ARTICLE IV
PEASANTS AND VILLAGERS

This agricultural class of people, the most numerous in the nation, consequently forming the most considerable part of its force, from whose hands flows the source of our riches, we receive under the protection of national law and government, from the motives of justice, humanity, Christianity, and our own interest well understood: enacting, that whatever liberties, grants, and conventions, between the proprietors and villagers, either individually or collectively, may be allowed in future, and entered authentically into; such agreements, according to their true meaning, shall import mutual and reciprocal obligations, binding not only the present contracting parties, but even their successors by inheritance or acquisition—so far that it shall not be in the power of either party to alter at pleasure such contracts, importing grants on one side, and voluntary promise of duties, labour, or payments on the other, according to the manner and conditions therein expressed, whether they are to last perpetually, or for a fixed period. Thus having insured to the proprietors every advantage they have a right to from their villagers, and willing to encourage most effectually the augmentation of the population of our country, we publish and proclaim a perfect and entire liberty to all people, either who may be newly coming to settle, or those who, having emigrated, would return to their native country; and we declare most solemnly, that any person coming into Poland, from whatever part of the world, or returning from abroad, as soon as he sets his foot on the territory of the Republic, becomes free and at liberty to exercise his industry, wherever and in whatever manner he pleases, to settle either in towns or villages, to farm and rent lands and houses, on tenures and contracts, for as long a term as may be agreed on; with liberty to remain, or to remove, after having fulfilled the obligations he may have voluntarily entered into.