The Mercantile System and its Historical Significance [7]
Brandenburg, Pomerania, and other northern territories lagged behind. We must, of course, allow that in Brandenburg the new judicial tribunal (Kammergericht), created under the influence of the ideas of centralisation characteristic of Roman law, as well as the Joachimica, and, somewhat later, various influential legal writings, like the Consuetudines of Scheplitz tended towards legal uniformity; nevertheless Brandenburg did not arrive, during this period, at a recognised "law of the land," or at a generally accepted regulation of the relations between peasants and their manorial lords. The attempt, during the years 1490-1536, to bring the towns under rules of police and administration which should be uniform for the whole territory, was only partially and temporarily successful; and Stettin, Stralsund, and other towns in Pomerania, Konigsberg in Prussia, and the "old town" of Magdeburg in the archbishopric retained almost down to 1700 a position of independence like that of imperial cities. The admonition, found in the general ordinances of police which were directed to the towns of Brandenburg from 1515 onward, that the Berlin ell should be the regular measure of length all over the land, the Erfurt pound for the weight of wax and spices, and the weights of Berlin for meat, copper, tin, and heavy wares, remained for some time but a pious wish. Even two generations later, the most that the Elector Augustus of Saxony had succeeded in securing was the use of the Dresden bushel on his demesne estates. While, for instance, in Wurtemberg the so-called "ordinances of the land" (Landesordnungen) in rapid succession, from 1495 onward, had, with ever widening scope, brought the economic activity of the country within their regulating lines, so that a whole series of the most important crafts were subjected to ordinances common to the whole duchy even before the Thirty Years' War (such as the butchers, the bakers, the fishmongers, the clothmakers, the copper-smiths, the pewterers, the workmen in the building trades, and, in 1601, even the whole body of merchants and dealers), and thus the whole land had already obtained an economic unity; we find in Brandenburg, during this period, only one or two quite isolated gild statutes issued by the princes that were not of a purely local nature, - such as that for the weavers of the New Mark, that for the linen weavers of the whole Mark, and that, about 1580, for the skinners and linen weavers of a number of towns together. The only evidence of any tendency towards territorial unity is to be found in the circumstances that, from 1480 onward, it was usual to seek the confirmation of the prince, as well as of the town council, for the statutes of every local gild (Innung); and that from about 1580 the prince's chancery began gradually to add to the confirmation a clause as to the power of revocation. This, however, was not the regular practice till after 1640; and it was not till 1690-1695 that the right was actually made use of. The practice of granting to the several artisan associations charters drawn up in identical terms dates from 1731. Like the separate local gild privileges, the local town privileges still maintained themselves unimpaired; the most that could be gained by the electoral government was, that the burgesses of other Brandenburg towns should be treated a little better than men from Stettin or Breslau. It needed an ordinance of the prince in 1443(11*) to open the Frankfurt Leather Fair to the Berlin shoemakers; and the Elector added, apologetically, that this should not prejudice the claims of the shoemakers of other towns who had not yet frequented the Frankfurt fair. The surrender of inheritances by one town of the Mark to another, without the enormous withdrawal-charges hitherto made, was the gradual result of treaties between the towns themselves. As late as 1481 the men of Spandau introduced a high withdrawal tax, in order to prevent their rich men from trying to get burgess-rights in Berlin and transferring themselves thither.(12*) Thus the question at issue