The Mercantile System and its Historical Significance [6]
that engaged in the trial before the Imperial Chamber (Reichskammergericht). The treaties of mutual defence with towns in other territories like Luneburg,(3*) - which were made as late as the time of Joachim I of Brandenburg, - seemed in the next period no longer suitable, since they aroused the distrust of the Luneburg princes. As the maintenance of the public peace passed into the hands of the princes, to them, and not to the towns, it fell to negotiate with one another for its strict preservation; for instance, in the treaty between Brandenburg and Pomerania of July 29, 1479,(4*) and that between Brandenburg and Magdeburg of July 24, 1479.(5*) The negotiations for commercial treaties, as well as the signature of the treaties themselves, between Brandenburg and Poland in 1514,(6*) 1524-27,(7*) 1534,(8*) and 1618,(9*) were the work of the princes and not of the towns. At the congresses to deal with the navigation of the Elbe and Oder in the sixteenth century, some of the ambassadors came from Frankfurt, but it was those sent by the elector who led the discussion. The treaty with "the common merchant" about transit through the Mark of Brandenburg was made by Joachim I, and not by the Brandenburg towns.(10*) In short, the representation of the country in the way of commercial policy passed over, slowly but surely, from the towns to the princely government. And if, in spite of this, the impression spread, about 1600, that all the trade of the country was coming to grief, the explanation is not to be found in this transference, but in the fact that the prince's policy was too feebly pursued, and that he was really at a disadvantage in dealing with Saxony, Silesia, Magdeburg, Hamburg, and Poland. While thus the authority of the territorial prince (die Landeshoheit), - the jus territorii et superioritatis, - received a new meaning in relation to the representation of economic interests towards the world outside, it is a still more important fact that, within the country itself, the territorial government pushed on energetically, by means of resolutions of the Estates and ordinances of the prince, towards the creation of new law. It was not as if there had not already been, here and there, a territorial law. In the land of the Teutonic Order the Handfeste of Kulm had been in existence since 1233; in the principality of Breslau, the "law of the country" (Landrecht) since 1346. But local law was everywhere the stronger. Not till the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries did the judicial decrees of the courts of the princes of the land, the so-called "laws of the land" (Landrechte), the state ordinances, the territorial police regulations, and so on, begin their victorious career. An indisputable need shewed itself for a new law, dealing with civil and criminal matters, succession and procedure, and common to the whole country. Out of the exercise of the princely regalia sprang ordinances for the forests, for hunting, for fishing, for mining, for the use of streams, for navigation, and for the construction of dikes; ordinances which were applicable to the whole country, and supplied its economic life with uniform rules. The new life of the press, of the reformed faith, of the newly-instituted schools, and of the system of poor-relief, received, not a local, but a territorial organisation, by means of a legislation which soon began to penetrate pretty far into matters of detail. No less need for territorial legislation was seen in regard to trade and industry, weights and measures, currency and highways, markets and fairs. But this construction of new territorial law was brought about, and the law itself enforced, in very different ways in the various lands. While the state of the Teutonic Order, as early as the fourteenth and fifteenth century, shewed some fair beginnings of such a legislation; while the larger states of Southwestern Germany, in consequence of their higher economic development and earlier civilisation, shewed, towards 1500 and during the course of the sixteenth century, much more extensive activity in this respect;