The Cardinal Laws () were a quasi-

constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organization or other type of entity, and commonly determines how that entity is to be governed. When these pri ...

enacted in

Warsaw Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Poland, largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula, River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at ...

Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, also referred to as Poland–Lithuania or the First Polish Republic (), was a federation, federative real union between the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania ...

, by the

Repnin Sejm The Repnin Sejm () was a Sejm (session of the parliament) of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that took place between 1767 and 1768 in Warsaw. This session followed the Sejms of 1764 to 1766, where the newly elected King of Poland, Stanisła ...

of 1767–68. Enshrining most of the conservative laws responsible for the inefficient functioning of the Commonwealth, and passed under foreign duress, they have been seen rather negatively by historians.

Origin

The Cardinal Laws were imposed on the Commonwealth by Russia's Empress

Catherine the Great Catherine II. (born Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst; 2 May 172917 November 1796), most commonly known as Catherine the Great, was the reigning empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796. She came to power after overthrowing her husband, Peter I ...

with Russian forces commanded by Prince Nicholas Repnin at the

of 1767–68.

Features and significance

Ostensibly the Cardinal Laws were intended to ensure the "

Golden Liberty Golden Liberty (; , ), sometimes referred to as Golden Freedoms, Nobles' Democracy or Nobles' Commonwealth ( or ''Złota wolność szlachecka'') was a political system in the Kingdom of Poland (1385–1569), Kingdom of Poland and, after the Unio ...

" of the Polish-Lithuanian nobility, as demanded by nobles united in the Radom Confederation. In fact, the Cardinal Laws made it certain that the

political system In political science, a political system means the form of Political organisation, political organization that can be observed, recognised or otherwise declared by a society or state (polity), state. It defines the process for making official gov ...

of the

would remain ineffectual and easily controllable by its neighbors. The Cardinal Laws' key features included the ''

liberum veto The ''liberum veto'' (Latin for "free veto") was a parliamentary device in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was a form of unanimity voting rule that allowed any member of the Sejm (legislature) to force an immediate end to the current s ...

'', the free election of Poland's king, '' Neminem captivabimus'', and the right to form

confederation A confederation (also known as a confederacy or league) is a political union of sovereign states united for purposes of common action. Usually created by a treaty, confederations of states tend to be established for dealing with critical issu ...

s and to raise '' rokoszes''—all, privileges of the nobility that had made the Commonwealth's

of "

" ungovernable. They also confirmed the lifelong term of the Commonwealth office holders, a similar confirmation of a lifelong possession of ''

królewszczyzna Crown land, also known as royal domain, is a territorial area belonging to the monarch, who personifies the Crown. It is the equivalent of an entailed estate and passes with the monarchy, being inseparable from it. Today, in Commonwealth realm ...

'' (crown lands). The laws confirmed superior position of nobility over the peasantry, with the exception of the right of

death penalty Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in s ...

. In a more positive view, the cardinal laws can be seen as a form of

(Bardach uses the term ''ustawa zasadnicza''), attempting to organize elements of the

law of Poland The Polish law or legal system in Poland has been developing since the first centuries of Polish history, over 1,000 years ago. The public and private laws of Poland are codified. The supreme law in Poland is the Constitution of Poland. Pol ...

, and also attempting to guarantee the stability of Commonwealth borders.

Aftermath

In 1768 Russia issued a "guarantee" to the Polish nobility, promising to defend the cardinal laws, and at the Partition Sejm of 1775 this guarantee was joined by the

Kingdom of Prussia The Kingdom of Prussia (, ) was a German state that existed from 1701 to 1918.Marriott, J. A. R., and Charles Grant Robertson. ''The Evolution of Prussia, the Making of an Empire''. Rev. ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946. It played a signif ...

and the

Austrian Empire The Austrian Empire, officially known as the Empire of Austria, was a Multinational state, multinational European Great Powers, great power from 1804 to 1867, created by proclamation out of the Habsburg monarchy, realms of the Habsburgs. Duri ...

. Russian intervention was unsuccessfully challenged by the

Bar Confederation The Bar Confederation (; 1768–1772) was an association of Polish nobles (''szlachta'') formed at the fortress of Bar, Ukraine, Bar in Podolia (now Ukraine), in 1768 to defend the internal and external independence of the Polish–Lithuanian C ...

, whose failure led to the

First Partition of Poland The First Partition of Poland took place in 1772 as the first of three partitions that eventually ended the existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth by 1795. The growth of power in the Russian Empire threatened the Kingdom of Prussia an ...

(1772). The Cardinal Laws were annulled by the

Constitution of 3 May The Constitution of 3 May 1791, titled the Government Act, was a written constitution for the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that was adopted by the Great Sejm that met between 1788 and 1792. The Commonwealth was a dual monarchy comprising t ...

passed by the

Great Sejm The Great Sejm, also known as the Four-Year Sejm (Polish language, Polish: ''Sejm Wielki'' or ''Sejm Czteroletni''; Lithuanian language, Lithuanian: ''Didysis seimas'' or ''Ketverių metų seimas'') was a Sejm of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwea ...

of 1788–92 but reinstituted by the

Grodno Sejm Grodno Sejm (; ) was the last Sejm (session of parliament) of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Grodno Sejm, held in autumn 1793 in Grodno, Grand Duchy of Lithuania (now Grodno, Belarus) is infamous because its deputies, bribed or coe ...

following Poland's defeat in the 1792 War in Defense of the Constitution. In fact it was the abolition of many of the cardinal laws that was used by the

Targowica Confederation The Targowica Confederation (, , ) was a confederation established by Polish and Lithuanian magnates on 27 April 1792, in Saint Petersburg, with the backing of the Russian Empress Catherine II. The confederation opposed the Constitution of 3 May ...

magnates as a reason to ask the Russians to intervene. The Cardinal Laws remained in effect for the last three years of the Commonwealth's existence, until the final,

Third Partition of Poland The Third Partition of Poland (1795) was the last in a series of the Partitions of Poland–Lithuania and the land of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth among Prussia, the Habsburg monarchy, and the Russian Empire which effectively ended Polis ...

References

{{reflist, refs= Juliusz Bardach, Boguslaw Lesnodorski, and Michal Pietrzak, ''Historia panstwa i prawa polskiego'' (Warsaw: Paristwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1987, p.297-298 {{cite book, author=Jacek Jędruch, authorlink=Jacek Jędruch, title=Constitutions, elections, and legislatures of Poland, 1493–1977: a guide to their history, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Rmx8QgAACAAJ, accessdate=13 August 2011, date=1998, publisher=EJJ Books, isbn=978-0-7818-0637-4, pages=159–160 {{cite book, author=Jacek Jędruch, authorlink=Jacek Jędruch, title=Constitutions, elections, and legislatures of Poland, 1493–1977: a guide to their history, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Rmx8QgAACAAJ, accessdate=13 August 2011, date=1998, publisher=EJJ Books, isbn=978-0-7818-0637-4, page=159 {{cite book, author=Jacek Jędruch, authorlink=Jacek Jędruch, title=Constitutions, elections, and legislatures of Poland, 1493–1977: a guide to their history, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Rmx8QgAACAAJ, accessdate=13 August 2011, date=1998, publisher=EJJ Books, isbn=978-0-7818-0637-4, pages=184–185 {{cite book, author=Robert Howard Lord, title=The second partition of Poland: a study in diplomatic history, url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_zp5pAAAAMAAJ, accessdate=11 March 2012, year=1915, publisher=Harvard University Press, page
482
��483 {{cite book, author=Hugh Seton-Watson, title=The Russian empire, 1801-1917, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=40KbWNve4XkC&pg=PA44, accessdate=4 July 2011, date=1 February 1988, publisher=Clarendon Press, isbn=978-0-19-822152-4, page=44 {{Citation, author=Władysław Smoleński, title=Dzieje narodu polskiego, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DUpBAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA295, accessdate=5 September 2011, year=1919, publisher=Gebethner i Wolff, pages=295–305

Origin

Features and significance

Aftermath

References

See also