387 Pick’s report began with a summary of the foreign and domestic tasks of the kanslikollegium, in which he emphasized the college’s status as a governmental organ rather than merely an administrative one. The college’s tasks encompassed, according to Pick: negotiations with foreign courts; as well as all royal informations, decrees, and explanations to the colleges of the realm and to the high courts, to the governors and landsgauptman {landshövdingar, translator’s note), as well as now and then to generals, commandants, and colonels, to the ober-statgalter {överståthållare, translator’s note) or supreme official {verkhovnyi namestnik) in Stockholm; as well as the royal resolutions and denials to the supplications of private individuals, instructions and salaries to the leading civil servants, diplomas to those who have been ennobled or raised to the dignity of barons or counts or have been given pensions, mansions, or estates; as, too, all manifestoes, regulations, confirmations or corroborations, edicts, and patents, which are published in the chancellery, in churches, and in courts, and are signed in the name of the king, or have his seal, for example in matters such as spiritual or secular, military, naval, fiscal, or revenue matters, trade matters, legal or police matters. When it came to the handling of these responsibilities. Pick reported that foreign and other politically sensitive questions {tainosti) were never left to the college as a whole, but were dealt with instead in the royal cabinet in the presence of one or two trusted “ministers of state” {statskii ministr). All domestic matters of state, however, were dealt with by the members of the college in corpore. In these cases, the procedure was such that the college discussed the various matters and then drew up summaries of them for presentation to the king. These might have to do with “someone who has presented a complaint about some Injustice he has suffered, another who has a claim against the crown, a third who is obtaining his privileges for manufactories, or the messages, answers, and informations which are submitted by the colleges and the governors.” The kanslikollegium had the right to present these matters to the king and to the Council, thus giving it a special position in relation to the other colleges. “But,” wrote Pick, “it has great esteem, for the arranging of all matters of state and the realmis done through its hands. When filling its councillor and secretary positions, the kanslikollegium was very careful in investigating the background of the candidates so that no one without knowledge and previous administrative experience was hired. According to Pick, this was because “this college is the most delicate ” 32 opportunity to study a revised edition of this memorandum in TsGADA, f. 96 (Snosheniia Rossii so Shvetsiei) 1715 g. delo 21 11. 17—43. ZA (no. 414), 542. Ibid., loc.cit. Ibid., 543.
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