194 specific state expenditures. The various groups of revenues were tied to specific destinations by means of the dispositions drawn up by the statskontoret^ and thus it became possible to read in the appropriations budget about which crown rents were to provide the salaries for each individual official. This so-called permanent allotment of the ordinary rents, which consisted of the revenues from crown homesteads and tax homesteads, was not to be altered, but was instead to reappear from one year to the next as far as was possible. In the budget for 1699, the permanent allotment amounted to 1,500,000 dsmt, and it was these revenues, which were listed in the budget in terms of cash, but actually paid almost entirely in kind, that paid for the system of cavalry farms and the local administration. Alongside of the permanent allotment there was an allotment of the variable revenues paid in cash, such as the customs duties, poll taxes, and excise taxes. This flexible portion of the state budget amounted in 1699 to 3,000,000 dsmt and was used to pay the salaries of the civil servants in the central administration, as well as the costs of the military.Since the permanent allotment was indeed permanent, the annual budgetary work of the statskontoret was actually limited to alloting these variable incomes. It should be pointed out in this context that more than seventy percent of the state revenues accounted for in the state budget, both in cash and in kind, came fromthe peasants. Eli Heckscher characterized the allotment system, based as it was on incomes in kind, as a regression from the cash economy and a return to a more primitive form of state economy. In doing so, Heckscher contrasted it with the systematic attempts by Gustav II Adolf and Axel Oxenstierna to introduce a cash economy. Their attempts were bound to fail, however, since the production of goods and the circulation of money had not yet reached the level of development whereby they completely dominated society. Heckscher’s characterization of the period does not, therefore, appear to be entirely just; the predominant economic fact of life, the existence of a natural economy, did not allow any choice. As a matter of fact, the allotment system was a necessary prerequisite for the maintenance of the system of administration and cavalry farms that already existed. By retaining the structure of appropriations from one year to another as far as possible, the economic base for the salary budgets for the central and local administration and for the armed forces remained secure. Noting this fact, which is of central importance to the question at hand, Heckscher wrote that “the whole thing was definitely medieval in its character; but it is undeniable that at the same time it created order and security, which the functionaries had been without for a long period of time.” As we Cavallie, 18—22. En Heckscher, Svenskt arbete och liv (Stockholm, 1957), 142. The increased demand for cash during the reign of Gustav II Adolf is explained by the great sums 236 237
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