the state.96 In the Book on Crimes, several rules stipulated that fines or corporal punishment should be increased if a servant committed a crime against his master.97 Again, from a modern private law perspective, the rules seem to have maintained a confusing mixture of private, contract law on the one hand and public, administrative and criminal law on the other. The enactment in 1734 of the new national code did not induce David Nerhman to do more than publish an appendix in 1746, in which the general, natural principles regarding the servant’s duty of subordination and the master’s duty of protection were the same as before.98 The legislature as well as the leading Swedish legal scholar tended to elaborate and concretise the general principles on inequality and loyalty between the parties which had been expressed in the medieval codes. From the point of view of legal systematising, Nerhman’s books and as well as the code, meant that the labour law rules were closer connected to a private law analysis. Regarding the content of servants’ relationships to their masters, the texts do not reveal any shift towards a new way of legal thinking. If any change during the Age of Liberty in this concern should be mentioned, it is that the legislation made the inequality between master and servant even more manifest.99 It would be tempting to conclude that Sweden did not deviate from the common and well-established European pattern. p a r t 1 i , c h a p t e r 2 54 96 The Code of 1734,The Book on Commerce, Chapter 1, Om kiöp och skifte (On sale and exchange), section 8. 97 The Code of 1734,The Book on Crimes, Chapter 15, Om dråp, hugg och slag, å husbonda eller förman; så ock oqvädings ord emot them(On manslaughter, stabbing and beating of a master or a foreman, and words of abuse directed to them), Chapter 42, Om hustiufnad, och nidingsstöld. (On theft in the house, and heinous theft). 98 Nehrman 1746, pp. 73-76. 99 During the Age of Liberty, the harshest statutes in Swedish legal history were established, and a very draconic one was planned within the so-called “Project of 1752”, Adlercreutz,T 1971, p. 48. See also Winroth 1878, pp. 46 and 95; Heckscher 1941, pp. 312-317; Lindberg, F1947, pp. 225-226; Söderlund 1949, pp. 133, 186; Utterström 1957, p. 254; Karlsson 1988, pp. 362-366; Englund 1989, pp. 93, 203; Lindberg, B H, 1992, i, pp. 216-217; Kumlien 1997, pp. 159-160, 165-167, 346.
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