Polski klasyczny liberalizm. O recepcji liberalizmu w polskiej myśli politycznej pierwszej połowy XIX w.
Polish Classical Liberalism. The Reception of Liberalism in Polish Political Thought in the First Half of the 19th Century

Summary/Abstract: The article presents a reminder and an analysis of the phenomenon of Polish classical liberalism, which is a reception of thoughts of Benjamin Constant de Rebecque. In the so-called Kingdom of Poland, a specific quasi-state organism, founded from the piece of the Russian partition of Poland and created after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the Russian Tsar Alexander I gave the Kingdom the constitution, which newly nominated members of parliament demanded to bind. The opposition was mainly headed by the representatives from the province of Kalisz (the Kalisians) under the leadership of Wincenty and Bonaventura Niemojowski. After deposition under house arrest in 1825, Wincenty Niemojowski translated in one volume the basic works of Benjamin Constant, significant from the point of view of the parliamentary struggle, and later armed during the Polish November Uprising 1830-1831. The work contains extensive principle of separation of powers, a very mature concept of freedom, as well as a warranty catalog to public authorities, such as freedom of the press, or the independence of the courts, which Wincenty Niemojowski highlighted in his translation. Paradoxically, it was the widest reception of classical liberalism in Poland, where to this day, trends of modern political thought represented by political parties have not yet developed.

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