All things, great and small, relating to civic life interested him; and a certain over-confidence in the power of law to regulate all human concerns is traceable in his labors. For the cities he elaborated a municipal law, and for his vassals and courtiers a court law (_Hirdskraa_), which was, however, an adaptation of a previously existing code, dating from the days of Sverre. The court law dealt with the feudal duties and privileges of vassals, prescribed rules for courtly intercourse, and a fixed ceremonial for the proclamation of a king, the conferring of the feudal dignities, etc. Among other things it ordained that no longer, as of old, should a peasant, as the representative of the people, confer the royal dignity upon the heir to the throne, but the man of highest rank present. An inclination is visible in King Magnus' legislation to break with the democratic past, and to remodel Norway, as nearly as possible, after foreign patterns. It was particularly England, with its feudal institutions, which seemed to him and his surroundings worthy of imitation. Although it was by no means a pure democracy which had prevailed in Norway hitherto, there had yet been a recognition of the people as the source of power, and the old stubborn sense of independence which characterized the peasantry had never been eradicated. Hitherto the laws had been submitted to the people at the _things_, where every free-born man could make himself heard. Now this venerable custom was abolished, and the king and his council reserved for themselves the right to make and repeal laws, without consulting the people. That this decree was accepted without protest, nay appears to have caused no particular excitement, shows plainly the change that had come over the spirit of the Norsemen. If a king had proposed such a law, in the days of Haakon the Good or Olaf Tryggvesson, he would have risked his throne and his life. Whether it was because royalty had risen to such dignity and power that it seemed hopeless to oppose it, or because the tribal aristocracy, instead of making common cause with the people, had attached itself to the crown, certain it is that the supine acceptance of so radical a change argued a degeneracy which explains the subsequent events.