Polish Constitution, 1815.—Alexander, who had a senti mental regard for freedom, so long as it meant obedience to him self, had promised the Poles a constitution. That constitution was soon duly drafted and signed. It contained 165 articles di vided under seven heads. The kingdom of Poland was declared to be united to Russia, in the person of the tsar, as a separate political entity. Lithuania and the Ruthenian Palatinates con tinued to be incorporated with Russia as the Western Provinces and were divided from the Congress kingdom by a customs barrier till the reign of Nicholas I. The kingdom of Poland thus defined was to have at its head a lieutenant of the emperor (namiestnik), who must be a member of the Imperial house or a Pole. The first holder of the office, General Zajonczek (1752 1826), was a veteran who had served Napoleon. Roman Catholi cism was recognized as the religion of the State, but other religions were tolerated. Liberty of the Press was promised, subject to the passing of a law to restrain its abuses. Individual liberty, the use of the Polish language in the law courts, and the executive employment of Poles in the civil government were secured by the constitution. The machinery of government was framed of a council of State, at which the Imperial Government was represented by a commissioner plenipotentiary, and a diet divided into a senate composed of the princes of the blood, the palatines and councillors named for life, and a house of nuntii elected for seven years. Poland retained its flag, and a national army based on that which had been raised by and had fought for Napoleon. The command of the army was given to the em peror's brother Constantine, a man of somewhat erratic character, who did much to offend the Poles by violence (see CONSTANTINE PAVLOVICH).
The diet met three times during the reign of Alexander, in 1818, in 1820 and in 1825, and was on all three occasions opened by the tsar. But the tsar and the diet soon quarrelled. The third session of the diet (May 13 to June 13, 1825) was a mere formality. All publicity was suppressed, and one whole district was dis franchised because it persisted in electing candidates who were disapproved of at court. All Europe at the time was seething with secret societies organized to combat the reactionary govern ments of the Holy Alliance. In Poland, the National Free masonry, or National Patriotic Society as it was afterwards called, had a large membership, especially among the students and the younger officers. Outside Congress Poland, a similar student movement arose in the University of Vilna. Severe measures— imprisonment, deportation, and exile—were taken against students and graduates of Vilna (including the great poet Mickiewicz), and they added to the excitement in Warsaw.
No open breach occurred during the reign of Alexander I., nor for five years after his death in 1825. On the death of the un popular Zajonczek in 1826, the Grand Duke Constantine became imperial lieutenant. His brother, the new tsar, Nicholas I., soon became entangled in a war with Turkey. Austria, as usual, de sirous of profiting by Russia's difficulties, began to court the favour of the Poles. Nicholas was crowned king of Poland in Warsaw, in 1829, and personally opened the diet in 183o. But the diet, already in 1828, had refused to sentence to death a group of Polish conspirators accused of dealings with the Russian "decembrists" who had plotted Nicholas' overthrow—and in 1829 there was even an abortive Polish plot to murder him at his coronation in Warsaw. Fresh excitement was created in Poland
by the outbreak of the revolution in France, in July, 183o, and the revolt of Belgium : a rumour was current—not without justi fication—that Nicholas, acting in concert with the other autocrats of the Holy Alliance, intended to use the Polish army to coerce the French and Belgian revolutionaries.
After the suppression of the insurrection, certain remnants of a constitution were still granted to Russian Poland by the "Organic Statute" of 1832, but they were soon rendered illusory: the administration avowedly aimed at destroying the nationality, and even the language, of Poland. The universities of Warsaw and Vilna were suppressed, the Polish students compelled to go to St. Petersburg and Kiev. The recruits from Poland were dis tributed in Russian regiments, and the use of the Russian language was enforced as far as possible in the civil administration and in the law courts. The customs barrier between Lithuania and the former Congress Poland was removed, in the hope that Russian influence would spread more easily over Poland. A hostile policy was adopted against the Roman Catholic Church. But though these measures cowed the Poles, they failed to achieve their main purpose. Polish national sentiment was intensified. The Poles in Russia, whether at the universities or in the public service, formed an element which refused to assimilate with the Russians. In Poland itself the tsar left much of the current civil administration in the hands of the nobles, whose power over their peasants was hardly diminished and was misused as of old. The Polish exiles who filled Europe of ter 183o maintained a constant agitation from abroad. The stern government of Nicholas was, however, so far effective that Poland remained quiescent during the Crimean War.