Abstract
According to Rousseau in The Government of Poland, the “love of liberty,” when properly cultivated, engenders the patriotism and virtue of citizens. The citizen's love of liberty, however, is not his enjoyment of liberty; it is his fiery longing or passion for national liberty, which has endured in the hearts of Poles owing to the constant threat posed by Russian imperialism. Unless the Poles continue to believe their liberty is threatened, they will begin to believe they can enjoy the luxury of possessing liberty; and then Poland will start down the familiar path of bourgeois corruption, culminating in despotism. Therefore, Rousseau's proposed “reform” of Polish institutions in fact aims to refine “the advantageous evils” of Poland's weakness and anarchy. His intention is to intensify and to orchestrate the defensiveness of all Polish citizens—against internal as well as external threats to liberty—for Rousseau understands that state of soul to be “the leaven” of the magnificent virtues of the ancients.
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