Another curious feature of the constitution was the szlachta’s right to confederate in an emergency such as the death of the monarch, foreign invasion, or some other extremity. They would form a confederation, elect a marshal, publish their aims and invite others to join. It was a form of plebiscite, and could take place within a Sejm where deadlock had been reached; it was the one political assembly in which, for obvious reasons, strict majority voting was observed and dissent ignored.
A fundamental weakness of the Polish parliamentary system was the under-representation of the towns, and therefore of trading interests, in the Sejm. This was not so much a flaw in the constitution as a reflection of the country’s social structure. In the fifteenth century the towns, with their predominantly foreign populations enjoying a favourable administrative status, did not join in the scramble for power and thereby missed an opportunity for integrating their rights into the constitution. They had always dealt directly with the crown, which guaranteed their status, but when the crown began to abdicate its responsibilities to the Sejm, the towns were left without a champion. This was compounded by social barriers. A law passed in 1550 (mainly at the insistence of the merchants) barred members of the szlachta from indulging in trade, and soon the szlachta began to regulate admissions to its own ranks. In 1578 the Sejm passed a law taking away from the crown and arrogating to itself the exclusive right to ennoble people (except for battlefield grants of arms by the king). A law of 1497 preventing plebeians from buying noble estates closed a back door to noble status. This sort of legislation was impossible to enforce given the absence of any heraldic institution or register, but lines were being drawn. A merchant might join the szlachta by some means and thereby acquire voting rights, but when he did, he would find himself banned from practising anything except agriculture, politics and war.
A number of cities, including Kraków, Lublin, Lwów, Poznań, Wilno, Gdańsk and Toruń, were represented in the Sejm, and other towns were on occasion invited to send deputies. In theory, these had the same debating and voting rights as others, but the reality was often different. As the writer Sebastian Petrycy put it: ‘Once upon a time a donkey was asked to a wedding feast; he marvelled and licked his chops at the thought of the new unfamiliar delicacies he would be tasting, but when the day came the donkey found he was only there to carry water and kindling to the kitchen.’ The city deputies were usually intimidated by their noble colleagues and feared to say anything—with some reason, since it appears that in 1537 the Kraków deputies were physically assaulted. They often found it easier to stay away and put up with whatever taxes might be imposed, or employ the local palatine to look after their interests.
The peasants, who had also enjoyed a direct relationship with the crown, were similarly sidelined. As the judge of the supreme court of appeal, the king had been the final arbiter in all their disputes with landowners. In 1518 Zygmunt the Old was persuaded to give up his right of arbitration, and in 1578 the Sejm itself assumed the function. Since it represented almost exclusively landed interests, the peasants were unlikely to find justice here. It is worth nothing that the principles of Polish democracy were not exclusive to the Sejm, and every village had its elected communal council and officers. The squire’s functions within this, usually as local magistrate, were not feudal or proprietary, but elective.
Not all the drawbacks of the Polish constitution were specific to it. All democracy breeds its own problems, and one of these is the impossibility of carrying on a successful foreign policy when decision-making is hamstrung by the devolution of power and the force of public opinion. The element of secrecy was impossible to sustain since all Sejm debates were open to the public and all its resolutions immediately printed. Defence suffered from the same problems. No democracy likes an army, because nobody likes paying for one. In the late sixteenth century about two-thirds of the entire revenue of most European states was spent on armament, almost 70 per cent in the case of Spain. In Poland, the figure was nearer 20 per cent. In the 1480s a ‘Current Defence Force’ of 2,000 was set up to parry Tatar raiding, and in 1520 the Sejm increased the numbers slightly. In 1563 a new system of ‘Quarter Troops’ was introduced, paid for out of a quarter of all revenues from starosties, but the number of men under arms remained tiny in relation to the vast area of the Commonwealth.