Pola

First Partition, 1772.

The first treaty of partition was signed at St. Petersburg between Prussia and Russia on Feb. 6-17, 1772; the second treaty, which admitted Austria also to a share of the spoil, on Aug. 5-16 the same year. The consent of the seym to this act of brigandage was extorted by bribery and force in 1773. Russia obtained the palatinates of Vitebsk, Polotsk, Micislaw: 34,616 sq.m. of territory, with a population of 550,000. Austria got the greater part of Galicia, minus Cracow : 32,045 sq.m., with a population of 816,000. Prussia received the maritime palatinate minus Danzig, the palatinate of Kulm minus Thorn, the northern half of Great Poland, and the palatinates of Marienburg and Ermeland : 14,025 sq.m., with a population of 378,000. In fine, Poland lost about one-fifth of her population and one-fourth of her territory.

In return for these enormous concessions the partitioning powers presented the Poles with a new constitution. The most mischievous of the ancient abuses, the elective monarchy and the liberum veto, were of course retained. Poland was to be dependent on her despoilers, but they evidently meant to make her a service able dependant. The Government was henceforth to be in the hands of a "permanent council" of 36 members, 18 senators and 18 deputies, elected biennially by the seym in secret ballot, sub divided into the five departments of foreign affairs, police, war, justice and the exchequer, whose principal members and assistants, as well as all other public functionaries, were to have fixed salaries. The royal prerogative was still further reduced. The king was indeed the president of the permanent council, but he could not summon the diet without its consent, and in all cases of prefer ment was bound to select one out of three of the council's nominees. Still, the new organization made for order and economy, and enabled Poland to develop and husband her resources, and devote herself uninterruptedly to the now burning question of national education. The shock of the first partition had a certain salutary effect on national mentality. Already in the darkest days of Saxon rule, important educational reforms had been carried out in the schools of the Piarist order by Stanislaus Konarski. Now, the dissolution of the Jesuit order in 1773, putting its rich possessions and the system of schools conducted by it into the hands of the State, gave Poland opportunity to secularize as well as modernize the whole educational fabric of the nation. This huge task was admirably performed by the Commission of Na tional Education, the first Ministry of Education in Europe. It

reorganized both the programme of teaching and the structure of the schools—including the decayed Universities of Cracow and Vilna—in a thoroughly modern and truly enlightened way. Less progress was made with the cause of constitutional reform: the Chancellor Andrew Zamoyski indeed drafted a new compre hensive code of laws, in which a beginning was made with the emancipation of the peasant serfs and of the town population, but this was rejected by the gentry in the diet (1780).

In the meantime, important events in the international field seemed to give Poland another chance of re-asserting her inde pendence against her despoilers. The death of Frederick the Great, in 1786, loosened the bonds of the alliance between Prussia and Russia. Russia, drawing nearer to Austria, undertook, jointly with her, a war against Turkey which proved unexpectedly hard; and Russia was at the same time attacked by Sweden. Prussia, having changed her policy and concluded an alliance against Russia with England and Holland, was now emboldened by Russia's difficulties to go farther: she invited Poland also to for sake the Russian alliance, and offered to place an army corps of 40,000 men at her disposal.

Reform of the Constitution, 1788-91.

It was under these exceptional circumstances that the "four years' diet" assembled (1788). Its leaders, Stanislaus Malachowski, Hugo Kollontay and lgnacy Potocki, were men of character and capacity, and its measures were correspondingly vigorous. Within a few months of its assembling it had abolished the permanent council ; enlarged the royal prerogative ; raised the army to 65,000 men; established direct communications with the Western powers; declared its own session permanent, and finally settled down to the crucial task of reforming the constitution on modern lines. But the difficulties of the patriots were commensurate with their energies, and though the new constitution was drafted so early as Dec. 1789, it was not till May 1791 that it could safely be presented to the diet. Meanwhile Poland endeavoured to strengthen her position by an alliance with Prussia. Frederick William II. stipu lated, at first, that Poland should surrender Danzig and Thorn; but the Poles proving obstinate, and Austria simultaneously dis playing a disquieting interest in the welfare of the republic, Prussia, in 1791, concluded an alliance with Poland which en gaged the two powers to guarantee each other's possessions and render mutual assistance in case either were attacked.