RB 29

95 400 dsmt paid to the clerks of the college each year.--*^ Together with appointment to the higher positions within the college, usually beginning with the position of secretary, came ennoblement. Since the majority of civil servants had no other source of income, the stability of the state administrative apparatus required that the salaries in the state budget were in fact paid out on a regular basis. Positions in the colleges were to be filled on the basis of demonstrated ability and previous service, and the salaries were considered to constitute just compensation for the work performed for monarch and country, which attitude reflected the ennobled civil servants’ conception of their role and importance in society.--' In this connection it is appropriate to quote a passage from a Pick memorandum on the Swedish salary system in which he pointed out that the private incomes from landholdings enjoyed by individual civil servants had no effect on the size of their salaries, but that “since all civil servants serve the state they receive a salary in proportion to their service and rank.” Pick emphasized the Importance of regular payments of salaries when he wrote: nor docs anyone serve without a salary in Sweden, for the civil servants serve the king and the entire realm and cannot have any means of livelihood or profession beyond this, but must see to their duties each day, while, on the other hand, all subjects who have no position can exert themselves for their livelihood and their business; and thus it is very important that everyone with a position receive the affixed salary and support from the whole realm. As mentioned above, salaries were listed in the state budget in terms of fixed sums of money {dsmt), but this does not mean that all salaries were paid out in cash. Sweden’s commodity market and cash economy were not well enough developed for this in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the economic structure imposed its own limits in this context.^'**’ As for the maintenance of the Swedish military forces. Pick pointed out that;-'^‘ all provincial regiments and infantry units receive their support in the provinces in such a way that private soldiers are supported by the peasants, while the officers have their farms and estates and thus cost the king nothing in peactime; but if there is war and the regiments find themselves in the field or in camp they receive their field pay from the king and their wives and children receive the benefits of the soldiers’ farms throughout the war. 229 RA, Statskontorets arkiv. Huvudarkivet, Personalstat 1715. Per J. Edler, Om börd och befordran under frihetstiden (Stockholm, 1915), 6—7. TsGADA, f. 248 delo 58 1. 95. Ibid., 1. 97v. See p. 195. TsGADA, f. 248 delo 58 1. 97v. The Russians also had plans to arrange the support of the military according to the Swedish system; see p. 280. 227 280 281

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