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:
“We have been weakened in our resistance to the professional anti-Communists because we know in our hearts that our so-called democracy has excluded millions of citizens from a normal life and the normal American privileges of health, housing and education.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)
“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)
“One of the duties which devolve upon women in the present interesting crisis, is to prepare themselves for more extensive usefulness, by making use of those religious and literary privileges and advantages that are within their reach, if they will only stretch out their hands and possess them.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)