The Sovereignty Issue in the Public Discussion in the Era of the Polish 3rd May Constitution (1788–1792)

Abstract

The following study is a result of the first phase of the ReConFort research on the constitutional debate of late eighteenth century in Poland (the so-called First Republic, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth). Several categories of sources, including not only juridical but also political writers’ and politicians’ private correspondence, were analysed. An analysis of the issue of sovereignty and an interpretation of this concept in journalistic writings and legal acts of that time lead to the conclusion that sovereignty was defined as an external independence and, in particular, as the ‘inner freedom’. On the grounds of journalistic writings and the Great Sejm’s (the 4-Year Sejm) legal acts the class of nobility remained the sovereign. The articles of the Constitution of the 3rd of May 1791 changed the role of the nobility (possessors), which became henceforth ‘the free nation’ in a political sense. Its main task was to represent the whole society composed of the nobility, bourgeoisie and peasantry. The adoption of the law on the free royal cities (1791) also provided an opportunity for a more liberal interpretation of the constitution itself. Another matter was a discussion on the position of the monarch related to the problem of his resignation from ‘free royal elections’, which was the most controversial regulation. The conservatives clearly interpreted these plans of the patriotic fraction as a ‘coup d‘etat’, an attack against the existing freedom and the first step to the introduction of an absolute model of rules.