Patriotic Party - Reforms and Successes

Reforms and Successes

The Party was established during the Four-Year Sejm (Great Sejm) of 1788–92 by individuals that sought reforms aimed at bolstering the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, including seeking to reassert Poland's independence from the Russian Empire. Its aim was to draft and pass legislation to fix the ailing Commonwealth. The Party worked to abolish the magnate and Russian dominated Permanent Council, and to enlarge the Polish Army. The Party was modeled after similar organization that recently began operating in revolutionary France.

The party received support from all strata of Polish-Lithuanian society, from societal and political elites, including some magnates, through Piarist Enlightened Catholics, to the radical left. The Party's conservative, or right, wing, led by progressive magnates such as Ignacy Potocki, his brother Stanisław Kostka Potocki and Prince Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski, sought alliance with Prussia and advocated opposing King Stanisław August Poniatowski. The Party's centrists, including Stanisław Małachowski, wished accommodation with the King. The liberal left wing (the Polish Jacobins), led by Hugo Kołłątaj (hence also known as "Kołłątaj's Forge"), looked for support to the people of Warsaw.

The Forge was among the most active and notable groups in the reform movement, and has been said to have acted as the party's political agitators. The Forge's proposals were highly refined; Kołłątaj's "Political Law", which included a proposal for a new constitution, became a major inspiration for the debated new constitution.

In 1790 the party acquired royal support, as the King joined the reformers. During the Four-Year Sejm, the Party secured various reforms such as improvement of the territorial administration, abolishment of the Permanent Council, increase of the army to 100,000 soldiers, and improved and increased taxation, with an income tax on Church and nobles. In its most important achievement, the Party secured adoption of the Constitution of 3 May 1791. The constitution further reformed the executive and legislature, notably abolishing the liberum veto and reintroducing hereditary monarchy to the Commonwealth. The Constitution has been described as one of the first modern constitutions, and one of the first attempts, outside France, to bring the ideals of the Age of Enlightenment to life. After the Constitution was passed, the Party formed the Society of Friends of the Government Ordinance (Zgromadzenie Przyjaciół Konstytucji Rządowej), a political club, to defend the reforms already enacted and to promote further, including economic, ones. The Party and the Society are often referred to as the first Polish political party.

In the years 1791-1792 the Party was supported by a newspaper „Gazeta Narodowa i Obca", which can be seen as its informal press outlet.