Privileges
Up to the 19th century, there existed feudally-based privileges in landowning (farmland by its nature exempt from regular land taxation irrespective of who owned it), being connected to nobility-related lordships and to allodial land. Fiefs were common in late medieval and early modern eras.
The 1906 adoption of the unicameral legislature in the parliament removed the political status of the so-called First Estate of Finland, though noble ranks were possible to grant in Finland until 1917. The last untitled ennoblement was made in 1904, and the last baronial rank was given in 1912.
The noble estate was never abolished in Finland, and even the constitution of the republic (1919) decreed that remaining rights of the estate classes are existent, but its privileged position has been weakened step by step. The nobility's political privileges were practically abolished by the reformation of the Parliament in 1906. The last taxation privileges were abolished in 1920. Some minor privileges remained for longer.
It was, however, only in 1995 when the privileges – originating from 1723 – of all four estates were formally abolished in connection with a revision of the Finnish constitution. The privileges had, however, been long considered obsolete unenforceable legislation.
Read more about this topic: Finnish Nobility
Famous quotes containing the word privileges:
“Solomon’s ... excess became an insult upon the privileges of mankind; for by the same plan of luxury, which made it necessary to have forty thousand stalls of horses,—he had unfortunately miscalculated his other wants, and so had seven hundred wives....
Wise—deluded man!”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.”
—Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969)
“Take two kids in competition for their parents’ love and attention. Add to that the envy that one child feels for the accomplishments of the other; the resentment that each child feels for the privileges of the other; the personal frustrations that they don’t dare let out on anyone else but a brother or sister, and it’s not hard to understand why in families across the land, the sibling relationship contains enough emotional dynamite to set off rounds of daily explosions.”
—Adele Faber (20th century)