example, determined what law should prevail in their limits. No outside power determined that question. The ordinances contain such serious matters as the law of inheritance, stipulated in all its details. In criminal law there were traces of feudal administration, but the customary law was now written and punishments were enactments of city councils. The council was, in fact, a court of appeal, and the distinctions between legislature and judiciary were not clearly marked. Add to this the police laws necessary in a compact community, and the scope of legislation goes far beyond our modern conceptions of the municipality. Each city regulated for itself and its dependent territory all matters concerning weights, measures, and coinage. A supervisor of weights and a master of the mint were necessary municipal officials. There were attempts to establish common standards among the towns, but the coinage of the time is the distraction of the modern collector and could hardly have been less to a contemporary. Religion also was under the supervision of city councils. Not until the Reformation do we meet with serious trouble about doctrine, but the administration of church property had been closely watched for a long time before. When the authorities were convinced that monastic estates were not properly managed they appointed bailiffs to supervise and report to the State. Zurich maintained an oversight of the clergy, and as the territorial possessions of the city increased more and more pastors depended on the secular authorities for appointment. Consequently it was only natural that the public debate on Zwingli's theses should take place before the great council, and that the celebrated decree which ordered the clergy to confine their preaching strictly to the Scriptures, was the act of that modern impossibility, a board of aldermen! The government of the city was in one sense confined to the circuit of its walls, and in another extended over the neighboring country. The lands of Zurich, for example, spread about over the space now occupied by Zurich Canton, but this was not a part of the State as we should now understand it; it was subject territory. The Canton was made up of districts, properties, and other feudal rights which had from time to time been purchased, forfeited, or conquered from their former owners. The various parts were administered by governors appointed by the city council. The inhabitants of the country were not citizens, but subjects of the city. Certain outside residents were admitted as citizens, but only by special act. The city stood simply in the place of the former owners or overlords of the soil. The evils of this were very great, for the country was unfairly treated in the regulation of trade. The city desired no competition on the part of country artisans. Countrymade goods were forbidden the city, or so burdened that they were unlikely to enter. The trade guilds were afraid of their own subjects and got behind the protection of their own walls. Inside the municipal boundaries the regulation of trade, apprenticeship, quality of goods, and such matters was largely in the hands of the unions, but the city frequently enacted general ordinances and regulated prices. The police ordinances show a wide range of activity. There is abundant record of the methods used to suppress crimes and misdemeanors. Citizens must not carry swords on stated occasions, particularly when crowds might be expected to assemble. Betting above a certain small limit was forbidden. In general, the power of government to regulate individual conduct was much more extensive than we now conceive it to be. What were later called "blue laws" were numerous and farreaching. The city fathers felt it to be their duty to prevent extravagance by statute. Clothing must be modest in form and remain within a stated limit of expense, for various classes. At one time coats must reach to the knee, and shoes must extend no more than a finger length beyond the toe. Wedding feasts must not have more than a certain number of guests. Profanity was unlawful, and a select list of prohibited oaths was published, so that one should not with impunity swear by "God's wounds," or by "the mother of God," and various other expressions which apparently came lightly over the tongue in those days. In fact, the records are a curious mixture of things both grave and gay. Some things we miss. There is little or nothing said about pavements, for the very good reason that they had little or nothing of the kind. Zurich's first-known paving ordinance appeared late in the fifteenth century. Street lights find no mention, for the city doubtless felt no call to undertake a business which from its very nature ought to be left to the free competition of the sun and moon. The nearest approach to a public franchise was the right to place mills on the river, which in Zurich flowed through the center of the town. The regulation of this was intended more than anything else to prevent undue competition of millers and to make the number of mills correspond to the demand for flour. This picture is incomplete but sufficient has been said to indicate the wide variety of civic problems and the spirit in which the solutions were approached. |