The elections were indirect, taking place through a limited number of electors, and only persons of fairly high financial standing, such as house-owners or large tax-payers, were allowed to be candidates. As a matter of fact, intellectual qualifications were no less valued than financial standing, scholars occupying an honorable place in the communal council.
The Kahal administration was thus oligarchic in character. The lower and poorer classes had no representation in it, and, as a result, their interests frequently suffered. In the eighteenth century complaints, coming from the Jewish rank and file, are constantly heard about the oppression of the Kahal "bosses," about the inequitable apportionment of taxes, and similar abuses.
During the same period litigation between individual Kahals frequently arose concerning the boundaries of their respective districts. This litigation was due to the fact that the Jewish residents of the townlets and villages were subject to the jurisdiction of the nearest Kahal, whose income they helped to swell. Since, however, the Kahal districts had never been officially delimited, several Kahals would occasionally lay claim to the control of the neighboring townlets and settlements (called in Hebrew _sebiboth_ and _yishubim_, and in the official language _prikahalki_[175]). Cases of this kind were brought either before the conferences of the District Kahals or the two central parliamentary institutions of Polish Jewry, the "Council of the Four Lands" and the "Council of the Principal Communities of Lithuania."
The centralization of Jewish self-government in these two Councils--that of the Crown and of Lithuania--was one of the main factors in stabilizing Jewish autonomy during that period of instability and disintegration. The meetings or Diets of these Councils, which were attended by the representatives of the Kahals and the rabbinate, afforded a regular opportunity for discussing the questions affecting the general welfare of the Polish Jews and for establishing well-defined relations with the Government and the Diets of the country. Attached to the Waads were special advocates (_shtadlans_, designated as "general syndics" in the Polish documents), who went to Warsaw during the sessions of the Polish Chamber for the purpose of submitting the necessary applications in defense of Jewish rights or of presenting the taxation lists of the Jewish communities. The Waad of the Crown continued to meet periodically in Lublin, and Yaroslav (in Galicia), and occasionally in other places, while the Lithuanian Council assembled in different towns in Lithuania.