entry of that country became Polish, while the peasantry
remained either Lithuanian or Russian.

In the Polish Commonwealth the towns were of small importance; their
inhabitants, though personally free, had almost no political rights. The
country population was divided into the _szlachta_, or freemen, who fought
the battles of the country and in whom was vested the entire political
power, and the _chlopi_, or peasants, who were serfs, and cultivated the
estates of the _szlachta_. The _szlachta_, who formed about a tenth of the
population of the country, were legally all of equal rank (p. 100); as a
matter of fact, differences of property created great social and even (in
practice) political distinctions between them. Some of them, possessed of
mere patches of land, lived a life little different from that of the
peasants (p. 167). Still others entirely lost their land and became
attached, even as menial servants, to the households of their richer
neighbours. (Thus Gerwazy was a servant, though not quite a menial, of the
Pantler.) The great land owners (or _magnates_), by gathering around them
hordes of gentle-born, landless dependents, were able to support private
armies, and to exercise a preponderating influence on the affairs of the
country. Hence the Constitution of May 3, 1791, excluded _szlachta_ not
holding land from the right to vote.--In English works on Poland the words
_szlachta_ and _szlachcic_ have usually been rendered as _nobility_ and
_noble_; in the present volume the terms _gentry_ and _gentleman_ are
used, which, though far from satisfactory, are at all events somewhat less
misleading.

The adoption of the elective instead of the hereditary principle in Poland
after the extinction of the Jagiello line led to frequent civil wars, and
was one cause of the country's decline in power during the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. The King was elected for life by the whole body of
the gentry, and every gentleman was theoretically eligible to the crown
(p. 264). Poland's peculiar parliamentary system also contributed to its
decay. Laws were made by a Diet of which the upper house, or Senate, was
formed by the bishops, wojewodas (see note 26), castellans (see note 38),
and ministers, while the lower house was composed of deputies elected by
district diets (p. 303). A unanimous vote was required on all measures;
more than this, any one deputy by his _veto_ could dissolve the Diet, even
in the last moments of