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Constitution of May 3, 1791

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Law

   May 3rd Constitution (painting by Jan Matejko, 1891). King Stanisław
   August (left, in regal ermine-trimmed cloak), enters St. John's
   Cathedral, where Sejm deputies will swear to uphold the new
   Constitution; in background, Warsaw's Royal Castle, where the
   Constitution has just been adopted.
   Enlarge
   May 3rd Constitution (painting by Jan Matejko, 1891). King Stanisław
   August (left, in regal ermine-trimmed cloak), enters St. John's
   Cathedral, where Sejm deputies will swear to uphold the new
   Constitution; in background, Warsaw's Royal Castle, where the
   Constitution has just been adopted.

   The Constitution of 3 May 1791 ( Polish: Konstytucja Trzeciego Maja) is
   generally recognized as Europe's first modern codified national
   constitution, as well as the second oldest national constitution in the
   world . It was instituted by the Government Act (Polish: Ustawa
   rządowa) adopted on that date by the Sejm ( parliament) of the
   Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

   The May 3rd Constitution was designed to redress long-standing
   political defects of the federative Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and
   its traditional system of " Golden Liberty." The Constitution
   introduced political equality between townspeople and nobility (
   szlachta) and placed the peasants under the protection of the
   government,^ thus mitigating the worst abuses of serfdom. The
   Constitution abolished pernicious parliamentary institutions such as
   the liberum veto, which at one time had put the sejm at the mercy of
   any deputy who might choose, or be bribed by an interest or foreign
   power, to undo all the legislation that had been passed by that sejm.
   The May 3rd Constitution sought to supplant the existing anarchy
   fostered by some of the country's reactionary magnates, with a more
   egalitarian and democratic constitutional monarchy. At its adoption,
   the document was translated into the Lithuanian language .

   The adoption of the May 3rd Constitution provoked the active hostility
   of the Polish Commonwealth's neighbors. In the War in Defense of the
   Constitution, Poland was betrayed by its Prussian ally, Frederick
   William II, and defeated by the Imperial Russia of Catherine the Great,
   allied with the Targowica Confederation, a cabal of Polish magnates who
   opposed reforms that might weaken their influence. Despite the defeat,
   and the subsequent Second Partition of Poland, the May 3rd Constitution
   influenced later democratic movements in the world. It remained, after
   the demise of the Polish Republic in 1795, over the next 123 years of
   Polish partitions, a beacon in the struggle to restore Polish
   sovereignty. In the words of two of its co-authors, Ignacy Potocki and
   Hugo Kołłątaj, it was "the last will and testament of the expiring
   Fatherland."
   Original manuscript of the May 3rd Constitution.
   Enlarge
   Original manuscript of the May 3rd Constitution.

History

Background

   The May 3rd Constitution was a response to the increasingly perilous
   situation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, only a century and a
   half earlier a major European power and indeed the largest state on the
   continent. Already two centuries before the May 3rd Constitution, King
   Sigismund III Vasa's court preacher, the Jesuit Piotr Skarga, had
   famously condemned the individual and collective weaknesses of the
   Commonwealth's citizens. Likewise, in the same period, writers and
   philosophers such as Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski and Wawrzyniec Grzymała
   Goślicki, and Jan Zamoyski's egzekucja praw (Execution-of-the-Laws)
   reform movement, had advocated reforms.

   By the early 17th century, the magnates of Poland and Lithuania were in
   near-total control of the Commonwealth — or rather, they managed to
   ensure that no reforms be carried out that might weaken their
   privileged status. They looked after their own interests while
   neglecting the commonwealth. They spent lavishly on banquets,
   drinking-bouts and other assorted amusements, while the peasants
   languished in abysmal conditions and the city dwellers were hemmed in
   by an array of anti- municipal legislation and fared much worse than
   their thriving Western contemporaries.

   Many historians hold that a major cause of the Commonwealth's downfall
   was the peculiar institution of the liberum veto ("free veto"), which
   since 1652 had in principle permitted any Sejm deputy to nullify all
   the legislation that had been adopted by that Sejm. Thus deputies
   bribed by magnates or foreign powers, or simply benighted and content
   to believe that they were living in some kind of "Golden Age," for over
   a century paralyzed the Commonwealth's government. The threat of the
   liberum veto could, however, be overridden by the establishment of a "
   confederated sejm," which operated immune from the liberum veto. The
   Four-Year, or "Great," Sejm of 1788–1792, which would adopt the
   Constitution of May 3, 1791, was such a confederated sejm; and it was
   due only to that fact that it was able to put through so radical a
   piece of legislation.

   By the reign (1764–1795) of Poland's last king, Stanisław August
   Poniatowski, the Age of Enlightenment had begun to take root in Poland.
   The King proceeded with cautious reforms. Fiscal and military
   "commissions" (ministries) were established. A national customs tariff
   was instituted. Thoroughgoing constitutional reforms were discussed.
   However, the idea of reforms in the Commonwealth was viewed with
   growing suspicion by neighboring countries, which were content with the
   Commonwealth's impotence and abhorred the thought of a powerful — and
   more democratic — country hard by their borders.

   Accordingly Empress Catherine the Great of Russia and King Frederick
   the Great of Prussia provoked a conflict between Sejm conservatives and
   the King over civil rights for religious minorities. Catherine and
   Frederick declared their support for the Polish nobility ( szlachta)
   and their "liberties," and by October 1767 Russian troops had assembled
   outside the Polish capital, Warsaw. The King and his adherents, in face
   of superior Russian military force, were left with little choice but to
   bow to Russian demands and accept the five "eternal and invariable"
   principles which Catherine vowed to "protect in the name of Poland's
   liberties": the free election of kings; the right of liberum veto; the
   right to renounce allegiance to, and raise rebellion against, the king
   ( rokosz); and the szlachta's exclusive right to hold office and land,
   and the landowner's power of life and death over his peasants.

   Not everyone in the Commonwealth agreed with King Stanisław August's
   decision. On February 29, 1768, several magnates, including Kazimierz
   Pułaski, vowing to oppose Russian intervention, declared Stanisław
   August a "lackey of Russia and Catherine" and formed a confederation at
   the town of Bar. The Bar Confederation opened a civil war with the goal
   of overthrowing the King and fought on until 1772, when overwhelmed by
   Russian intervention.
   The First Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1772.)
   Enlarge
   The First Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1772.)

   The Bar Confederation's defeat set the scene for the next act in the
   unfolding drama. On August 5, 1772, at St. Petersburg, Russia, the
   three neighboring powers, Russia, Prussia and Austria, signed the First
   Partition treaty. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was to be divested
   of over 30,000 square miles of territory, leaving her 74,000 square
   miles. This was justified on grounds of anarchy in the Commonwealth and
   the latter's refusal to cooperate with its neighbors' efforts to
   restore order. The three powers demanded that the Sejm ratify this
   first partition, otherwise threatening further partitions. King
   Stanisław August yielded to duress and on April 19, 1773, called the
   Sejm into session. Only 102 deputies attended; the rest, aware of the
   King's decision, refused. Despite protests, notably by the deputy
   Tadeusz Rejtan, the First Partition of Poland was ratified.

   The first of the three successive 18th century partitions of
   Commonwealth territory by Russia, Prussia and Austria that would
   eventually blot Poland from the map of Europe, had made it clear to
   progressive minds that the Commonwealth must either reform or perish.
   Even before the First Partition, a Sejm deputy had been sent to ask the
   French philosophes Gabriel Bonnot de Mably and Jean-Jacques Rousseau to
   draw up tentative constitutions for a new Poland. Mably had submitted
   his recommendations in 1770–1771; Rousseau had finished his (
   Considerations on the Government of Poland) in 1772, when the First
   Partition was already underway.

   Supported by King Stanisław August, a new wave of reforms were
   introduced. The most important included the establishment (1773) of a
   Komisja Edukacji Narodowej (" Commission of National Education") — the
   first ministry of education in the world. New schools were opened in
   the cities and in the countryside, uniform textbooks were printed,
   teachers were educated, poor students were provided scholarships. The
   Commonwealth's military was modernized; a standing army was formed.
   Economic and commercial reforms, previously shunned as unimportant by
   the szlachta, were introduced, and the development of industries was
   encouraged. The peasants were given some rights. A new Police ministry
   fought corruption. Everything from the road system to prisons was
   reformed. A new executive body was created, the Permanent Council
   (Polish: Rada Nieustająca), comprising five ministries.
   In 1791, the "Great" or Four-Year Sejm of 1788–1792 adopts the May 3rd
   Constitution at Warsaw's Royal Castle (rebuilt in the 1970s after its
   deliberate destruction by the Germans in World War II).
   Enlarge
   In 1791, the "Great" or Four-Year Sejm of 1788–1792 adopts the May 3rd
   Constitution at Warsaw's Royal Castle (rebuilt in the 1970s after its
   deliberate destruction by the Germans in World War II).

   In 1776 the Sejm commissioned Chancellor Andrzej Zamoyski to draft a
   new legal code, the Zamoyski Code. By 1780, under Zamoyski's direction,
   a code (Zbiór praw sądowych) had been produced. It would have
   strengthened royal power, made all officials answerable to the Sejm,
   placed the clergy and their finances under state supervision, and
   deprived landless szlachta of many of their legal immunities.
   Zamoyski's progressive legal code, containing elements of
   constitutional reform, failed to be adopted by the Sejm.

Drafting and Adoption

   Events in the world now played into the reformers' hands. Poland's
   neighbors were too occupied with wars — especially with the Ottoman
   Empire — and with their own internal troubles to intervene forcibly in
   Poland. A major opportunity for reform seemed to present itself during
   the "Great" or " Four-Year Sejm" of 1788–1792, which opened on October
   6, 1788, and from 1790 — in the words of the May 3rd Constitution's
   preamble — met "in dual number," the newly elected Sejm deputies having
   joined the earlier-established confederated sejm. While a new alliance
   between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Prussia seemed to
   provide security against Russian intervention, King Stanisław August
   drew closer to leaders of the reform-minded Patriotic Party. A new
   Constitution was drafted by the King, with contributions from Stanisław
   Małachowski, Ignacy Potocki, Hugo Kołłątaj, Stanisław Staszic, the
   King's Italian secretary Scipione Piattoli, and others.

   The advocates of the Constitution, under threat of violence from the
   Sejm's Muscovite Party (also known as the "Hetmans"), and with many
   contrary-minded deputies still away on Easter recess, managed to set
   debate on the Government Act forward by two days from the original May
   5. The ensuing debate and adoption of the Government Act took place in
   a quasi- coup d'etat: many pro-reform deputies arrived early and in
   secret, and the royal guards were positioned about the Royal Castle
   where the Sejm was gathered, to prevent Muscovite adherents from
   disrupting the proceedings. The Constitution ("Government Act") bill
   was read out and passed overwhelmingly, to the enthusiasm of the crowds
   gathered outside.

The fall

   The May 3rd, 1791, Constitution remained in effect for only a year
   before being overthrown, by Russian armies allied with the Targowica
   Confederation, in the War in Defense of the Constitution.

   Wars between Turkey and Russia and Sweden and Russia having by now
   ended, Empress Catherine was furious over the adoption of the May 3rd
   Constitution, which threatened Russian influence in Poland. Russia had
   viewed Poland as a de facto protectorate. The contacts of Polish
   reformers with the Revolutionary French National Assembly were seen by
   Poland's neighbors as evidence of a revolutionary conspiracy and a
   threat to the absolute monarchies. The Prussian statesman Ewald von
   Hertzberg expressed the fears of European conservatives: " The Poles
   have given the coup de grâce to the Prussian monarchy by voting a
   constitution."
   Hanging in effigy of the Targowica Confederation traitors (Warsaw,
   1794). Paining by Jan Piotr Norblin.
   Enlarge
   Hanging in effigy of the Targowica Confederation traitors (Warsaw,
   1794). Paining by Jan Piotr Norblin.

   A number of magnates who had opposed the Constitution from the start,
   such as Feliks Potocki and Ksawery Branicki, asked Tsarina Catherine to
   intervene and restore their privileges abolished under the
   Constitution. With her backing they formed the Targowica Confederation,
   and in their proclamation denounced the Constitution for spreading the
   "contagion of democratic ideas." They asserted that "The intentions of
   Her Highness the Empress of Russia Catherine the Great, ally of the
   Polish Commonwealth, in introducing her army, are and have been none
   other than to restore to the Commonwealth and to Poles freedom, and in
   particular to all the country's citizens, security and happiness." On
   May 18, 1792, over 20,000 Confederates crossed the border into Poland,
   together with 97,000 veteran Russian troops.

   The Polish King and the reformers could field only a 37,000-man army,
   many of them untested recruits. The Polish Army, under the King's
   nephew Józef Poniatowski and Tadeusz Kościuszko, did defeat the
   Russians on several occasions, but the King himself dealt a deathblow
   to the Polish cause: when in July 1792 Warsaw was threatened with siege
   by the Russians, the King came to believe that victory was impossible
   against the Russian numerical superiority, and that surrender was the
   only alternative to total defeat and a massacre of the reformers.

   On July 24, 1792, King Stanisław August abandoned the reformist cause
   and joined the Targowica Confederation. The Polish Army disintegrated.
   Many reform leaders, believing their cause lost, went into self-exile.

   The King had not saved the Commonwealth, however. To the surprise of
   the Targowica Confederates, there ensued the Second Partition of
   Poland. Russia took 250,000 square kilometers, and Prussia took 58,000.
   The Commonwealth now comprised no more than 212,000 square kilometers.
   What was left of the Commonwealth was merely a small buffer state with
   a puppet king and a Russian army.

   For a year and a half Polish patriots bided their time, while planning
   an insurrection. On March 24, 1794, in Kraków, Tadeusz Kościuszko
   declared what has come to be known as the Kościuszko Uprising. On May 7
   he issued the " Proclamation of Połaniec" (Uniwersał Połaniecki),
   granting freedom to the peasants and ownership of land to all who
   fought in the insurrection.

   After some initial victories — the Battle of Racławice ( April 4) and
   the capture of Warsaw (April 18) and Wilno (April 22) — the Uprising
   was dealt a crippling blow: the forces of Russia, Austria and Prussia
   joined in a military intervention. Historians consider the Uprising's
   defeat to have been a foregone conclusion in face of the gigantic
   numerical superiority of the three invading powers. The defeat of
   Kościuszko's forces led to the third and final partition of the
   Commonwealth in 1795.

Legacy

   Nevertheless, memory of the world's second modern codified national
   constitution — recognized by political scientists as a very progressive
   document for its time — for generations helped keep alive Polish
   aspirations for an independent and just society, and continues to
   inform the efforts of its authors' descendants. In Poland it is viewed
   as the culmination of all that was good and enlightened in Polish
   history and culture. The May 3rd anniversary of its adoption has been
   observed as Poland's most important civic, May 3 holiday, since Poland
   regained independence in 1918.

   Prior to the May 3rd Constitution, in Poland the term "constitution"
   (Polish: konstytucja) had denoted all the legislation, of whatever
   character, that had been passed at a Sejm. Only with the adoption of
   the May 3rd Constitution did konstytucja assume its modern sense of a
   fundamental document of governance.

   The very concept of a codified national constitution was revolutionary
   in the history of political systems. The first such constitution was
   the Constitution of the United States of America, written in 1787,
   which began to function in 1789. The second was the Constitution
   adopted by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on May 3, 1791. These two
   charters of government form an important milestone in the history of
   democracy. Poland and the United States, though distant geographically,
   showed some notable similarities in their approaches to the design of
   political systems. By contrast to the great absolute monarchies, both
   countries were remarkably democratic. The kings of the
   Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were elected, and the Commonwealth's
   parliament (the Sejm) possessed extensive legislative authority. Under
   the May 3rd Constitution, Poland afforded political privileges to its
   townspeople and to its nobility (the szlachta), which formed some ten
   percent of the country's population. This percentage closely
   approximated the extent of political access in contemporary America,
   where effective suffrage was limited to male property owners.

   The defeat of Poland's liberals was but a temporary setback to the
   cause of democracy. The destruction of the Polish state only slowed the
   expansion of democracy, by then already established in North America.
   Democratic movements soon began undermining the absolute monarchies of
   Europe. The May 3rd Constitution was translated, in abridged form, into
   French, German and English. French revolutionaries toasted King
   Stanisław August and the Constitution — not only for their progressive
   character, but because the War in Defense of the Constitution and the
   Kościuszko Uprising tied up appreciable Russian and Prussian forces
   that could not therefore be used against Revolutionary France. Thomas
   Paine regarded the May 3rd Constitution as a great breakthrough. Edmund
   Burke described it as "the noblest benefit received by any nation at
   any time…. Stanislas II has earned a place among the greatest kings and
   statesmen in history." In the end, the conservatives managed to delay
   the ascent of democracy in Europe only for a century; after the First
   World War most of the European monarchies were replaced by democratic
   states, including the reborn, Second Polish Republic.

Features

   King Stanisław August described the May 3rd Constitution, according to
   a contemporary account, as "founded principally on those of England and
   the United States of America, but avoiding the faults and errors of
   both, and adapted as much as possible to the local and particular
   circumstances of the country." Indeed, the Polish and American national
   constitutions reflected similar Enlightenment influences, including
   Montesquieu's advocacy of a separation and balance of powers among the
   three branches of government — so that, in the words of the May 3rd
   Constitution (article V), "the integrity of the states, civil liberty,
   and social order remain always in equilibrium" — as well as
   Montesquieu's advocacy of a bicameral legislature.

   The Constitution comprised 11 articles. It introduced the principle of
   popular sovereignty (applied to the nobility and townspeople) and a
   separation of powers into legislative (a bicameral Sejm), executive
   ("the King in his council") and judicial branches.

   The Constitution advanced the democratization of the polity by limiting
   the excessive legal immunities and political prerogatives of landless
   nobility, while granting to the townspeople — in the earlier Our Free
   Royal Cities in the States of the Commonwealth Act (Polish: Miasta
   Nasze Królewskie wolne w państwach Rzeczypospolitej) of April 18, 1791,
   stipulated in Article III to be integral to the Constitution — personal
   security, the right to acquire landed property, eligibility for
   military officers' commissions, public offices, and membership in the
   nobility ( szlachta). The Government Act also placed the Commonwealth's
   peasantry "under the protection of the national law and government" — a
   first step toward the ending of serfdom and the enfranchisement of that
   largest and most oppressed social class. ^

   The May 3rd Constitution provided for a Sejm, "ordinarily" meeting
   every two years and "extraordinarily" whenever required by a national
   emergency. Its lower chamber — the Chamber of Deputies (Polish: Izba
   Poselska) — comprised 204 deputies and 24 plenipotentiaries of royal
   cities; its upper chamber — the Chamber of Senators (Polish: Izba
   Senacka) — comprised 132 senators ( voivodes, castellans, government
   ministers and bishops).
   Title page of Piotr Dufour's 1791 edition of the Polish May 3rd
   Constitution (Government Act).
   Enlarge
   Title page of Piotr Dufour's 1791 edition of the Polish May 3rd
   Constitution (Government Act).

   Executive power was in the hands of the royal council, called the
   Guardianship of the Laws (Polish: Straż Praw). This council was
   presided over by the King and comprised 5 ministers appointed by him: a
   minister of police, minister of the seal (i.e. of internal affairs —
   the seal was a traditional attribute of the earlier Chancellor),
   minister of the seal of foreign affairs, minister belli (of war), and
   minister of treasury. The ministers were appointed by the King but
   responsible to the Sejm. In addition to the ministers, council members
   included the Roman Catholic Primate (who was also president of the
   Education Commission) and — without a voice — the Crown Prince, the
   Marshal of the Sejm, and two secretaries. This royal council was a
   descendant of the similar council that had functioned over the previous
   two centuries since King Henry's Articles (1573). Acts of the King
   required the countersignature of the respective minister. The
   stipulation that the King, " doing nothing of himself, … shall be
   answerable for nothing to the nation," parallels the British
   constitutional principle that " The King can do no wrong." (In both
   countries, the respective minister was responsible for the king's
   acts.)

   To enhance Commonwealth integration and security, the Constitution
   abolished the erstwhile union of Poland and Lithuania in favour of a
   unitary state and changed the government from an individually- to a
   dynastically- elective monarchy. The latter provision was meant to
   reduce the destructive, vying influences of foreign powers at each
   royal election.^ Under the terms of the May 3rd Constitution, on
   Stanisław August's death the throne of Poland was to become heraditory
   and pass to the Frederick Augustus I of Saxony from house of Wettin,
   which had provided two of Poland's recent elective kings.

   The Constitution abolished several institutional sources of government
   weakness and national anarchy, including the liberum veto,
   confederations, confederated sejms (paradoxically, the Four-Year Sejm
   was itself a confederated sejm), and the excessive sway of sejmiks
   (regional sejms) stemming from the binding nature of their instructions
   to their Sejm deputies.

   The Constitution acknowledged the Roman Catholic faith as the "dominant
   religion," but guaranteed tolerance of, and freedom, to all religions.
   The Army was to be built up to 100,000 men. Standing income taxes were
   established (10% on the nobility, 20% on the church). Amendments to the
   constitution could be made every 25 years.

   The May 3rd Constitution recognized, as integral to itself, the act on
   Our Free Royal Cities in the States of the Commonwealth that had been
   passed on April 18, 1791 (Constitution, article III) and the act on
   regional sejms (Sejmiki) passed earlier on March 24, 1791 (article VI).
   Some authorities additionally regard as parts of the Constitution the
   Declaration of the Assembled Estates of May 5, 1791, confirming the
   Government Act adopted two days earlier, and the Mutual Declaration of
   the Two Peoples (i.e., of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania) of
   October 22, 1791, affirming the unity and indivisibility of Poland and
   the Grand Duchy. The provisions of the Government Act were fleshed out
   in a number of implementing laws passed in May–June 1791 on sejms and
   sejm courts (two acts of May 13), the Guardianship (June 1), the
   national police commission (that is, ministry: June 17) and civic
   administration (June 24).

   The May 3rd Constitution remained to the last a work in progress. Its
   co-author Hugo Kołłątaj announced that work was underway on "an
   economic constitution…guaranteeing all rights of property [and]
   securing protection and honour to all manner of labor…" Yet a third
   basic law was touched on by Kołłątaj: a "moral constitution," most
   likely a Polish analogue to the American Bill of Rights and the French
   Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.

Holiday

   May 3rd was first declared a holiday (May 3rd Constitution Day — Święto
   Konstytucji 3 Maja) on May 5, 1791. Banned during the Partitions of
   Poland, it again became a holiday in April 1919 under the Second Polish
   Republic. The May 3rd holiday was banned once more during World War II
   by the Nazi and Soviet occupiers. After the 1946 anti-communist student
   demonstrations, it lost support with the authorities of the People's
   Republic of Poland, who replaced it with May 1 Labor Day celebrations.
   May 3rd lost its legal standing as a holiday in January 1951. Until
   1989, May 3rd was a common day for anti-government and anti-communist
   protests. In April 1990, after the fall of communism, May 3rd was
   restored as an official holiday.
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