The Programme of Repairing the Polish‑Lithuanian Commonwealth in Saxon Times. Ethical, Political as well as Socio‑Economic Aspects

The first projects to repair the political system of the Polish‑Lithuanian Commonwealth were limited in Saxon times. In the case of Stanisław Konarski, the greatest thinker of those times, the ethical aspect of the state repair programme, which was the reform of Piarist education, was temporarily ahead of the political aspect. The latter was presented only at the end of this time in the work “O skutecznym rad sposobie” (“How to give advice effectively”). The Piarist scholar proposed auctioning off the army and preventing the breaking of parliament sessions by means of the liberum veto principle. Some writers of this period (Stanisław Leszczyński, Stanisław Konarski) had weak and inconsistent proposals to abolish the peasants’ serfdom and their enfranchisement, similar to the statements of later Polish physiocrats on this subject. In the views of the main thinkers of Saxon times, the postulates about the need to develop agriculture, industry and trade were combined with mercantilist topics. These writers were populationists. Stefan Garczyński’s considerations on the role of the internal market, presented in his “Anatomy of the Republic of Poland”, should be specially emphasized.