VI. The Sejm, or Legislative Authority
The Sejm, or the assembled estates, shall be divided into two chambers: a Chamber of Deputies, and a Chamber of Senators presided over by the King.
The Chamber of Deputies, as the image and repository of national sovereignty, shall be the temple of legislation. Therefore all bills shall be decided first in the Chamber of Deputies: primo, as to general laws, that is, constitutional, civil, criminal, or for the institution of perpetual taxes, in which matters proposals submitted by the throne to the provinces [województwa], districts [ziemie] and counties [powiaty] for discussion, and by instructions coming to the Chamber, shall be taken for decision first; secundo, as to resolutions of the Sejm, that is, temporary levies, degree of coin, contraction of public debt, ennoblements and other incidental rewards, disposition of public expenditures ordinary and extraordinary, war, peace, final ratification of treaties of alliance and trade, any diplomatic acts and agreements involving the law of nations, the quitting of executive magistracies, and like matters corresponding to the chief national needs, in which matters proposals from the throne shall come directly to the Chamber of Deputies and shall have priority of procedure.
The duty of the Chamber of Senators, comprising bishops, province chiefs [wojewodowie], castellans and ministers, presided over by the King, who is entitled to cast a votum [vote] of his own, and secondly to resolve paritas [parity: an equal division of votes] in person or by sending his judgment to that Chamber, is: primo, to adopt, or to retain for further deliberation by the nation, by the majority vote provided in law, every law which, having formally passed the Chamber of Deputies, shall immediately be sent to the Senate. Adoption shall confer the force and sanctity of law. Retention shall only suspend a law until the next ordinary Sejm, at which, if it be agreed to once again, the law suspended by the Senate shall be adopted; secundo, to decide every resolution of the Sejm in the above-enumerated matters, which the Chamber of Deputies shall immediately send to the Senate, together with the Chamber of Deputies by majority vote, and the conjoint majority, provided by law, of both Chambers shall be the judgment and will of the estates.
We stipulate that senators and ministers shall not have a votum decisivum [decisive vote] in the Sejm in matters concerning their conduct of office, either in the Guardianship or in commission, and at such time shall have a seat in the Senate only to give explication upon demand of the Sejm.
A legislative and ordinary Sejm shall be ever ready. It shall begin every two years and last as provided in a law on Sejms. A ready Sejm, convoked in exigencies, shall decide only about the matter in which it be convoked, or about an exigency befallen after it be convoked. No law shall be abrogated at the ordinary Sejm at which it has been enacted. A Sejm shall comprise the number of persons provided by lower law, both in the Chamber of Deputies and in the Chamber of Senators.
We solemnly confirm the law on regional sejms [sejmiki], enacted at the present Sejm, as a most essential foundation of civil liberty.
Inasmuch as legislation cannot be conducted by all, and the nation to that end employs as agents its freely elected representatives, or Deputies, we determine that Deputies elected at regional sejms shall, in legislation and in general needs of the nation, be considered under this Constitution as representatives of the entire nation, being the repository of the general confidence.
Everything, everywhere, shall be decided by majority vote; therefore we abolish forever the liberum veto [“free veto”], confederations of any kind, and confederate sejms, as being opposed to the spirit of this Constitution, subversive of government, and destructive of society.
Preventing on one hand abrupt and frequent changes of the national constitution, and on the other recognizing the need to perfect it after experiencing its effects upon the public weal, we fix a season and time for revision and amendment of the Constitution every twenty-five years. We desire that such a constitutional sejm be extraordinary in accordance with the provisions of a separate law.
