Historically, the most significant Polish legal act is the Constitution of 3 May 1791, the first modern constitution in Europe. Instituted as a Government Act, it was designed to redress long-standing political defects of the federative Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and its Golden Liberty. Previously, only the Henrician Articles (1573) signed by each of Poland's elected monarchs could perform the function of a set of basic laws. The new Constitution introduced political equality between townspeople and the nobility (''szlachta''), and placed the peasants under the protection of the government. It abolished pernicious parliamentary policies such as the ''liberum veto'', which permitted any deputy to rescind all the legislation passed in the interest of a foreign power. The 3 May Constitution sought to supplant the existing anarchy fostered by some of the country's reactionary magnates, with a more egalitarian and democratic constitutional monarchy. The Constitution influenced many later democratic movements across the globe. Tax-paying women were allowed to take part in Polish political life until the third partition in 1795. In 1918 the Second Polish Republic became one of the first countries to introduce universal women's suffrage.