The Constitution of 3 May 1791

The dualistic Polish-Lithuanian state distinguished itself from others by religious tolerance, as well as a unique law with a dominant role of the parliament (sejm) and the limited power of the elected king.

The Polish-Lithuanian state reached the peak of its power at the turn of the 16^th and 17^th century. The wars of the second half of the 17^th century – the Cossack uprising of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the Swedish invasion and conflicts with Russia and Turkey – ruined the country and weakened its international position.

Liberum veto was intended to prevent the tyranny of the majority over the minority. But after 1652 it became commonly accepted that the veto invalidated not only a specific law, but also the work of an entire session of the sejm.

Participation in the Great Northern War (1700–21) brought not only depopulation and destruction of entire areas of the country, but also political dependence on the growing power of Russia. During this period, the crisis of the state reached an apogee. Sessions of the sejm were regularly broken up, often by foreign courts, who feared the strengthening of the Commonwealth. In this way, liberum veto became an obstacle to repairing the state.

One of the first supporters of the reform was the two-time ruler of the Commonwealth (1704–09, 1733–36) and later (from 1738) the Duke of Lorraine, Stanisław Leszczyński (1677–1766). In a work attributed to him, entitled “A Free Voice Securing Freedom”, he advocated the introduction of terms for the sejm, which would prevent it being suspended. Liberum veto was supposed to act only in relation to specific laws and have no power to suspend sessions of the sejm.

A huge influence on the change in thinking about the state was exerted by Piarist priest and school reformer Stanisław Konarski (1700–73). He was in favour of replacing the liberum veto with majority voting. His views were an inspiration for the creators of the reform programme propagated in the first period of the reign of Stanisław August.

Konarski understood that political reforms require the education of an ideal citizen. The Collegium Nobilium, founded in 1741, was to serve this purpose. A special role in the programme of this facility was played by patriotic education, conducted in the spirit of respect for freedom and responsibility for the Commonwealth. Konarski’s program was also implemented in other Piarist schools, including the college in Vilnius.

Familia leaders saw the main threat to the existence of the state in the expansiveness of Prussia, and the greatest chance to support it, in an alliance with Russia. In order to gain influence in the Saint Petersburg circles, the Czartoryski family sent a close relative, Stanisław Antoni Poniatowski, to the city, where he entered into an affair with Catherine, who later became the Empress of Russia in 1762.

After the death of Augustus III, thanks to the support of the empress, Poniatowski became the new ruler and took the name of Stanisław August.

The king, together with the Czartoryski family, carried out a number of fiscal and military reforms in the early years of his reign (1764–66), and even limited the liberum veto. However, the reformers underestimated the hostility of Russia and Prussia to the attempts to strengthen the Commonwealth.

The reforms introduced by the king and the Familia, were met with stiff resistance from the opposition and Russia. The intrigues of the Russian ambassador, Nikolai Repnin, led to the suspension of the renewal programme, and to the establishment of a Russian “guarantee” over the catalogue of the inviolable political principles of the Commonwealth, including the liberum veto and free elections. This was meant to strengthen the domination of Saint Petersburg over the Polish-Lithuanian state.

Battles took place in the shadow of the game of empires, reluctant towards the rise of Russian power. The diplomatic riddle was solved by the empires at the expense of the defenceless Commonwealth.

An attempt to prevent the humiliating ratification of the partitioning treaties was made by Tadeusz Reytan, Member of Parliament from Nowogródek, supported by several other MPs, including Samuel Korsak and Stanisław Bohuszewicz.

The Empress aimed at consolidating Russian power in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but she did not intend to strengthen Stanisław August too much. She strove for a balance between the monarch and the magnate opposition.

It consisted of 36 senators and deputies and was chaired by the monarch. The Council consisted of the departments of foreign affairs, treasury, army, justice and administration. The council was reformed in 1776 thanks to the cooperation of the king and the Russian ambassador Otto Stackelberg. It became a tool of effective executive power.

In 1765, Stanisław August founded the Cadet Corps, which was to prepare cadets for military service and holding civilian offices by bringing them up in a spirit of love and sacrifice for their country.

The improvement of education was one of the king's most momentous reforms. On October 14^th 1773, the sejm, at the request of the king, established the Commission of National Education (KEN), which reorganized the school system and curricula. It established communal schools for all children and district schools for noble children. Students – girls among them – used pioneering textbooks developed by the Society for Elementary Books under the leadership of Ignacy Potocki.

KEN schools paid more attention to the natural sciences, mathematics and the Polish language than others had before. But they continued to propagate the patriotic education postulated by Konarski. The king's brother and later primate – bishop Michał Jerzy Poniatowski became the president of KEN.

Under these circumstances, the political leaders of the Polish-Lithuanian state saw an opportunity to break the country out of its stagnation. At the beginning of the 1788 sejm, Stanisław August remained faithful to the programme of the alliance with Russia, confirmed in 1787 during his meeting with Catherine II in Kaniv, seeing it as an opportunity to protect the country from another partition.

The magnate opposition, lead by Grand Marshal of Lithuania Ignacy Potocki, sought to abolish the Permanent Council, to hand over power to the sejm and increase the size of the army. This republican programme was well received by a society engulfed by patriotic rapture.

Simultaneously, differences began to emerge between the so-called patriotic party around Potocki and Great Hetman of the Crown, Franciszek Ksawery Branicki. The hetman sought to regain power over the army. To achieve this, his supporters tried to awaken a fear among the nobility that the reforms would hit their privileges.

These sentiments were picked up by the patriotic reform party headed by Ignacy Potocki, Stanisław Małachowski and Hugo Kołłątaj, utilising the diplomatic support of Prussia.The sejm ordered the Russian troops to leave the territory of the Commonwealth and decided to enlarge the army to 100,000 soldiers.

The liquidation of the Permanent Council and the transfer to the sejm of the administrative bodies overseeing the treasury, army, diplomacy and internal affairs meant that the parliament took over as the highest authority in the country.

Seeing this as Commonwealth’s attempt to become independent, the Russian ambassador Otto Stackelberg urged Stanisław August to leave Warsaw and to refuse to recognize the sejm. The king, however, did not decide to “separate from the nation” and joined the anti-Russian supporters of reforms.

Debates on the 658-clause draft were protracted. Meanwhile, in the autumn of 1790, two years had passed since the last assembly of the sejm. In this situation, the patriotic party, together with the king, decided to convene sejmiki to elect new deputies and to continue deliberations in a double composition. The new members of the sejm, largely in favour of the king, livened up the pace of work. In this situation, Potocki decided to compromise with Stanisław August.

The basis of the secret negotiations was the king’s proposal, expressing his vision of a constitutional monarchy with a strong position of the ruler. The royal secretary, Scipione Piattoli, was the intermediary in Potocki’s consultations with Stanisław August. Stanisław Małachowski and Hugo Kołłątaj also participated in the work. The latter edited a compromise form of the text. The authors of the constitution decided to pass it in one session to avoid a long debate on each of its points.

The official reason for organizing the session were foreign dispatches informing about the possible partition of the Commonwealth, which were to be read to deputies and senators. The audience was brought to the gallery of the Senate Chamber in the Royal Castle.

Before noon, the parliamentarians began to arrive, passing a crowd of townspeople and the armed royal guard. The atmosphere was nervous and expectant, and further heated by the reading of communications about the planned partition.

The debate dragged on until late afternoon and it is not known how long it would have continued had it not been for Marshal Stanisław Małachowski. When the king raised his hand to speak, the marshal silenced the room, shouting “The king swears!” After the king took the oath, the deputies rushed to offer congratulations, and then went to the collegiate church of St. John to complete the ceremony.

The Diet, or the Legislative Power The majority of votes shall decide everything, and everywhere; therefore we abolish, and utterly annihilate, liberum veto, all sorts of confederacies and confederate Diets, as contrary to the spirit of the present constitution, as undermining the government, and as being ruinous to society.

The Members of Parliament were to be elected every two years, with the possibility of summoning them to multiple sessions. Laws were to be passed by the chamber of deputies, and the Senate, chaired by the king, had the right to veto, suspending the law until the next term of office. On urgent matters, both houses voted together.

The most perfect government cannot exist or last without an effectual executive power. […] Having experienced the fatal effects of interregna, periodically subverting government […] and being desirous of preventing forever all foreign influence […] we have, from prudent motives, resolved to adopt hereditary succession.

Executive power was vested in the king and the Custodial Council of the Law made up of five ministers. Lower in the hierarchy were government commissions for education, home affairs, the army and the treasury.

As judicial power is incompatible with the legislative, nor can be administered by the King, therefore tribunals and magistratures ought to be established and elected. It ought to have local existence, that every citizen should know where to seek justice, and every transgressor can discern the hand of national government.

The court system was to be based on the election of judges by the representative bodies of nobles and burghers respectively. The separation of powers however was not absolute: the Sejm court constituted the highest tribunal for “crimes against the State”, there was a minister of justice in the Custodial Council (albeit not by title), the government commissions also had certain judicial powers. Little had changed regarding legal status of the peasants.

The May 3^rd Constitution was passed as a result of a compromise. Radical republicans did not oppose the constitutional monarchy, and supporters of the unitary state succumbed to the persuasion of the defenders of the separateness of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. An important role in the negotiations on the consolidation of the Polish-Lithuanian dualism of the Commonwealth was played by Kazimierz Nestor Sapieha, Marshal of the Lithuanian Confederation.

The Lithuanians were to constitute half of the members of the Army and Treasury Commission and a third of the Police Commission. The representatives of the Polish Crown and Duchy of Lithuania were to alternately preside over the Military and Treasury Commissions. The Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania became equal political partners.

In February 1792, the sejmiki gathered throughout the Commonwealth to elect judges to the tribunals. Supporters of the constitution used this opportunity to investigate the attitude of the nobility to the Governance Act passed on the 3^rd of May.

Most of the local assemblies supported the new law. Some of them swore in the constitution, the rest vouched their faithfulness to it or thanked the authors of the new law. Only every tenth sejmik disregarded the constitution with silence.

The Governance Act was met with greater support in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, than it was in the Polish Crown, where all the sejmiki agreed to the constitution. Shortly after its publication, the document was translated into Lithuanian. This is the first such high ranking text that has survived until today as a monument to the Lithuanian language.

The adoption of the Constitution of the 3^rd of May was widely echoed in Europe. The foreign press appreciated not only the advantages of the new regime, but also the peaceful way in which it was introduced. The revolution in the Commonwealth was judged differently by the rulers of neighbouring powers, who were not pleased with the prospect of the strengthening of the Polish-Lithuanian state.

We have seen anarchy and servitude at once removed; a throne strengthened for the protection of the people, without trenching on their liberties; all foreign cabal banished, by changing the crown from elective to hereditary […] Not one man incurred loss or suffered degradation. All, from the king to the day-labourer, were improved in their condition. Everything was kept in its place and order; but in that place and order everything was bettered.
[Edmund Burke, philosopher, “An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs”, 1791].

After negotiations with Empress Catherine II, opponents of the constitution with Stanisław Szczęsny Potocki, Seweryn Rzewuski, Franciszek Ksawery Branicki and Szymon Kossakowski at the helm, signed an act of confederation on April 27th 1792 in Saint Petersburg. The document was announced on May 14th in Targowica, shortly before Russian troops entered the territory of the Commonwealth.

On the northern front, the Russian army reached Brest. In the south, Crown Commander Prince Józef Poniatowski delayed the Russians’ march towards the River Bug. Of particular importance were the victorious Battle of Zieleńce and the fierce Battle at Dubienka, where the corps under the command of Tadeusz Kościuszko fought.

On July 25^th 1792, in Warsaw, Stanisław August decided to join the Targowica Confederation in order to “save what can be saved”. However, the Constitution of the 3^rd of May and the reforms of the Great Sejm could not be preserved, and the last sejm in Grodno – the last in the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth – made history as a shameful event, agreeing to the second partition and abolition of the Governance Act.

Meanwhile, in the occupied country, preparations began for an insurrection, later known as the Kościuszko Uprising.

Jakub Kubicki’s classicist project was never implemented due to the fall of the Commonwealth. Only a small chapel was built, around which, throughout the 19^th century, Poles illegally celebrated the next anniversaries of the adoption of the constitution.

After Poland regained its independence in 1918, in 1920 the sejm adopted a law “on the performance of the vow made by the Four Year Sejm, on the erection of a temple in Warsaw dedicated to Divine Providence”. These plans also didn’t come to fruition. The will of the creators of the 3^rd May were only fulfilled in the 21^st century.