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The 'Constitution of May 3, 1791' (; ) is generally recognized as Europe's first and the world's second modern codified national constitution.^[1][2][3] The May 3rd Constitution was instituted as a "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 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,^[4] 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 legislation passed by that sejm. The Constitution sought to supplant the existing anarchy fostered by some of the country's magnates with a more democratic constitutional monarchy.^[5] The document was translated into Lithuanian.^[6]
The adoption of the May 3rd Constitution provoked the active hostility of the Commonwealth's neighbors. In the War in Defense of the Constitution, the Commonwealth was betrayed by its Prussian ally, Frederick William II, and defeated by Catherine the Great's Imperial Russia allied with the Targowica Confederation, a cabal of Polish magnates who opposed reforms that might weaken their influence. Despite the Commonwealth's defeat and the consequent Second Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the May 3rd Constitution influenced later democratic movements. 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."

Contents

History

Background

Drafting and Adoption

The fall

Legacy

Features

National Holiday

See also

Similar documents

References

Further reading

External links

History

Background

The May 3rd Constitution was a response to the increasingly perilous situation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, only a century earlier a major European power and indeed the largest state on the continent. Already two hundred years 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. 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 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 content to believe they were living in some kind of "Golden Age," for over a century paralysed 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.
The Enlightenment had gained great influence in certain Commonwealth circles during the reign (1764–95) of its last king, Stanisław August Poniatowski, and the King had proceeded with cautious reforms such as the establishment of fiscal and military ministries and a national customs tariff. However, the idea of reforms in the Commonwealth was viewed with growing suspicion by neighboring countries, which were content with the Commonwealth's current state of affairs and abhorred the thought of a resurgent and democratic power on their borders.
Accordingly Empress Catherine the Great of Russia and King Frederick the Great of Prussia provoked a conflict between some members of the Sejm 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 acquiesce 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 began a civil war with the goal of overthrowing the King, and fought on until 1772 when they were overwhelmed by Russian intervention.

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 neighbouring 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 with 74,000 square miles. This was justified on grounds of "anarchy" in the Commonwealth and her 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 under 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^[7]) 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 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 neighbuors 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 1788–92, 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,^[8] 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.^[9] 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 neighbours 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."[1]

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 kilometres, and Prussia took 58,000. The Commonwealth now comprised no more than 212,000 square kilometres. 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 absolute monarchies were replaced by democratic states, including the reborn, Second Polish Republic.

Features

May 3rd Constitution in Lithuanian language.

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 Free Royal Cities Act of April 18, 1791, stipulated in Article III to be integral to the Constitution — personal security, the right to acquire landed property, and 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.^[10]
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 printed edition of the ''Government Act'' (Constitution of May 3, 1791).

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.^[11] Under the terms of the May 3rd Constitution, on Stanisław August's death the throne of Poland was to become hereditary and pass to Frederick Augustus I of Saxony, of the 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, the Free Royal Cities Act 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 within a single state, and their equal representation in state governing bodies. The provisions of the Government Act were fleshed out in a number of 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. 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 labour…" 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.

National 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 Polish People's Republic, 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. It was restored as an official Polish holiday in April 1990, after the fall of communism.
In 2007, May 3rd was declared as well a Lithuanian national holiday; the first joint celebration by the Polish Sejm and the Lithuanian Seimas took place on May 3, 2007.

See also

★ History of democracy

★ History of Poland (1569-1795)

★ ''Neminem captivabimus''

★ Free Royal Cities Act

Similar documents

★ Corsican Constitution of 1755

★ Swedish Constitution of 1772

★ Constitutions of France

★ ''Magna Carta''

★ ''Nakaz''

★ Instrument of Government

References

1. John Markoff describes the advent of modern codified national constitutions as one of the milestones of democracy, and states that "The first European country to follow the U.S. example was Poland in 1791." John Markoff, ''Waves of Democracy'', 1996, ISBN 0-8039-9019-7, p.121.
2. The Federalist Papers, , James, Madison, Penguin Classics, 1987,
3. Constitutions of the World, , Albert, Blaustein, Fred B. Rothman & Company, 1993,
4. Article IV (''The peasants''): "we accept under the protection of the law and of the national government the agricultural folk […] who constitute the most numerous populace in the nation and hence the greatest strength of the country […]."
5. George Sanford, ''Democratic Government in Poland: Constitutional Politics Since 1989'', Palgrave, 2002, ISBN 0-333-77475-2, Google print p.11
6. Lietuvos TSR istorija. T. 1: Nuo seniausių laikų iki 1917 metų. - 2 leid. Vilnius, 1986, p. 222. Transcript of original translation can be found on Senieji lietuviški raštai (Old Lithuanian texts), Lituanistica, Istorija.net
7. Maurice Cranston, ''The Solitary Self: Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Exile and Adversity'', University of Chicago Press, 1997, ISBN 0-226-11865-7, Print p.177
8. Piotr Stefan Wandycz, ''The Price of Freedom: A History of East Central Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present'', Routledge (UK), 2001, ISBN 0-415-25491-4, Google Print, p.128
9. Paul W. Schroeder, ''The Transformation of European Politics 1763–1848'', Oxford University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-19-820654-2, Google print p.84
10. It bears noting that the contemporaneous United States Constitution sanctioned the continuation of slavery. Thus neither constitution enfranchised all its adult male population: the U.S. Constitution discriminated against America's slaves, the Polish Constitution — against Poland's peasants.
11. King Stanisław August himself had been elected in 1764 with the support of his ex-mistress, Russian Tsarina Catherine the Great — including bribes and a Russian army deployed only a few miles from the election sejm, meeting at Wola outside Warsaw.

Further reading

★ Adam Zamoyski, ''The Polish Way: a Thousand-Year History of the Poles and Their Culture'', New York, Hippocrene Books, 1994.

★ Jacek Jędruch, ''Constitutions, Elections and Legislatures of Poland, 1493–1993'', Summit, NJ, EJJ Books, 1998, ISBN 0-7818-0637-2.

★ Joseph Kasparek, ''The Constitutions of Poland and of the United States: Kinships and Genealogy'', Miami, American Institute of Polish Culture, 1980.

★ Norman Davies, ''God's Playground'', 2 vols., ISBN 0-231-05353-3 and ISBN 0-231-05351-7.

★ Paweł Jasienica, ''Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów'' (The Commonwealth of the Two Peoples), ISBN 83-06-01093-0.

★ Emanuel Rostworowski, ''Maj 1791 - maj 1792: rok monarchii konstytucyjnej'' (May 1791–May 1792: the Year of Constitutional Monarchy), Warsaw, ''Zamek Królewski'' (Royal Castle), 1985.

External links

★ Polishconstitution.org: Site about the May 3rd Constitution that includes a partial English translation by Christopher Kasparek.

★ History of Polish law until 1795.

★ The Constitution of May 3, 1791, by Hon. Carl L. Bucki.

★ Constitutions, Elections and Legislatures of Poland, 1493–1993.

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