480 not discharging obligations then it was self-evident, but neighbours were also unwilling to report one another for illicit distillation of alcohol or felling oaks. Nor could it always be expected to be an easy task to find willing witnesses. These public officials originally mostly appeared in court when the interests of the Church or State were directly threatened, but they gradually came to act as prosecutor, alongside civil plaintiffs, even regarding thefts, crimes of violence and similar disputes of a more personal nature. The embryo of a modern police force and prosecutors office had come into being. While the latter part of the 17th century and the 18th century were mainlv characterized by the infiltration of local justice by central government (and the Church), a new trend emerged in towns during the beginning of the 19th century. In Linköping, primarily, it can be seen how the number of people sentenced for crimes against local statutes and by-laws increased substancially, whilst government interests rather tended to fade into the background. We are on the road to “the organised community”, where one of the consequences is increased regulization, not least locally. Civil disputes had, furthermore, increased compared with the 17th century and even in some criminal cases it was still a question of settling disputes between private citizens. In spite of the fact that one can speak of a centralisation of justice frommany aspects, many parties were involved and this leads to the question of how the courts could achieve a balance between these interests. During the 17th century, when the nobility enjoyed its golden age, the district court in Gullberg occasionally took a stand on the side of the common people against the nobility. Repression by the central powers of authority is most noticable during the Carolingian autocracy (1680-1718) and as a result of Gustavus Ill’s alcohol policy during the last decades of the 18th century. However, even then the farmers and townsmen were not completely powerless. State statutes could be obstructed by passive resistance and unwillingness to witness against neighbours. The high demands on evidence saved many illicit distillers, illegal innkeepers and forest fellers from punishment. The farmers and townsmen were not, at a political level, powerless either. In the period from 1720 to 1772 in particular, their strivings did sometimes contribute to influencing the laws in a, for them, beneficial direction. The court sessions became in a double sense a negotiation between different parties in a social game, where the parties certainly could place different weights on the scales of justice. Furthermore, the State, the Church and the public agreed on many questicins. Even before government and local elite seriously began to become involved in combatting fights and quarrels, ordinary common people had become used to settling many of these disputes in court. In many cases it was probably a question of differences of degrees, when local elites and central authorities disagreed about a particular sentence. Most people thought that
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