While thus the authority of the territorial prince (die Landeshoheit), - the jus territorii et superioritatis, - received a new meaning in relation to the representation of economic interests towards the world outside, it is a still more important fact that, within the country itself, the territorial government pushed on energetically, by means of resolutions of the Estates and ordinances of the prince, towards the creation of new law. It was not as if there had not already been, here and there, a territorial law. In the land of the Teutonic Order the Handfeste of Kulm had been in existence since 1233; in the principality of Breslau, the "law of the country" (Landrecht) since 1346. But local law was everywhere the stronger. Not till the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries did the judicial decrees of the courts of the princes of the land, the so-called "laws of the land"(Landrechte), the state ordinances, the territorial police regulations, and so on, begin their victorious career. An indisputable need shewed itself for a new law, dealing with civil and criminal matters, succession and procedure, and common to the whole country. Out of the exercise of the princely regalia sprang ordinances for the forests, for hunting, for fishing, for mining, for the use of streams, for navigation, and for the construction of dikes; ordinances which were applicable to the whole country, and supplied its economic life with uniform rules. The new life of the press, of the reformed faith, of the newly-instituted schools, and of the system of poor-relief, received, not a local, but a territorial organisation, by means of a legislation which soon began to penetrate pretty far into matters of detail. No less need for territorial legislation was seen in regard to trade and industry, weights and measures, currency and highways, markets and fairs.
But this construction of new territorial law was brought about, and the law itself enforced, in very different ways in the various lands. While the state of the Teutonic Order, as early as the fourteenth and fifteenth century, shewed some fair beginnings of such a legislation; while the larger states of Southwestern Germany, in consequence of their higher economic development and earlier civilisation, shewed, towards 1500 and during the course of the sixteenth century, much more extensive activity in this respect; Brandenburg, Pomerania, and other northern territories lagged behind. We must, of course, allow that in Brandenburg the new judicial tribunal (Kammergericht), created under the influence of the ideas of centralisation characteristic of Roman law, as well as the Joachimica, and, somewhat later, various influential legal writings, like the Consuetudines of Scheplitz tended towards legal uniformity; nevertheless Brandenburg did not arrive, during this period, at a recognised "law of the land," or at a generally accepted regulation of the relations between peasants and their manorial lords. The attempt, during the years 1490-1536, to bring the towns under rules of police and administration which should be uniform for the whole territory, was only partially and temporarily successful; and Stettin, Stralsund, and other towns in Pomerania, Konigsberg in Prussia, and the "old town" of Magdeburg in the archbishopric retained almost down to 1700 a position of independence like that of imperial cities. The admonition, found in the general ordinances of police which were directed to the towns of Brandenburg from 1515 onward, that the Berlin ell should be the regular measure of length all over the land, the Erfurt pound for the weight of wax and spices, and the weights of Berlin for meat, copper, tin, and heavy wares, remained for some time but a pious wish. Even two generations later, the most that the Elector Augustus of Saxony had succeeded in securing was the use of the Dresden bushel on his demesne estates.
While, for instance, in Wurtemberg the so-called "ordinances of the land" (Landesordnungen) in rapid succession, from 1495onward, had, with ever widening scope, brought the economic activity of the country within their regulating lines, so that a whole series of the most important crafts were subjected to ordinances common to the whole duchy even before the Thirty Years' War (such as the butchers, the bakers, the fishmongers, the clothmakers, the copper-smiths, the pewterers, the workmen in the building trades, and, in 1601, even the whole body of merchants and dealers), and thus the whole land had already obtained an economic unity; we find in Brandenburg, during this period, only one or two quite isolated gild statutes issued by the princes that were not of a purely local nature, - such as that for the weavers of the New Mark, that for the linen weavers of the whole Mark, and that, about 1580, for the skinners and linen weavers of a number of towns together. The only evidence of any tendency towards territorial unity is to be found in the circumstances that, from 1480 onward, it was usual to seek the confirmation of the prince, as well as of the town council, for the statutes of every local gild (Innung); and that from about 1580 the prince's chancery began gradually to add to the confirmation a clause as to the power of revocation. This, however, was not the regular practice till after 1640; and it was not till 1690-1695 that the right was actually made use of. The practice of granting to the several artisan associations charters drawn up in identical terms dates from 1731.
