equal before the law. By drawing parallels to the rules concerning the relationship between parents and children, they indicated that the purpose of the servant’s position of subordination and obedience was to protect the inferior party.The inequality was for the subordinated person’s own good. The legal character and applicability of the master-servant relationship became more of a central topic when the debate about the “social issue” became heated in the first decades of the 19th century. The law committee that had been appointed in1811 (Sw. Lagkommittén) delivered two proposals for a new Book of Commerce (Sw. Handelsbalken) in 1815 and 1826 respectively.The latter one was part of the famous, and controversial proposal for a comprehensive Swedish Civil Code. Like the French Code Civil of 1804201, the Swedish drafts of 1815 and 1826 emphasised the distinction between service contracts concerning specified results (Chapter 12) and agreements regarding “ordinary” (Sw. vanligt) unspecified labour (Chapter 11). According to the committee, the latter category concerned the master-servant relationship (Sw. tjänstehjonsförhållandet), which was a contract characterised by the fact that the party providing a service belonged to the paying party’s household and had an open-ended duty of obedience. It would be as doubtful, or even impossible, to mark out bounds to the parties’ obligations as it would be to prescribe rules concerning parents’ authority over their children.202 Each effort to decide exactly what was the master’s right or to prescribe any other restriction than that he should treat the servant humanely p a r t 1 i i , c h a p t e r 3 96 Legislative preparatory works. Drafts of a Swedish Civil Code 1815, 1826 and 1849 201 The influences from the French Code Civil are discussed by Marks von Würtemberg 1934, p. 164. 202 LagCommiteen, Förslag till Handelsbalk 1815 (The Law Committee, Proposal on a Book on Commerce 1815), pp. 100, 108; LagCommiteen, Förslag till Allmän Civillag 1826, Förslag till Handelsbalk(The Law Committee, Proposal on a General Civil Code 1826, The Book on Commerce), pp. 136-139, 195-196.
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