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V

ESSAYS IN SWEDISH HISTORY

of an m^nomic or admraistxative naturę fell into this category, and so too did legislation affecting one Estate only, for which it was sufficient that the king should consult the Estate concerned. The kings nsed this power of ordinance-making freely, as their dutv was, and the council accepted tlie practice without ques-tion. Many of the great refbrms of Gustav Adolf’s reign were put out in this m Axel Oxenstierna, who drafted most of them, was certainly not the man to object to it.⁸⁷

What then was the position in regard to illegal taxation ? To this the answer niust be thąt illegal taxation really was surpri-singly rare. The king might bargain for an aid with individual pro\inciaI assemblies, he might ask the assembled riksdag for a tax, he might even harangue tlie crowd at the great markets with a view to trying tlie eifect of royal oratory upon the eommonalty but almost always he sought and obtained eon-sent of some sort,⁸* Illegal tasation is simply not a major issue in Swedish constitutional history, and the roli of national henoes is surprismgły poor in yillage Hampdens. There were tumults and demonstradons against km&p taxes, certainly; and it was always &iriy pro babie that some of the king^łs bailifls would abuse their posidon to fleece the taxpayer in order to linę their own pockets. But the vicdms of tłiis situation did not make a eonstiiudonal issue of it: they applied the standard remedy, and massacred the bailiff; and most kings were not insensidve to a hint so vkariousły administered. After Gustav Vasa no king h\Yd of his own, as the Land Law directed that he should; and wben in the seventeenth century the ąuesdon of a reduktion came to be a buming issue its advocates were ahle to make the point (and it was not altogether a mere debadng point) that members of the high aristocracy, by defending alienadons of lands and revenues. were making it impossible for the king to live without amordmary tmtioD, and so were temptmg him to violate his coranation oath,**

Ulegał taxation might be rare; aihicaiy imprisnnment — that is, unprisonment othoahe chan after formal trial and sentence - w^s morę common. especially for crimes of a polirical naturę. But this was not a matter about which the council was disposed to make any fos. Nothing Hke a writ of habems impas etdsted:*¹ and if it had, a return to the effect that imprionnmenr ^ per pirieic mamhfcm dmmm regis wouid have seemed peifoctly in

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ON ARISTOCRATIC GONSTITUTIONALISM

order to almost everybody. The king, after all, was the highest officer ofjustice in his kingdom, entitled to doom his own dooms personally⁹² - as Monaldesco found to his cost; and even Erik Sparre conceded that the King had the right to be judge in his own cause, if it were a ąuestion de regalibus.®³ The council, for its part, had no sympathy with persons who ‘employed an unprofi-table mouth’ in lewd and naughty words. Gensorship was vigorous and vigilant, and remained so imtil 1766.⁹⁴ The idea of freedom of speech in parliament was indeed growing, but outy rather slowly ;⁹⁵ and in this matter the council was as ready as the monarch to take a strong linę with pert and froward members.⁹⁶

~^X.iberties of the subject of this kind were not really at the centrę of coostftutional controyersy in the sixteenth and seven-teenth centuries. They never became popular grieYajię^and they^make no figurę in the llsts ol hurdens’ {besvar) which the lower Estates presented to each ńksdagj in part because abuses of this sort were not vital issues in Sweden, in part because Sweden lacked an economically strong, politically maturę and habitually litigious middle class, able and wiiling to resent them. There are no analogues in Sweden to Bate and Gony; a Prynne or a Lilbume is scarcely conceivable; the crucial consdtutional issues never seem to hang upon dedsions in the courts; and if any historian were to attempt to compile a volume of Cases in the Constitutwnal Law, of the type familiar to English undergradu-ates, the crop he would glean finom the sudeenth and seven-teenth centuries would be meagre indeed.

Turning to another field, we can see that the attempt to -Tmpose somę contro! upon ihe king’s Qjjpduct of fbreign połicy had certainly a limited measure of success: Gustav Adolf took riksdag and council fulły inio his confidence befbre anbarking upon the German expedition (and indeed seemed glad enough to spread the burden of responsibility) ;*^T Osensdema iollowed the same linę in 1644. But neither of them pajd any heed to the complementaiy obligarion to seek appioval for a truce ar a peace;*® and just how little king or council coułd feel bound in the matter of dedaiing war can be scen finom Charles x*s a ltach an Denmark in 1658, and de la Gardie^ attack on Brandenburg in 1674 - in the one case without minailting the Estates, in the other in express defiance of their wishes.

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