Constitution of 3 May 1791

The Constitution of 3 May 1791, titled the Government Act, was a written constitution for the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was the first codified, modern constitution (possessing checks and balances and a tripartite separation of powers) in Europe and the second in the world, after that of the United States. The Constitution sought to implement a more effective constitutional monarchy, introduced political equality between townspeople and nobility, and placed the peasants under the government's protection. It banned pernicious parliamentary institutions such as the liberum veto, which had put the Sejm at the mercy of any single deputy. The 1791 Constitution was in force for less than 19 months. The Second and Third Partitions of the Commonwealth (1793, 1795) ultimately ended Poland's and Lithuania's sovereign existence until the close of World War I in 1918. In the words of two of its principal authors, Ignacy Potocki and Hugo Kołłątaj, the 17 91 Constitution was "the last will and testament of the expiring Homeland"