VII. The King, the Executive Authority
No government, be it the most perfect, can stand without strong executive authority. The happiness of peoples depends upon just laws, the effect of the laws–upon their execution. Experience teaches that neglect of this part of government has filled Poland with misfortunes. Therefore, having reserved unto the free Polish people the authority to make laws for itself and the power to keep watch upon all executive authority, as well as to elect officials to magistracies, we confer the authority of supreme execution of the laws to the King in his council, which council shall be called the Guardianship of the Laws.
The executive authority is strictly bound to observe the laws and to carry them out. It shall act of itself where the laws permit, and where they need supervision, execution, or even forceful aid.
Obedience is owed to it always by all magistracies; we leave in its hand the power to press magistracies that be disobedient or remiss in their duties.
The executive authority shall not enact or interpret laws, impose taxes or levies by any name, contract public debts, alter the distribution of treasury revenues established by the Sejm, wage war, or definitive[ly] conclude peace or treaties or any diplomatic act. It shall be free to conduct only interim negotiations with foreign states, and to take temporary and timely measures requisite for the security and peace of the country, of which it shall inform the next assembly of the Sejm.
We desire and determine that the throne of Poland shall be forever elective by families. Experience of disastrous interregnums periodically overturning the government, the obligation to safeguard every inhabitant of the Polish land, the sealing forever of avenue to the influences of foreign powers, the memory of the former grandeur and happiness of our country under continuously reigning families, the need to turn foreigners away from ambition for the throne, and to turn powerful Poles toward the single-minded cultivation of national liberty, have indicated to our prudence that the throne of Poland be passed on by right of succession. We determine, therefore, that following the life that Divine beneficence shall grant to us, the present-day Elector of Saxony shall reign in Poland. The dynasty of the future kings of Poland shall begin with the person of Frederick Augustus, present- day Elector of Saxony, to whose male successors de lumbis [from the loins] we reserve the throne of Poland. The eldest son of the reigning king shall succeed his father to the throne. Should the present-day Elector of Saxony have no male issue, then the consort, with the consent of the assembled estates, selected by the Elector for his daughter shall begin the male line of succession to the throne of Poland. Wherefore we declare Maria Augusta Nepomucena, daughter of the Elector, to be infanta of Poland, reserving to the people the right, which shall be subject to no prescription, to elect another house to the throne after the extinction of the first.
Every King, on ascending the throne, shall execute an oath to God and to the Nation, that he will preserve this Constitution and the pacta conventa [“agreed-to agreements”] that shall be drawn up with the present-day Elector of Saxony, as destined to the throne, and which shall bind him even as those of the past.
The person of the king is sacred and secure from everything. Doing nothing of himself, he shall be answerable for nothing to the nation. He shall not be autocrat but father and chief to the nation, and as such this law and Constitution deems and declares him to be. The incomes as they shall be provided for in the pacta conventa, and the prerogatives proper to the throne as stipulated by this Constitution to the future Elect, shall not be touched.
All public acts, tribunals, courts of law, magistracies, coin and stamps shall go under the King’s name. The King, to whom shall be left every power of beneficence, shall have ius agratiandi [the right to pardon] those sentenced to death, except in crlminibus status [in crimes of state]. To the King shall belong the supreme disposition of the country’s armed forces in wartime and the appointment of army commanders, howbeit with their free change by the will of the nation; it shall be his duty to commission officers and appoint officials pursuant to the provisions of lower law, to appoint bishops and senators pursuant to the provisions of that law, and ministers, as the prime officials of the executive authority.
The Guardians, or royal council, added to the King for supervision of the integrity and execution of the laws, shall comprise: primo the Primate, as chief of the Polish clergy and as president of the Educational Commission, who may substitute for himself among the Guardians the first bishop ex ordine [in rank], neither of whom shall sign decisions; secundo five ministers, to wit, a minister of police, a minister of the seal, a minister belli [of war], a minister of the treasury, and a minister of the seal for foreign affairs; tertio two secretaries, of whom one shall keep the protocol of the Guardians, the other the protocol of foreign affairs; both without a decisive votum.
The Successor the Throne, having emerged from minority and executed an oath to uphold the Constitution, may be present at all sessions of the Guardians, but without a vote [voice?: the Polish glos may mean either].
The Marshal of the Sejm, elected for two years, shall be of the number serving among the Guardians, without entering into their decisions, solely in order to convoke a ready Sejm in the event that he recognize in the cases requiring the mandatory convocation of a ready Sejm, a true need, and the King demur at convoking it, when said Marshal shall issue to the Deputies and Senators circular letters convoking them to a ready Sejm and stating the causes of its convocation. The only cases requiring the mandatory convocation of a Sejm are the following: primo, in an exigency involving the law of nations, more particularly in the event of war hard by the borders; secundo, in the event of internal disorder that threatens revolution in the country or collision between magistracies; tertio, in evident danger of famine; quarto, in the country’s bereavement by death of the King, or in his dangerous illness. All decisions in the council of Guardians shall be discussed by the above-mentioned body of persons. The royal decision shall prevail after all opinions have been heard, that there be a single will in the execution of law. Therefore every decision from the Guardians shall issue under the King’s name and with the signature of his hand, but it shall also be signed by one of the ministers seated among the Guardians, and thus signed, it shall oblige obedience, and shall be carried out by the commissions or by any executive magistracies, but particularly in such matters as are not explicitly excluded by this law. In the event that none of the seated ministers wish to sign the decision, the King shall abandon the decision, but should he persist in it, the Marshal of the Sejm shall request convocation of the ready Sejm, and if the King delay convocation, the Marshal shall convoke it.
Even as to appointment of all ministers, so also is it the King’s right to summon one of them from every department of administration to his council of Guardians. This summoning of a minister to sit among the Guardians shall be for two years, with the King’s free reconfirmation of it. Ministers summoned to the council of Guardians shall not sit in commissions [i.e., ministries].
In the event that a two-thirds majority of secret votes of the two conjoint Chambers of a Sejm demand change of a minister either in the Guardians or in an office, the King shall immediately appoint another in his place.
Desiring that the Guardians of the National Laws be bound to strict accountability to the nation for any and all their misdeeds, we determine that, when ministers be charged with breach of law by a deputation designated to examine their deeds, they shall answer in their own persons and property. In any such impeachments, the assembled estates shall by simple majority vote of the conjoint Chambers send the inculpated ministers to sejm courts for their just punishment equalling the crime or, their innocence being demonstrated, their release from proceedings and punishment. For the orderly carrying out of executive authority, we institute separate Commissions, having connection with the council of Guardians and bound in obedience to it. Commissioners shall be elected to them by the Sejm to carry on their offices for a time set by law. These Commissions are: primo of Education, secundo of Police, tertio of the Armed Forces, quarto of the Treasury.
The provincial [wojewódzkie] commissions of order instituted at this Sejm, also subject to the supervision of the Guardians, shall receive orders through the above-mentioned intermediary Commissions, respective[ly] as to the objects of the authority and obligations of each of them.
