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ESSAYS IN SWEDISH HISTORY

vacancies, promotions and ‘prejudice*. When one faction was continuously in office for a long period - as the Hats were, from 1739 to 1765 - the civil service eventually became some-thinglike the administrative front of the parliamentary party.¹⁴² But even in these circumstances it was strong and independent enough to erect a barrier to the worst excesses of the spoils system: in 1756 the riksdag accepted a Memorandum on the Semces which safeguarded regularity of promotion and gave due weight to the characteristic civil seryice virtue of longev-ity.¹⁴⁸The riksdag, for its part-like the monarchy in Charles xi’s time - had itself become a part of the bureaucratic appar-atus, assuming to itself administratiye, investigatory and judicial functions on one slender constitutional pretext after another; and meddling in every department of the central and local govemment.

Thus the absolutism of Charles xi, by a curious paradox, paved the way for the Age of Liberty, and the bureaucracy provided the bridge between the two. It is elear that as regards the riksdag the ground had in many ways been prepared in Charles xi’s time, and in part by his actions. No doubt it is true that the meeting of 1693 sees the riksdag at its absolute nadir, and that a contemporary might have been forgiven for suppos-ing that it was shortly to die of inanition; but its resurgence in 1713, and its vigour after 1719, were nevertheless due in no smali degree to the educative training which Charles himself had provided. He did not follow the example of the absolutist rulers of Germany, and undermine the position of the Estates by persuading them to delegate their powers to a standing committee, though this was a development which had certainly been conceiyable in 1634. It ^was his practice to come to the ńksdag with a generał account of his difficulties rather than with concrete proposals for their acceptance, in the confidence that the problem had been so presented to them that they could hardly fail to suggest the solution he had desired from the be-ginning. He carried the reduktion, for instance, by using the same techniąue as had enabled Gustav Vasa to confiscate the lands of the church: he simply informed the Estates of the crown’s needs, and left it to them (with a little judicious promp-ting from behind) to provide the remedy. One effect of this way of doing things was that while the royal Proposition

became a survey of the State of the nation, the parliamentary initiative passed into the Estates’ hands to a greater extent than ever before; and legislation took its rise not so much in the acceptance of the king’s proposals as in motions designed to supply his necessities.¹⁴⁴ The harmony between the crown and the riksdag, moreover, encouraged royal frankness; and the Estates were kept informed of the details of expenditure with a new particularity: we have here the origins of those ‘relations’ which in the next century were presented to the Estates, at the beginning of every Diet, by the major offices of government.¹⁴⁶ New responsibilities were placed on the riksdag: they were asked, for instance, to formulate economic policy; and though they cannot be said to have discharged the task satisfactorily, it was at least a start.¹⁴⁶ Above all, they were invited by the king to assume inąuisitorial and judicial functions which were to develop formidably under his successors. The use of the riksdag as a court to judge high offenders had precedents from the sixteenth century, and notably from 1567 and 1600; but what happened in Charles xi’s time was of a rather different character. Already in 1675 the Estates had induced the king to permit them to set up a Commission of Enąuiry into the conduct of the Regents. In 1680 its place was taken by another -the so-called Great Commission - composed of nine members from each of the four Estates; and to it Charles committed the task not only of investigating, but of passing judgment upon, both Regents and rad. It was authorized, moreover, to scruti-nize the journals, minutes and records, not only of the rad but of the offices of the central government.¹⁴⁷ This amounted in fact to giving royal sanction to something not far removed from the principle of ministerial responsibility to parliament; and Charles himself gave colour to this interpretation when he remarked that if the Regents had kept the riksdag properly informed of their proceedings they would have been free of censure.¹⁴⁸ The Great Commission accordingly wentsystematic-ally through the nf</-minutes for the years of the Regency, session by session; and any member of that body might find himself called upon to explain or justify an unlucky speech or a heated intervention, madę years before in a long-forgotten context. Thus was introduced the particular method of fixing responsibility which was to be characteristic of Swedish

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