The new form of government introduced by Ribbing, Horn and others was nothing else than that of an aristocratic republic. The rights of the monarch, reduced in 1719, were still further reduced in 1720. He had two votes in the state council and a deciding vote in deadlock, but besides the authority to appoint councillors from the candidates nominated by the Riksdag, and to appoint all higher officials, no other rights. The government was in the hands of the state council, consisting of sixteen members. The Riksdag decided all questions of taxes and legislation, and settled issues of peace and war. Each of the four Estates was represented in the committees, except in the “secret committee,” for international affairs, to which no yeoman could be chosen. Each Estate had its speaker. The president of the chancery was the minister of foreign affairs and consulted the secret committee on important questions, being the only head of a department who was allowed as a member of the state council. The nobility held the balance of power, much to the opposition of the lower Estates, who tried, by repeated agitation, to invest the king with the authority held by him before the days of absolute power. The nobility had done away with its three classes, and, with these abandoned, it was the majority, viz., the lower nobility, who were the governing class. The aristocracy tried its best to regain the privileges enjoyed during the reign of Queen Christine and Charles X., but Horn forced it to be satisfied with those granted by Gustavus Adolphus. The power of the higher nobility was forever crushed by the loss of their immense possessions. The friction between the nobility and the lower Estates of the Riksdag was constant, Horn siding with the former, but keeping them all in check. Arvid Horn led with superior skill and gentleness the management of foreign affairs. All influences from the powers and from the restless nobles to involve Sweden in a conflict of war were unsuccessful. A treaty was never entered into with any one power without another one formed with a power of the opposite continental party to counterbalance it. Thus England, France and Russia were unable to make Sweden an obedient ally, Horn upholding her independence, maintaining peace and inspiring respect. Utterly refusing to accept the bribes which were freely offered and considered the indispensable means of obtaining diplomatic influence in that day, Horn himself distributed bribes to gain his patriotic purposes. Horn’s great mistake was to refer the decision of foreign affairs in which he was opposed by members of the state council to the Riksdag and its secret committee. The latter commenced to act independently in important foreign matters. By signing an agreement with France, through which Sweden lost its former privilege of an independent policy, the committee ultimately caused his downfall, in 1738. Arvid Horn then retired, at the age of seventy-two, and died a few years later.