Untitled - Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas

to the specificity of the Grand Duchy, there was an abundance of small townships
that were subordinate to Duchy dignitaries, who determined the subsequent
fates of such towns and townships. After the 1772 partition, on eve of the Four-
Year Sejm, there were up to six hundred towns and townships within Grand
Duchy territory. Of these some 59 % were privately-owned towns, some 12 % –
church towns and some 29 % – national and estate-owned, the royal towns and
townships. Of these, some one hundred towns had had self-governance rights and
had periodically exercised them in the past.
The traits of the boyar strata’s viewpoint on townspeople influenced the
1764–1788 Town Reforms, thereby, as of yet, there was no intention to change
the conditions of the townspeople in society, even though the focus was on
towns. Reform initiators raised demands: instill law and order in towns, supervise
constructions, audit and regulate the revenues and expenditures of towns and
form conditions for the development of the arts and crafts and trade to raise
the economic states of towns. The boyars were meant to manage these reforms,
but the execution of the reform program came too late in Lithuania. The first
Great Law and Order Commission was not established until 1776, in Grodno.
Meanwhile the decrees of Lithuania’s central government especially rarely reached
the townspeople. The reforms in Poland started ten years earlier and proceeded
more successfully. One difference with Poland was that Magdeburg Rights for
small townships in the Grand Duchy were abolished in 1776. Based on this legal
criterion, after 1776, the settlement areas in the Grand Duchy that retained selfgovernance
in one form or another, it could be said, numbered no more than
thirty. The towns of Lithuania were small, had predominately wooden buildings
and lacked law and order. The fundamental businesses of these towns – crafts and
trade – suffered recessions.
Warsaw townspeople invited Grand Duchy towns to get involved in the Four-
Year Sejm reforms. They organized congresses of town delegates from the Republic
of Two Nations and formulated their assignments as well as the first program for
those who wanted to stimulate parliamentary discussions in the Sejm on town
matters. Previously Grand Duchy townspeople had only united on different
issues, but no common demands were made that could unite all Grand Duchy
towns. Grand Duchy town delegates met in Warsaw in April-May of 1789 and,
following the initiative of the Warsaw delegates, formulated demands to the Sejm,
separate from those made by Poland’s town delegates, for reforms addressing the
common problems of Grand Duchy towns. The delegates of the Grand Duchy’s
royal towns concurred with the initiatives made by Warsaw’s townspeople
and actively participated in other 1789 town congresses. The deputation that
had formed in the Sejm had to prepare a draft of town reforms. Grand Duchy
townspeople received its instructions and began sending the patents of rights from
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