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1645.]
Obligations of official
persons to render CHRISTINA. THE REGENCY. an account in yearly
courts of inquest.
293
nor any captain of a castle shall intermeddle with
the council-chamber. —No one shall be prefect in
the jurisdiction where he is lawman ;
no prefect
shall have the command of a fortress, or any au-
thority in the castles and sti-engths of the crown,
unless the king grant special wan-ant thereto to the
governors of the frontier provinces. Neither a pre-
fect nor a captain of a castle shall remain, miless
the king shall otherwise appoint, more than three
years in his office; and after the expiration of these
he shall repair, on the 1st of June, to the capital, to
give an account of his administration before all tne
five colleges. If any one be found unfaithful or
negligent, he is to be called before the palace-
court, arraigned by the state-fiscal, and to be
mulcted as the court shall award. Colonels in the
provinces and regiments of foot and horse, the
strength of each being proportioned to the size of
the prefecture, shall be twenty-eight in number,
namely, eight of horse (including the troopers of
the trained bands) and twenty of foot ^. No prefect
has any command (further than for the mainten-
ance of the law and peace) over the military force,
without especial warrant from the king ;
no officer
of the latter is to interfere in matters of taxation
on pain of death.—These ai’e the principal function-
aries whom the king has at hand in his service and
the realm’s, and every officer is bound to give
account and answer to the king himself, as often as
he may please to make demand, and also every one
before his college,
—lawmen, judges of hundreds,
and all justiciaries before the palace-court; the
ordnance-master, colonels of regiments, captains of
castles, before the council of war; all those who
have the fleets of the realm in their hands, before
the admiralty; ambassadors and agents, before the
council of chancery; and finally, all who have to do
with the public disbursements, before the council
of the exchequer. The marshal of the household,
the equerry of the stud, and ranger of the forests
of the crown, with all justiciaries, prefects, and
colonels of regiments in Sweden, shall yearly come
to Stockholm on the day of the Epiphany, to ren-
der account; if any one have lawful excuse of non-
appearance, he is to give an account by his clerk,
book-keeper, or other deputy. The lawmen, pre-
fects, and colonels in Finland, Ingermanlaud, Livo-
nia, and Prussia, are not indeed bound to appear,
but shall, nevertheless, yearly send their deputies
to Stockholm, on the first day of September ^. The
five "councils" of the realm are holden from
Twelfth-day to Candlemas, to revise and examine
the papers of the specified functionaries of the
government of the household and country ;
in like
manner they shall themselves, from Candlemas to
Lent, render an account to the king, if he be pre-
sent and can receive it, but otherwise before the
five grand officers, it being understood that the
1
The concept has but seventeen regiments in the whole,
eight of horse and nine of foot. This surprising disparity
confirms the opinion that the chancellor’s draught of a form
of government is really considerably older than the present,
and made out before the army received its further develop-
ment in the latter years of the reign of Gustavus Adolphus.
That this was actually the case is evinced by another circum-
stance : in a memorial of Oxenstierna to the government
and council of the 18th October, 1633 (thus contemporary
with the form of government), he reckons not nine but
eighteen regiments of foot in Sweden and Finland. These
were increased in the form of government, which gives
fifth, with his assessors, is constantly ready to
make account, during which his place in the go-
vernment is filled by the chief lieutenant of Stock-
holm. If affairs of state arise so onerous and diffi-
cult, that this examination cannot possibly be made
in the appointed term, then trustworthy and dis-
creet men, from the assessors of the colleges, may
be deputed for the investigation of particular mat-
ters, in order that all may be set to rights during
the winter, and nothing deferred from one year to
another. If any one in a college is found culpable,
he is to appear before the court of the five high
officers, who shall appoint in addition two members
of each of the colleges, and with these rests the
power of reprimanding, or punishing with infamy
and removal, according to the nature of the case,
yet taking the king’s decision, if he be present.
But if any offence is brought home to a whole col-
lege, or one of the five high officers, then it depends
on the king alone, whether the matter shall be
stayed with a reprimand, or be referred to him and
the council to adjudge. All these investigations,
congresses, and processes, shall be held in a cham-
ber in the castle of Stockholm thereto appointed,
one of the two secretaries of state being permanent
prosecutor, the other notary; unless one of them be
himself interested in the matter, sick, or absent, in
which case another upright man may be named to
those functions.—At the before-mentioned yearly
conventions of the official servants of the state,
exact information is to be taken as to the whole
condition of the realm, and the affairs which do not
require to be brought before a general diet, may
be discussed and disposed of. If it should occur
sometime, that the opinion of the estates is re-
quired, where yet the time or other circumstances
do not allow the like general deliberations, then
besides the above-mentioned officers of state, two
of the baronage from every assize, the bishops and
superintendents of Sweden and Finland, with one
deputy from the towns of Stockholm, Upsala, Got-
tenburg, Norrkoeping, Abo, and Wiborg, shall be
summoned to consultation. In the absence, illness,
or minority of the sovereign, no new laws can be
made, no new privileges conferred, no letters of
nobiUty granted, no crown or taxed estates or
other dues of the crown be alienated or exchanged,
but all such matters, as all nominations and reso-
lutions, shall await the confirmation of the reigning
person; yet so that if any resolution has been passed
at a general diet, it can only be confirmed or abx’O-
gated in the general diet.
Circumstances, yet more than principles, after-
wards made the constitution of 1634 distasteful to
the people of Sweden. It never was carried into
effect in all its branches. For its epoch, the work
was one of statesmanlike wisdom*, from which our
own might still learn.
twenty, reckoning three regiments to West-Gothland, in-
stead of two in the memorial, and two instead of one to
Carelia.
2 The presidents of the palace-courts in Gothland, Finland,
and Livonia, shall be personally present yearly on the 1st ol
June, or by Midsummer at latest.
3 One of the principles of this form of government was
expressed in another shape by the chancellor, when he de-
clared in the senate on the 15th July, 1636, that
" he held it
not unadvisable to appoint censors, who should censure each
man’s duty, as at Rome." Adlersparre, Histor. Saml. iv. 98.
The prescribed mode of rendering account was at first ob-
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