopczynski reminds us (and
it is easy to forget it) is in fact a difficult, artificial, and acquired habit of mind. It
depends on several prerequisites: first, that votes be counted, not evaluated in im-
portance according to the identity of the voter; that is, all votes must be considered
equal. In the order of business discussion must be distinctly followed by voting, lest
nothing emerge but a vague sense of the meeting, or apparent unanimity in which
responsibilities are indefinite and differences of opinion are temporarily covered
up, only to break out later. There must be a party of some kind, personal, political,
religious, or economic, willing to work for years to carry out a decision, and to re-
sist its reversal. It is well to have a settled and fixed population, for if dissidents can
simply go away, or retire so far into the depths of the country as to be forgotten,
they never learn to submit to majority wishes, nor does the majority learn to gov-
ern. A strong executive is useful, for there can be no majority rule unless minorities
are obliged to accept decisions once made. Lastly, persons who in their own right
are the masters of men, sovereigns on estates with subjects of their own, submit
with reluctance to a majority even of their own equals; majority rule has always
seemed more reasonable to middle classes than to seigneurs.^7
Few of these conditions obtained in Poland. The Polish nobleman bowed to no
one. Liberty reigned, the aurea libertas of Polish annals. So did equality and frater-
nity, in a way, for in law all nobles were equals and supposed to address one another
as “brother.” The Poles looked down on the slavish monarchies that surrounded
them. They were forever on guard against “despotism,” and they watched with zeal
over their “contracts,” the pacta conventa. They boasted like Englishmen of the vir-
tues of their ancestors and the wisdom of their constitution. They liked to compare
their Republic to the best times of Greece and Rome. A deputy exercising the Li-
berum Veto became in this view a bold tribune of the people; and Polish liberty, if
it rested on slaves, was all the more Athenian in its character.
Actually there was less ground for gratification. The result of Golden Liberty
“was the omnipotence of a single caste carried to a point unparalleled in any other
European country.”^8 It was usual enough in the eighteenth century for the landed
aristocrats to enjoy superior privileges. Elsewhere in Eastern Europe they ruled
over serfs under monarchical auspices. In England and for a time in Sweden they
even governed. In Poland, having monopolized all organs of state, they could nei-
ther govern nor suffer themselves to be governed. Central authority became a
shadow. The Polish army in the mid- eighteenth century consisted of 24,000 men,
7 L. Konopczynski, Le Liberum veto: etude sur le développement du principemajoritaire (Paris, 1930),
19–23.
8 Lord, Second Partition, 15.