The critical edition of sources relating to the first partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, together with a slightly provocative introduction, may stimulate research on the moral and ethical conditions of the Polish elites of that period, and may also be inspiring for those interested in political thought during the reign of Stanisław August. The text shows the receipt and the opinion for the important events in the Polish-Lithuanian state, which cannot be simply classified as positive or negative. These events are much more complicated and require a more comprehensive framework, one that, based on the records, the direct observers of these events had.