Frederick’s law-reforms were in great part achieved by the aged jurist Cocceji, who, with the King’s support, triumphed over all the interested opposition of lawyers and of his rivals. In the course of the years 1747 and 1748, he abolished superfluous courts, raised the fees for litigation, quickened the procedure, established satisfactory tests for judges and advocates, reduced the numbers of these functionaries, and did away at one stroke with the whole class of solicitors. The violence of these reforms is a fresh proof of the King’s omnipotence. He might by a stroke of the pen have given binding force to the _Codex Fridericianus_, a famous code of law which Cocceji drew up on principles of his own choosing. It is evident that in Prussia the judges were forced to be “lions under the throne.” The civil service gave less proof of courage and was equally impotent to oppose the will of the King. Its structure might have been designed for the very purpose of preventing any official save the King from enjoying any substantial power or prominence. The lower agents, who could not be dangerous, had no colleagues, but all the higher functions were performed by boards. The villages were governed by the bailiffs of their lords, and thus a vast number of petty local officers were directly responsible to the representative of the Crown. Above the bailiffs stood the Sheriff (_Landrat_), who was nominated by the local nobles, but appointed by the King and acted as his factotum. One young _Landrat_ strove to convince Frederick that there were locusts in his country by sending him some live specimens in a box. They escaped in the palace, and the angry King straightway altered the conditions of the office, decreeing that in future no one should be eligible who was under thirty-five years of age. In the towns royal commissioners were charged with the collection of the “Excise” and with duties of general supervision. But at the next stage collegiate administration begins. _Landrat_ and commissioner alike were responsible to the Provincial Chamber for War and Domains—a body such as that on which Frederick had served while a prisoner at Cüstrin. The individual members of the Chamber served the Crown as inspectors in their province and as special commissioners to carry out the public works which the King constantly initiated. The Chamber as a whole reviewed the work of the lower officials and reported to the General Directory, a clumsy corporation of ministers, which in its turn reported to the King. It is hardly necessary to observe that Frederick conceded to no person or body in this hierarchy the right to stand between himself and any business with which he chose to interfere. He, like his father, often preferred the evidence of his own eyes and of his soldiers to the statements of his civil servants. The General Directory had been created by Frederick William in 1723.