255 use of absolutio ah instantia declined sharply towards the end of the century. To the functioning of the system, the significance of conditional acquittal had always been secondary. Why, then, were the Roman-canon rules of proof abandoned in Finland? It may be wise first to reiterate that it was at the lower court level that the change produced the fewest consequences; in hundred courts and city courts, legal rules of proof had already been ignored at will whenever practical demands called for conviction on circumstantial evidence. The final withering away of the legal rules of proof as a result of the actual theory of free evaluation of proof is difficult to separate from the traditional disregard of the rules; more than anything, it is the ideological basis of the lower court practice that changed in the nineteenth century. The question should therefore be reformulated: Why did the turn towards free evaluation of evidence commence in the practice of the high courts and theJDS in the 1850s and 1860s? In the study, the search for the answer was again undertaken first by way of international comparison. It is seen, then, that the breakthrough of free evaluation of proof was a highly sensitive political matter from the end of the eighteenth till the middle of the nineteenth century in Europe. In France, then, theories of proof were not discussed independently of the judicial organization: free evaluation of evidence was seen to be automatically linked to the establishment of trial juries staffed by laymen. Toward the middle of the nineteenth century, a different pattern of discussion emerged in Germany, as matters of judicial organization and theories of proof were increasingly detached from each other. Although the combination of trial juries and free evaluation of evidence proved victorious in the aftermath of the German Revolution of 1848, the seeds of a new idea had been sown, as it had nowbecome possible to envisage free evaluation of evidence as bequeathed to professional judges. In the second half of the nineteenth century, then, free evaluation of evidence was in an increasing number of situations conferred upon the professional judiciary in both Germany and France. In literature, this has been linked to the increasing bourgeoisiement of the judiciary; unlike under absolutist rule, the hourgeoisie had no need to control the judiciary, nowits own. When seen in this comparative context, the Finnish development, with its corresponding features and its peculiarities, will hopefully be more clearly comprehended. In general respects, Finnish societal and political development largely follows the general European one in the nineteenth century. As elsewhere, the Finnish Ständestaat, “estate of estates,” began to crumble towards the middle of the nineteenth century. The Ständestaat structure was then replaced by other divisions. The Finnish elite was restructured, and the legal profession came to formpart of that elite. In the second half of the century, moreover, a liberal economic systemwas substituted for the mercantilist regulation. The bureaucratic structures of the modern state were built in Finland as they
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