The Mercantile System and its Historical Significance [10]
as 1450 Frederick II complained that, in contempt of his authority, the men of Spandau demanded Niederlage from the burghers of Cologne and Berlin. The staple privileges of Spandau, as well as those of Oderberg, Landsberg, Eberswald, Tangermunde, and Brandenburg, and even those of Berlin were, by 1600, evaded or abolished. Oderberg, in 1634, formally surrendered the right of demanding Niederlage, in return for a grant by the elector of a court of lower jurisdiction.(16*) These were all signs of progress in the matter of internal freedom of trade. Only the right of Niederlage enjoyed by Frankfurt survived; and this was even enlarged: for, as its rivals were Stettin and Breslau and other trading towns outside the country, the electoral authorities thought it their duty to support it.(17*) Although in this matter territorial policy treated the greater centres of trade differently from the smaller, and regarded their interests as, in a measure, the interests of the whole country, in other directions the government of the prince had to oppose even these larger towns - as in the matter of import and export, prohibitive regulations, and the like. The greater and more important the town might be, the less possible was it to allow it to have an independent policy in these respects. Though the efforts of Joachim I to secure freer passage into the houses of one town of the beer made in another had little success; though the burghers of Berlin, even in the first half of the eighteenth century, desperately resisted any further allowance of the competition of Bernau; though the government were unable to obtain equal rights in fairs for all the traders and craftsmen of other Brandenburg towns; nevertheless, it was quite distinctly recognised, even in the sixteenth century, that the decision whether grain, wool, woolfells, and other wares could be imported or exported belonged to the electoral government. In the neighbouring territories, on the contrary, especially in Pomerania and the archbishopric of Magdeburg, we see the governments waging a long contest over the question whether the chief towns, Stettin and Magdeburg, or the government of the country, or both together, had the right to prohibit trade in corn. Such a prohibition was issued by the town of Brunswick in the sixteenth century quite independently, and, indeed, very frequently. In Pomerania the struggle was ended in 1534-5 by arbitration: if the Stettin council wished to forbid export they must do so before Shrove Tuesday; the Duke retained the right both of suspending the prohibition altogether and of allowing exceptions.(18*) In the archbishopric of Magdeburg we find, in the time of the Elector Albert, that sometimes the town requested the government, and sometimes the government requested the town, to forbid export, and that there was an attempt to arrive at joint action by joint deliberation; yet, as early as 1538, the archiepiscopal governor (Statthalter) after a bad harvest imposed a duty of a quarter of a gulden per wispel on the export of corn to last until next Midsummer's Day, so as to keep a sufficient supply in the country and yet "not altogether prevent the peasant from making a livelihood." Under the succeeding Brandenburg "administrators" of the archbishopric, the right of the government to prohibit export in times of scarcity was as undoubted as in most of tHeir other territories.(19*) In Brandenburg the following rules were established during the course of tHe sixteenth century. In winter, from Martinmas (Nov. 11) to the Feast of the Purification (Feb. 2) no exportation should take place; Scheplitz connects this with the cessation of navigation during the winter, the universal custom in earlier times. Moreover, the peasants were never to export; only the squires (knights), the prelates, and the towns. In time of dearth the Elector had the right of embargo; but exceptions were allowed, as, for instance, to the towns of Seehausen, Werben, and Osterberg in the Old Mark (1536), both on account of their position on the frontier as well as because