THE NOBLE DEMOCRACY 265
not be written into the Crown Register. All the work of the session was declared
null and void. It was a baleful precedent. Henceforth, any member sufficiently
determined to destroy the working of the Sejm, had an excellent means of doing
so. It is now known that Sicinski had acted on the orders of Janusz Radziwill,
and in future years there were to be many more magnates who were ready to
paralyse the central government for their own local advantage.
Oddly enough, the man who served as Marshal of that fateful Sejm in 1652,
Andrzej Maksymilian Fredro (1620-79), showed himself to be a fervent advo-
cate of all the libertarian practices of the szlachta. His published writings, which
included Przyslowia mow potocznych (Proverbs of current speech, 1658) and
Monita politico-moralia (Political and Moral Admonitions, 1664), consisted
largely of collected maxims and aphorisms exuding folksy humour and wisdom,
and were soon to be found on every nobleman's bookshelf. His Scriptorum
Fragmenta (Literary Fragments, 1660) were specifically designed to popularize
what he called 'the paradoxical philosophy of anarchy'. An empty treasury, he
maintained, prevents a monarch from growing insolent. God keeps Poland poor
in order to check the nobles' arrogance. The Liberum Veto is a blessing, since it
protects the minority of wise men from the dictates of the stupid majority.
Fredro firmly believed in the unique advantages of the,Polish system. His opin-
ions were shared by generations of noblemen whose prejudices and conceits he
so accurately reflected.
Not surprisingly, nothing was done in such an atmosphere to remedy the con-
stitution. In 1666, the Liberum Veto was invoked in the middle of the session;
and in 1668, for the first time, it was used on the opening day before the debates
of the Sejm had begun. In the Saxon Era, the chaos accelerated. In the reign of
Augustus II (1697-33), 11 out of 20 sessions of the Sejm were broken. Under
Augustus III (1733-63), only one Sejm was able to pass any legislation at all.^18
In that era, the essential functions of the Sejm in the administrative and finan-
cial sphere were adopted, at a very perfunctory level, by the dietines. The
Republic's enemies rejoiced. Each of the Powers retained magnates who could
break the Sejm at the drop of a ducat. All were intent that none of their rivals
should steal a march. The Russians, in particular, were well satisfied. From 1717
onwards they enjoyed a virtual protectorate over the Republic and guarded their
western frontier at the cost of a few magnatial pensions. By posing as the cham-
pions of 'the Golden Freedom' and of the Liberum Veto, they could ensure that
the Republic remained incapable of organizing itself or offering resistance to
Russian policy. By filling Warsaw with Russian troops on all important occa-
sions, they 'protected the Sejm from outside interference'. By threatening their
opponents with arrest and sequestration if they dared to protest, and by
obstructing all measures for constitutional reform, they kept the charade in
motion for the rest of the century. In 1768, the King's proposal to abolish the
Liberum Veto, together with other restrictive practices, was rejected, for fear of
the one necessary voice of dissent. In May 1791, the long awaited reforms were
indeed enacted; but only by virtue of the Russians' preoccupations in the