ed you, citizens, to give me the highest proof of
confidence, for you have not only laid your whole armed strength and the
use thereof in my hands, but in addition, in the period of the Rising,
not deeming yourselves to be in the condition to make a well-ordered
choice of members for the Supreme National Council, you confided that
choice to me. The greater the universal confidence in me that I behold,
the more solicitous I am to respond to it agreeably to your wishes and
to the necessities of the nation.

"I kept to that consideration in the nomination of members of the
Council. I desired to make the same choice that you yourselves would
have made. So I looked for citizens who were worthy of the public trust:
I considered who in private and public life had maintained the
obligations of unstained virtue, who were steadfastly attached to the
Rights of the Nation and the Rights of the People, who at the time of
the nation's misfortunes, when foreign oppression and domestic crime
drove at their will the fate of the country, had most suffered for their
patriotism and their merits. It was such men whom for the most part I
summoned to the National Council, joining to them persons honoured for
their knowledge and virtue, and adding to them deputies capable of
assisting them in their onerous obligations."

He then says that the reason he did not nominate the Council earlier was
because he was awaiting the whole nation's confirmation of the Act of
the Rising that had been proclaimed in Cracow, and thus "during the
first and violent necessities" of the Rising he was driven to issue
manifestos and ordinances on his own responsibility.

"With joy I see the time approaching when nothing shall be able to
justify me for the smallest infringement of the limits you placed to my
power. I respect them because they are just, because they emanate from
your will, which is the most sacred law for me. I hope that not only
now, but when--God grant it!--having delivered our country from her
enemies, I cast my sword under the feet of the nation, no one shall
accuse me of their transgression."[1]

[Footnote 1: T. Korzon, _Kosciuszko_.]

Public morality did not satisfy Kosciuszko in his choice of the men who
were to rule the country. He would have none to shape her laws and
destinies whose personal morals were lax. "What do you want, Prince?"
were the dry words with which he greeted Jozef Poniatowski, when the gay
officer came into his camp to