Finally a Commercial College (which has special bearing on our subject) was established to regulate, control and encourage trade.[4] The first plans for such a college were presented to the council of state in the autumn of 1637. Its special function should be to supervise, increase and extend foreign and domestic trade. Klas Fleming was appointed president, and Johan Beier, who for years acted as treasurer of the New Sweden Company, was made secretary. But the college was soon dissolved, and several attempts to re-organize the same failed. In 1651, however, it was definitely established as a department of the government with salaried officers and servants, and two years later, when Erik Oxenstierna became its president, the New Sweden Company and colony was entrusted to its care. The first written constitution of Sweden, which had been prepared by Oxenstierna and sanctioned by the King, was adopted in 1634. Self government in Sweden dates from antiquity. The king circumscribed, to some extent this prerogative of the people as time went on; but municipal self-government was never fully relinquished by the commoners, and the colonists, who came to the Delaware between 1638 and 1664, were accustomed to have a voice in local affairs, secular and religious. The diet also, made up as it was of the four estates (the nobility, the clergy, the peasantry and the burgesses), gave the people an opportunity of participating in the government of the whole country. This body was summoned by royal authority, as circumstances required and questions of great import arose, and the members were appointed or elected to represent the various districts of the kingdom. The council of state became an important factor in the government during the seventeenth century. According to the constitution of 1634 it was to consist of 25 members, selected from the principal houses of the nobility. Its interests and activities had a wide scope. It discussed every feature of public life at its meetings; it decided questions of peace and war; it deliberated about foreign and domestic commerce; it considered the ways and means of trading companies; it settled disputes between city officials and between companies and individuals; it revised judgments of courts as well as court martials,--in short the entire religious, social and domestic life of the nation received its attention.