ractised to all lengths: right of every
Polish, gentleman to confederate with every other against, or for,
whatsoever to them two may seem good; and to assert their particular
view of the case by fighting for it against all comers, King and Diet
included. It must be owned, there never was in Nature such a Form
of Government before; such a mode of social existence, rendering
"government" impossible for some generations past.

On the strength of Saxony and its resources and connections, the two
Augusts had contrived to exist with the name of Kings; with the name,
but with little or nothing more. Under this last August, as we heard,
there have been about forty Diets, and in not one of them the least
thing of business done; all the forty, after trying their best, have
stumbled on NIE POZWALAM, and been obliged to vanish in shrieks and
curses. [Buchholz (_Preussisch-Brandenburgische Geschichte,_ ii. 133,
134, &c. &c.) gives various samples, and this enumeration.] As to August
the Physically Strong, such treatment had he met with,--poor August, if
readers remember, had made up his mind to partition Poland; to give away
large sections of it in purchase of the consent of neighbors, and plant
himself hereditarily in the central part;--and would have done so, had
not Grumkow and he drunk so deep, and death by inflammation of the foot
suddenly come upon the poor man. Some Partition of Poland has been more
than once thought of by practical people concerned. Poland, as "a house
chronically smoking through the slates," which usually brings a new
European War every time it changes King, does require to be taken charge
of by its neighbors.

Latterly, as we observed, there has been little of confederating;
indeed, for the last thirty years, as Rulhiere copiously informs us,
there has been no Government, consequently no mutiny needed; little or
no National business of any kind,--the Forty Diets having all gone
the road we saw. Electing of the Judges,--that, says Rulhiere, and
wearisomely teaches by example again and ever again, has always been an
interesting act, in the various Provinces of Poland; not with the hope
of getting fair or upright Judges, but Judges that will lean in the
desirable direction. In a country overrun with endless lawsuits, debts,
credits, feudal intricacies, claims, liabilities, how important to
get Judges with the proper bias! And these once got, or lost till next
term,--what is there to hope or to fear? Russia