At the outset, he was supported by the Familia, but during the 1770s this turned into the mainstay of a powerful opposition, which forced him into greater dependence on Russian support. His only assets were his personal charm, his intelligence and his patience. He had been a deputy six times, and was therefore familiar with the workings of the Sejm and the attitudes that prevailed in it. He was also aware as no other elected monarch had been of the considerable influence and powers still at the disposal of the crown. Skilful and diplomatic, he was prepared to compromise and bide his time on one project in order to further another.
His was not so much a policy as a vision. From his youth, he dreamt of a total ‘re-creation of the Polish world’, to use his own words, involving a return to the ideals of the Commonwealth on the one hand, and turning the sarmatian szlachta into a European nation on the other. His reading and his travels, particularly in England, had taught him the value of the state as an institution. When political reforms were cancelled out by the Russo-Prussian intervention of 1772, he concentrated on this aspect of his programme.
By the 1780s two generations had passed through the reformed schools and been exposed to the thought of the Enlightenment, and a new eighteenth-century version of the traditional political nation had emerged, leavened by significant numbers of artists, functionaries and tradesmen ennobled by the King.
The Convocation Sejm of 1764 had been revolutionary not only in its political attitudes—the speech by the chancellor which heralded so many political reforms also hectored the deputies that ‘To sell raw materials and buy finished goods makes one poor; to buy raw materials and sell finished goods makes one rich.’ During the 1730s and 1740s a number of magnates had already tried their hand at manufacturing. The Radziwiłł established glass foundries, a furniture factory, a cannon foundry and workshops producing cloth, carpets and articles of clothing at their seat of NieświeŻ and other estates. The range reflects a lack of specialisation which meant that the products were often of poor quality. The same was true of the factories set up by Ludwik Plater at Krasław near Vitebsk, producing velvet, damask, carpets, carriages, swords and rifles. The Potocki factories at Brody and Buczacz specialised in high-quality carpets, kilims, tents, hangings, sashes and cloth. During the same period the bishopric of Kraków, which owned large areas of what would become the industrial heartland of Poland, built several new iron foundries.
In 1775 the Sejm repealed the law forbidding the szlachta to engage in commerce, and the next twenty years saw a remarkable development of mercantile and capitalist activity among the magnates and szlachta.
Between 1764 and 1768, a royal mint was established at Warsaw, the currency was stabilised, weights and measures were standardised, and a state postal service was founded. In 1771 a canal was dug connecting the Vistula to the Warta; in 1775 the King launched a project for one between the Bug and the Pripet; in 1767 Prince Michał Ogiński had begun digging a canal linking the Niemen and the Dnieper, thereby making it possible to navigate from the Baltic to the Black Sea, which opened up alternative markets for exports.
Much of the industrial activity went hand in hand with a resurgence in the decorative arts. In 1774 the King founded the Belweder ceramic factory which produced high-quality vases and tableware; the Czartoryskis started a porcelain factory at Korzec which employed up to 1,000 workers in the 1790s in the production of more functional items of quality under the supervision of experts brought from Sevres, and the same was true of the new furniture centre of Kolbuszowa. But there was also a certain amount of purely industrial enterprise. The state built an ordnance factory outside Warsaw and a large cloth mill geared particularly to supplying the army. In 1767 a joint-stock wool-manufacturing company was floated. The treasurer of Lithuania, Antoni Tyzenhaus, launched a wide-ranging programme of industrialisation in Grodno on the King’s behalf. The most business-minded of all the magnates, Antoni Protazy Potocki, established banks in major Polish cities, factories in various parts of the Commonwealth, and a trading house at Kherson from which he operated a merchant fleet on the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.