Polish-American Social Club of North
San Diego County
Polish Constitution of May
3, 1791
Jan Matejko's 9x15 ft painting executed on the
centenary of the passage of the Constitution shows Stanisław August Poniatowski,
King of Poland, being bourn in triumph from the Royal Palace, seen in the
background where the Constitution had just been passed, to Warsaw's St. John's
Cathedral. The painting hangs in the National Museum in Warsaw. May 3
Constitution, by
Matejko (1891). King
Stanisław August (left) enters
St. John's Cathedral, where
deputies will swear to uphold the
Constitution. Background:
Warsaw's Royal Castle, where it has just been adopted.
The first Polish constitution was adopted by the
Four-Year Sejm (parliament) on 3 May 1791. It was the first such basic law in
written form in Europe and the second in the world after the constitution of the
United States (1787). The Constitution of 3 May was drafted at the Four-Year
Sejm (1788–1792) by reformers led most actively by King Stanisław II August
Poniatowski, Hugo Kołłątaj, and Ignacy Potocki. The constitution was preceded by
two acts regarded as integral to it: the Reorganization of the Sejmiki
[provincial diets] Act (adopted on 24 March 1791) and the Act on the Status of
Towns and
Townsmen's Rights (18 April).
In 1791, the "Great" or
Four-Year Sejm of 1788–92 adopted the May 3
Constitution at Warsaw's
Royal Castle.
In accordance with Enlightenment ideas, the
Constitution and these two related documents introduced the principle of the
nation's sovereignty and the separation of the legislative, executive, and
judicial powers. Landless noblemen (usually dependent on magnates) were excluded
from the Sejm and the sejmiki, and townsmen were given the opportunity to
acquire nobility through the purchase of a landed estate or by virtue of
services rendered to the country or professional work. The citizens of royal
towns were guaranteed personal immunity and were granted the right to purchase
landed estates and hold junior official posts. The towns received the right to
send their representatives to the Sejm, where they would have an advisory voice
on matters concerning towns. State protection of the Jews was confirmed. The
constitution maintained
serfdom, but peasants were to be put under the
protection of the law and the government, inter alia with regard to
contracts concluded with landowners.
The constitution abolished the election of kings;
after the death of the current king, the throne was to be hereditary in the
Saxon dynasty. Legislative power was
vested in a bicameral Sejm (with a Chamber of Deputies
and a Senate), which was to be responsible for legislation and taxation and
would have broadly conceived control over the government as well as jurisdiction
in offenses against the nation and the state. Laws were to be adopted by a
majority vote; the deputies (204 plus 24 plenipotentiaries of towns) were to be
elected for a term of two years. The competency of the Senate was restricted to
a
suspensory veto; if the Chamber of Deputies upheld its
decision, the bill became law without the consent of the Senate. The role of the
sejmiki, and indirectly also of the magnates, was restricted. The
executive was strengthened: confederations (a form of legal rebellion) were
banned and the liberum veto (the principle of unanimity that allowed a
single deputy to dissolve the Sejm and invalidate its decisions or even to
prevent it from assembling) was abolished.
Royal Castle Senate Chamber, where the May 3
Constitution was adopted
The Council of Ministers, called the Guardians of
the Laws, was to be the highest executive body. It was to be composed of the
king, who had the decisive voice, the
primate, and five ministers, and was to direct the
central administration and supervise five commissions (ministries)—education,
foreign affairs, justice, war, and treasury. The monarch was responsible to no
one, while the ministers were responsible to the king and the Sejm for their
policies and could be brought before the Sejm court if they broke the law—this
was thus the world's first legally formulated principle of ministerial
responsibility. The reform of the judiciary united the various noblemen's
judicial courts into uniform collegiate country courts of first instance; courts
of appeal were set up in towns. The constitution was a great step forward toward
a centralized government. It laid the foundations for cooperation between
landowners and rich burghers and opened possibilities for the further political
and legal transformations that would be
indispensable for the development of Poland's
fledgling capitalism.
The Constitution of 3 May was supplemented on 20
October 1791 by the Mutual Pledge of the Two Nations, which emphasized the
federal character of the state and the equal status of the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania and the Polish Kingdom. The Duchy was to have the same ministerial
posts as Poland, and it retained its separate system of laws. This was a
compromise between the Lithuanians' aspiration for sovereignty and reform of the
political system, on the one hand, and the tradition of union between the two
states and the preservation of the Commonwealth's federal character, on the
other. The constitution gained the support of the majority of the nobility,
townsmen, and many magnates. In 1792 its opponents set up the Targowica
confederation in defense of the old system and asked Russia to intervene
militarily. The achievements of the Constitution of 3 May were canceled by the
fall of the Commonwealth with the Third Partition in 1795.
Polish-Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth 1789-1792, after removal of
Russian Empire protectorate
The Constitution of May 3, 1791 (Polish:
Konstytucja Trzeciego
Maja;
Lithuanian: Gegužės
trečiosios konstitucija) is generally regarded as Europe's first and
the world's second modern
codified national
constitution, following the 1788 ratification of the
United States Constitution (however, see also:
Corsican Constitution).[1][2][3]
[a]
The May 3, 1791, Constitution was adopted as a "Government
Act" (Polish: Ustawa rządowa) on that date by the
Sejm (parliament)
of the
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was in effect for
only a year, until the
Russo-Polish War of 1792.
The May 3 Constitution was designed to redress
long-standing political defects of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and its
traditional system of "Golden
Liberty" conveying disproportionate rights and
privileges to the
nobility. 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 3 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
and landless nobility 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 3 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 Motherland."[7][8]
Background
The May 3 Constitution
responded 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 3 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 controlled the Commonwealth—or rather, they
managed to ensure that no reforms would be carried out that might weaken their
privileged status (the "Golden
Freedoms"). They spent lavishly on banquets, drinking bouts and other
amusements, while the peasants languished in abysmal conditions and the towns,
many of which were wholly within the private property of a magnate who feared
the rise of an independent middle class, were kept in a state of ruin.[9]
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 1788–92, 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 not only by the magnates, but also by neighboring countries,
which were content with the Commonwealth's contemporary state of affairs and
abhorred the thought of a resurgent and democratic power on their borders.[10]
Accordingly Russia's Empress
Catherine the Great and
Prussia's King
Frederick the Great provoked a conflict between some members of the Sejm and
the King over
civil rights for
religious minorities.[11][12]
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.[11][12]
The King and his adherents, in face of superior Russian military force, were
left with little choice but to acquiesce in Russian demands and during the
Repnin Sejm (named after unofficially presiding Russian ambassador
Nicholas Repnin) accept the five "eternal and invariable principles" which
Catherine vowed to "protect for all time to come 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);
the
szlachta's exclusive right to hold office and land; and a landowner's
power of life and death over his peasants.[10][11][12]
Thus all the privileges of the nobility that had made the Commonwealth's
political system ("Golden
Liberty") ungovernable were guaranteed as unalterable in the
Cardinal Laws.[11][12]
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth thus became an effective
protectorate of the
Russian Empire.[13]
Nonetheless, several minor beneficial reforms were adopted, and the need for
more reforms was becoming increasingly recognized.[12]
Not everyone in the Commonwealth agreed with King Stanisław August's
acquiescence. 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 overwhelmed by Russian intervention.[10]
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 about a third of its territory and population (over 200,000 km˛ and
4 million people).[14]
This was justified on grounds of "anarchy" in the Commonwealth and her refusal
to cooperate with its neighbors' efforts to restore order.[15]
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 what
became known as the
Partition Sejm; the rest, aware of the King's decision, refused. Despite
protests, notably by the deputy
Tadeusz Rejtan, the First Partition of Poland was ratified.[14]
Rejtan, by
Matejko. In September 1773,
Rejtan (lower right) tried to prevent
ratification of the
First Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
by barring other
Sejm deputies from the chamber.
The first of the three successive 18th-century
partitions of Commonwealth territory that would eventually blot Poland from
the map of Europe shocked the inhabitants of the Commonwealth, and had made it
clear to progressive minds that the Commonwealth must either reform or perish.[14]
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
1770–71; Rousseau had finished his (Considerations
on the Government of Poland) in 1772, when the First Partition was already
underway.[16]
Supported by King Stanisław August, a new wave of reforms were
introduced. The most important included the establishment, in 1773, of a
Komisja Edukacji Narodowej ("Commission
of National Education")—the first ministry of education in the world.[14][17][18]
New schools were opened in the cities and in the countryside, uniform textbooks
were printed, teachers were educated, and poor students were provided
scholarships.[14]
The Commonwealth's military was modernized, and 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.[14]
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, facing opposition from
conservative szlachta and foreign powers, failed to be adopted by the Sejm.[19]
Adoption
Events in the world now played into the reformers'
hands. Poland's neighbors were too occupied with wars — Prussia with France,
Russian and Austria 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 3 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,[20]
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 (Marshal
of the Sejm),
Ignacy Potocki,
Hugo Kołłątaj,
Stanisław Staszic, the King's Italian secretary
Scipione Piattoli, and others.
The draft Constitution's advocates, 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
guard were positioned about the Royal Castle, where the Sejm was gathered, to
prevent Muscovite adherents from disrupting the proceedings.
The Constitution bill ("Government Act") was read out and passed
overwhelmingly, to the enthusiasm of the crowds gathered outside.
Downfall
The Constitution remained in effect for only a year before being
overthrown, by Russian armies allied with the
Targowica Confederation, in the
War over the May 3, 1791, Constitution.
Wars
between Turkey and Russia and
Sweden and Russia having by now ended,
Empress Catherine was furious over the adoption of the May 3 Constitution,
which threatened Russian influence in Poland.[21]
Russia had viewed Poland as a de facto
protectorate.[22]
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."[23]
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 Poniatowski 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
(97,000 sq mi), and Prussia took 58,000 square kilometres (22,000 sq mi). The
Commonwealth now comprised no more than 212,000 square kilometres
(82,000 sq mi). 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 in 1795 to
the third and final partition of the Commonwealth.
Features
King Stanisław August Poniatowski described the May 3 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."[24]
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 3 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.[25]
King Stanisław August Poniatowski described the May 3 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."[24]
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 3 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.[25]
Original
manuscript of Constitution
The Constitution comprised 11 articles.[26]
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.[25]
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).[27]
The Government Act also placed the Commonwealth's
peasantry "under the protection of the national law and government"[28]—a
first step toward the ending of
serfdom and the enfranchisement of that largest and most oppressed
social class.[29]
The May 3 Constitution provided for a
Sejm, "ordinarily" meeting every two years and "extraordinarily" whenever
required by a national emergency.[30]
Its
lower chamber—the Chamber of Deputies (Polish: Izba Poselska)—comprised
204[citation
needed]
deputies and 24[citation
needed]
plenipotentiaries of royal cities; its
upper chamber—the
Chamber of Senators (Polish: Izba Senacka)—comprised 132[citation
needed]
senators (voivodes,
castellans,
government ministers and
bishops).
Executive power was in the hands of a royal council, called the "Guardians
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.)[31]
To enhance Commonwealth integration and security, the Constitution
abolished the erstwhile
union of Poland and Lithuania in favor of a
unitary state and changed the
government from an
individually- to a
dynastically-elective
monarchy.[32]
The latter provision was meant to reduce the destructive, vying influences of
foreign powers at each royal election.[33]
Under the terms of the May 3 Constitution, on Stanisław August's death the
Polish throne 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.[34]
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.[30]
The Constitution acknowledged the
Roman Catholic faith as the "dominant
religion", but guaranteed
tolerance of, and
freedom to, all religions.[35]
The Army was to be built up to 100,000 men.[citation
needed] Standing income
taxes were established (10% on the nobility, 20% on the church).[citation
needed]
Amendments to the constitution could be made every 25 years.[30]
The May 3 Constitution recognized, as integral, the Miasta
Nasze Królewskie Wolne w Państwach Rzeczypospolitej (Free
Royal Cities Act) that had been passed on April 18, 1791 (Constitution,
article III) and Prawo o sejmikach, the act on regional sejms (sejmiki),
passed earlier on March 24, 1791 (article VI).[36]
Some authorities additionally regard, as parts of the
Constitution, the "Deklaracja Stanów Zgromadzonych (Declaration of the
Assembled Estates) of May 5, 1791, confirming the Government Act adopted two
days earlier,[37]
and the Zaręczenie Wzajemne Obojga Narodów (Mutual
Declaration of the Two Peoples, i.e., of the
Crown 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.[24]
The Mutual Declaration strengthened the
Polish-Lithuanian union, while keeping many
federal aspects of the state intact.[38]
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 Guardians of the Laws (June 1), the
national police commission (that is, ministry; June 17) and
municipal
administration (June 24).[39]
The May 3 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 honor to all manner of
labor…" Yet a third basic law was touched on by Kołłątaj: a "moral
constitution," most likely a Polish analog to the American
Bill of Rights and the French
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.[40]
Medals commemorating the Constitution
Legacy
The memory of the world's second modern codified national constitution
(the first constitutional monarchy in the world)—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 3 anniversary of its adoption has been observed as Poland's
most important
civil holiday since
Poland regained independence in 1918.[41]
Prior to the May 3 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 3 Constitution did konstytucja assume its
modern sense of a fundamental document of governance.
These 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.[1]
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 3
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 3 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 3 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."[42]
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.
Holiday
May 3 was first declared a
holiday (May-3rd-Constitution Day—Święto Konstytucji 3 Maja) on May
5, 1791.[43]
Banned during the
partitions of Poland (though still then occasionally celebrated),[44]
it was celebrated in the
Duchy of Warsaw.[43]
It was again made an official Polish holiday in April 1919 under the
Second Polish Republic—the first holiday officially introduced in the
Second Polish Republic.[41]
The May 3 holiday was banned once more during
World War II by the
Nazi and
Soviet occupiers.
After the 1946 anti-communist student demonstrations, May 3
Constitution Day lost support with the authorities of the
Polish People's Republic, who replaced it with May 1
Labor Day celebrations; in 1951, May 3 was officially rebranded
Democratic Party Day and officially removed from the list of national
holidays.[43]
Until 1989, May 3 was a common day for anti-government and anti-communist
protests.[41]
Polish Constitution Day has been a focal point of ethnic
celebrations of
Polish-American pride in the
Chicago area, going back to 1892.
Poles in Chicago have continued this tradition to the present day, marking
it with festivities and the annual
Polish Constitution Day Parade; prominent guests nationwide, most notably
Bobby Kennedy, have attended over the years as a way to lobby
Chicago Polonia. The anniversary of the May 3, 1791 Constitution has
also for decades been observed in
San Francisco with celebrations in
Golden Gate Park.
May 3 was restored as an official Polish holiday in April 1990,
after the
fall of communism.[43]
In 2007, May 3 was in addition declared a
Lithuanian national
holiday. The first joint celebration by the Polish
Sejm and the Lithuanian
Seimas took place on May 3, 2007.[45]
See also
Similar documents
Constitutions of Poland
Notes
a
^
Scholars still debate the definition of "modern constitution"; some assert that
there were other modern constitutions before the
United States Constitution—thus pushing the May 3
Constitution back from second place. For example, in 1973 Dorothy Carrington
published an article arguing that the 1755
Corsican Constitution should be considered the first
modern national constitution.[46]
Polish-American Social Club of North San Diego County. Webpage:
http://polishclubofnorthsdcounty.com
Meeting Place: American Legion Hall, 230 E. Park Ave, Escondido, CA 92025.
MAP
Contact: 760-758-7219, amogilski@yahoo.com
Webmaster: Peter Sobczak, San Diego, 858-513-1939
petersob2009@gmail.com
