He was a great magnate, grandly ruling in his vast estates in the eastern parts of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, known as the Kresy. His annual income was over 3 million zloties. Elected deputy for Bracław at the famous Four-Year Sejm, he began that career of treachery which was to terminate in the ruin of his country. Yet his previous career had awakened many hopes in him. His popularity culminated in 1784 when he presented an infantry regiment of 400 men as a free gift to the Commonwealth. But he identified the public welfare with the welfare of individual magnates, his aims in seeking reforms was to transform the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into a magnate oligarchy.
His scheme was to divide Poland into an oligarchy of autonomous grandees exercising supreme power in rotation. In 1788 he persuaded two other magnates, Franciszek Ksawery Branicki and Severin Rzewuski to join he anti-royalist conspiracy. The election of Stanisław Małachowski and Kazimierz Lew Sapieha as marshals of the Four Years Sejm still further alienated him from the Liberals. After strenuously but vainly opposing every project of reform, he slipped off to Vienna whence he continued an active propaganda against the new proposals.
Protest against the Constitution
He opposed the Constitution of 3 May of 1791, and was one of the leaders of the Hetman Party. After attempting fruitlessly to persuade the Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor to take up arms against the reformers, he proceeded with his co-conspirators to St. Petersburg in March 1792 and, with the connivance of the Empress Catherine II of Russia formed the Targowica Confederation allegedly for the maintenance of the ancient and lax institutions of Poland, of which he had been marshal, or rather the dictator. He continued directing the conspiracy o from his castle at Tulczyn. When the May Constitution was overthrown and the Prussians were already in occupation of Great Poland, Potocki went on a diplomatic mission to St. Petersburg. There finding himself duped and set aside, he again went to Vienna until 1797, when he retired to Tulczyn and devoted himself to the improvement of his estates and large wealth for the remainder of his life. He had been sentenced to death in absentia by the Supreme Criminal Court during the Kościuszko Uprising in 1794. On 17 November 1797 he was made a general of the Russian infantry, but was dismissed on 30 October 1798. He was buried with the ignominy of a "traitor" general.
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After the signing of the Targowica Confederation:"Each true Pole, not blinded by the Prussian and royalist cabal, is convinced, that our Fatherland can only be saved by Russia, otherwise our nation will be enslaved". After Stanisław August Poniatowski's abdication and the destruction of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: "About past Poland and Poles . Gone is this country, and this name, as many others have perished in the world's history. I am now a Russian forever."
