In the Form of Government adopted in 1634, Sweden received from Oxenstjerna’s hands the first of modern written constitutions. By it Lutheranism in the form of the Confession of Augsburg was imposed upon the sovereign and all his subjects. Government was vested in the king, advised by a senate of twenty members chosen by him from the nobility, to whom were added five _ex officio_ members being the great officers of state, _i.e._ the steward, the marshal, the treasurer, the chancellor and the admiral. The whole direction of affairs during the illness or minority of the king was placed in their hands, subject only to the provision that all laws passed, privileges conferred, and alienation of crown lands effected during the incapacity of the king must receive his subsequent ratification. Other provisions of a less important nature regulated the administration of justice, but in all of them the same care for securing the supremacy of the noble and official class is everywhere observable. In fact, the result of the Form of Government was to place the chief direction of affairs in Sweden for nearly fifty years in the hands of a narrow aristocratic clique of official families. During the minority of Christina, no less than three out of the five great officers of state were members of the Oxenstjerna family alone. [Sidenote: =The government a narrow oligarchy.=] The policy of the regency was conceived in the interests of the nobility. They profited by the continuance of the war in Germany, for to them fell the high commands in the army, and the opportunities of amassing wealth by plunder and confiscation. They profited equally by the necessities of the Crown at home, for they became the possessors either by purchase or grant of large tracts of crown lands made over to them by the government, partly to secure their loyalty and partly to relieve its embarrassments. But what was meat to the nobles was poison to the peasantry. The people soon found that the court noble or the successful general was a far harder master to serve than ever the Crown had been. The long-continued war raised the taxes, checked the growth of manufactures, and drained the country of its best peasant blood, only to return to it a body of brigand soldiers ruined in morals and incapable of honest industry. Had it lasted but a few years longer, it is by no means improbable that Oxenstjerna would have found that he had purchased a foreign empire at the cost of a domestic revolution. The quick intelligence of Christina, brought up as she was in Sweden, while the Chancellor was forced to spend a large part of his time in Germany, appreciated the danger; and this, quite as much as her natural humanity, prompted her to put an end to a war, which had ceased to have a serious political object, and was being waged in the interests of a class and in honour of a memory.