224 layer.”' Unlike in most countries, in Finland the question of the law of proof was not linked to that of the jury; in fact, the jury was not even on the agenda. To understand why the questions of jury and free evaluation of evidence, on one hand, and political liberalism, on the other, were not — at least not as visibly - connected in Finland as they were in France and Germany, we first need to observ’e the general political and social context of the mid-nineteenth-century Finland. To be sure, liberal political ideas started to advance in Finland in the 1840s.^ They were fromthe start rivaled by a powerful current in Finnish politics, the nationalist Fennomania. Despite certain differences of emphasis in their political programs, in the beginning the two political movements had much in common and they were both, until the 1870s, mainly confined to the limited urban elites of civil servants and cultural and academic intellectuals.^ The Finnish political map did not, thus, directly correspond to that of many European countries with a division into a land-owning conservative aristocracy and a liberal bourgeoisie."' Against this background the fact that the trial jury, an essentially liberal bourgeois phenomenon, did not gain political support in the predominantly rural nineteenth-century Finland^ becomes comprehensible. From the 1860s onwards, the Fennomans became the leading force within the Finnish political reformmovement.^ Despite the weakness of liberalismas a political force, liberal ideas made their way to Finnish society. It was especially among the dominant class of civil servants and nobility that they gained acceptance.'' In fact, it has been said that the shift in the upper-class ideology from a “conservative-bureaucratic” to “liberal-bourgeois” world view took place with relatively little friction. Most importantly fromthe point of view of this study, the liberal reforms were implemented not in alliance with the lower social strata, but fromabove instead.^ Of this powerful elite of civil serv^ants'^ effectuating the liberal re- ' According to Schwimann, ins commune spread across Europe with a "diinnen Schicht”; cited at Giaro 1994 (a) p. 11. - Klinge 1980 p. 40; Liikanen 1995 p. 104. ^ See Klinge 1980 p. 15. According to Liikanen, Liberals and Fennomans “represented two competitive strategies of constructing a modern state and a nation.” Whereas Fennomans emphasized nationalism, Liberals stressed the importance of economic freedom. At least before the sharpening of ideological differences in the 1860s, however. Liberals were not opposed to the betterment of the position of Finnish language, nor were Fennomans against free social and economic enterprise. Liikanen 1995 pp. 119-121. ■* Ibid. pp. 119-120. ^ See Rommi 1972 pp. 381-382. ^ See ibid. pp. 381-382; Klinge 1980 p. 40. ^ Liikanen 1995 p. 108. * Klinge 1980 p. 40. Liikanen 1995 p. 105; see also Nousiainen 1993 pp. 429-431. As to the economic reforms, the same basic idea is conveyed by Kekkonen (1987). In the Grand Duchv, no other elite existed to seriouslv rival the dominance of the civil servants. Tiihonen — Tiihonen 1984 p. 123. 8
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