The Free Royal Cities Act (full Polish title: Miasta Nasze Królewskie wolne w państwach Rzeczypospolitej; English: "Our Free Royal Cities in the States of the Commonwealth", or the Law on the Cities, Prawo o miastach) was an act adopted by the Four-Year Sejm (1788-92) of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on April 18, 1791, in the run-up to the adoption of the Constitution of May 3, 1791.
The Free Royal Cities Act was subsequently stipulated, in that Constitution's Article III, to be an integral part of the Constitution.
The Act granted to the Commonwealth's townspeople personal security, the right to acquire landed property, and eligibility for military officers' commissions, public offices, and membership in the szlachta (nobility).
The Act constituted a major element in the Constitution's advancement of democracy in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (which was converted by the Constitution into a unitary state, henceforth called the "Polish Republic" — "Rzeczpospolita Polska").
Famous quotes containing the words free, royal, cities and/or act:
“We are all bound to the throne of the Supreme Being by a flexible chain which restrains without enslaving us. The most wonderful aspect of the universal scheme of things is the action of free beings under divine guidance.”
—Joseph De Maistre (1753–1821)
“Oh, I know my family’s not of royal blood, but you needn’t throw it in my face all the time.”
—Robert N. Lee. Rowland V. Lee. Queen Elyzabeth (sic)
“The city is always recruited from the country. The men in cities who are the centres of energy, the driving-wheels of trade, politics or practical arts, and the women of beauty and genius, are the children or grandchildren of farmers, and are spending the energies which their fathers’ hardy, silent life accumulated in frosty furrows in poverty, necessity and darkness.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“psychologist
Mothers with marriageable daughters ought to look out for men of this stamp, men with brains to act as protecting divinity, with worldly wisdom to diagnose like a surgeon, and with experience to take a mother’s place in warding off evil. These are the three cardinal virtues in matrimony.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)