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ESSAYS IN SWEDISH HISTORY

all those aspects of monarchical goverament which Erik Sparrc and Hogenskild Bielke had found most odious in the reigns of Gustav Vasa's sons. The Land Law, indeed, still stood, as the moveless foundation of the State; but the king’s legists now inter-preted ii in a way which allowed him greater li berty of action than its framers had ever dreamed of. Under Charles xn that liberty estended so far, that the reign seemed the realization of all the most sinister implications which council-constitution-alism had peroewed in hereditary monarchy. But the political catastrophe and the economic sufferings which it entailed in the end nersed the nadon to sweep absoludsm away. The idea of ełectoral monarchy had never wholly died, even in the mid-seventeenth cen tury ;⁶³ and the death of Charles xn without heirs ąualified to succeed him provided an opportunity for a new elecdon and a fresh start. And with the return of ełectoral monarchy', consdtudonalism too retumed. The service-nobility deserted the crown; a consdtudon was adopted which estab-łished the \irtual sovereignty of the riksdag for morę than half a century. But the attempt of the high aristocracy to use the opportunity to reassert the counciFs cłaim to speak for the nadon failed ignominknisly. The day when they could stand fbrth as the champions of consdtudonalism had gone for ever; and the sign of its passing was provided by the nickname given to their supporters in 1719: their opponents called them — ‘Tona?**

We are now, perhaps, in a position to approach an answer to the ąiiesdon which I posed at the beginning of this lecture, and to attempt some esdmate of the contribution of aristocratic consti-tudooałism to the devełopment of Swedish li berty. Seen thus in perspecdve, it appears much less impressive tharrthe reader of Lagerroth or Eriand Hjarae might suppose. Between 1560 and 1718, the limilations which the high aristocracy imposed upon the monarchy, the bulwarks they built up against royal abso-liitism, proved fragile indeed. Their efforts were fairly effective against toyereignł who were minors, as in 1611, 1634, 1660; but when a ruler reached his majority the ground which had been gained during his nooage was lost quickly, and with scarcely a

ON ARISTOCR ATIC GONSTITUTIONALISM

strugglc. With the soli tary exception of the Charter extorted from Sigismund in 1594, no constitutional victory was ever won over a king of fuli age. In 1590 John iu purged his council, and exacted from its members a decLaration of abjeet servility;⁸* Charles ix and his secretaries maintained the royal authority in the face of widespread discontent even after Charles had been disabled by a paralytic stroke; Christina shrugged off the Form of Government when she came of age without the smallest hint of resis tance from the men w ho had madę it, and followed this up by imposing, by sheer will-power, a dynastie settlement almost unanimously opposed by her council. Charles x gave short shrift to mediatora;⁸⁸ Charles xi dealt the council a blow from which it never recoverecL It needed Charles xn’s death to break the spell of obedience which his absolutism had cast upon the country in his lifetime. No reigning monarch ever subscribed to the Form of Govemment of 1634. Until 1719 no Charter on the lines of that of 1611 was ever extracted from Gustav Adolf ⁵s successors.

But if the power of the monarchy thus remained remarkably constant, it would be rash to assume that the liberties of the subject were retarded by this State of affairs. Some liberties were fairly secure in any event; others, though in jeopardy, would have been nonę the safer if the council had been able to make good all its claims. Take, for instance, that clause in the Land Law which bound the king to impose no new law upon the people without their consent. It was not a clause which came into play very often, for ‘new law* meant in fact only major pieces of legislation which affected the Land Law itself in important respects: as, for example, the Succession Agreements of 1544 or 1604, or the Judicature Ordinance of 1614, or the Form of Goverament of 1634. Now in fact all these were sub-mitted to, and accepted by, the riksdag; and it is not easy to think of legislation of this sort (apart, perhaps, from some ecclesiastical legislation in Gustav Vasa’s time) which did not comply morę or less with the Land Law’s provisions. Side by side with statutes of this kind, however, was a large body of what may be called proclamations, ordinances or regulatjpBS, which the king could promułgate without the consent of any-body at all — though to be surę the Land Law obliged him to take his counciFs counsel upon them. Practicaliy all legislation