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Jerzy Tadeusz Lukowski
In this article J. Lukowski has examined how the ideas of Montesquieu and Rousseau were used by the framers of the Polish constitution of 1791 to overcome the prevailing Sarmadan ideology of the Polish gentry. This assumed that the traditional institutions were perfect and were geared to block any attempt to change them. The first major breakthrough was to recognise the Chamber of Envoys in the Diet (Sejm) as the Embodiment of Rouseau's General Will, freeing it from the tradition of mandated delegates. This created a problem of how to prevent the strengthened royal executive using its extensive powers of patronage to subvert the newly sovereign legislature. Here too ideas taken from Montesquieu and Rosseau were used to give the executive Council control over the use of royal powers. The article concludes that the authors of the constitution of 1791 made skilful use of enlightenment ideas to appease the fears of the conservative gentry, while leaving open the possibility of future development towards the ideal republic outlined by Rousseau.
