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keeping, hunting and fishing, and death duties. The people chose the Bannerherr but he was obliged to swear loyalty to the Prince-Abbot, as did all men of military age, which was fourteen. Bräker describes an oath-taking festival in his diary for 14 th May 1793.

The powers of the Landvogt were very far-reaching. He presided over the Appelationsgericht [appeal court] and the Landsgericht [lower court] and the Kriegsrat [war council] which controlled the militia, and appointed half of their members. He also appointed most of the higher officials of his government, including the Landweibel [bailiffs] and Landschreiber [clerks]. From 1755 he had control over the militia, choosing all the captains, but all militia officers had to be natives of the Toggenburg. He thus had almost complete control over the executive officers and the judiciary. He appointed most of the officers of the lower court, with the restriction that these also had to be natives of the Toggenburg, and that numbers of Protestants and Catholics in these offices had to be equal. All offices were held for life, with the exception of the Landvogt himself, who held office only by favour of the Prince-Abbot.

Since 1718 Protestants were on equal terms with Catholics in publicly practising their religion. The pastors and five lay assessors formed a synod which regulated the conduct of the clergy, and controlled the Protestant schools and the church courts which dealt with matters such as marriage and divorce. Protestants and Catholics each elected ten of the forty members of the Landgericht and three of the twelve members of the Appelationsgericht. An undercurrent of hostility lingered on - for example, in chapter 60 of Bräker's autobiography we read that when he went out with a Catholic girl both his parents and hers were very unhappy about it, but co-existence seems to have been outwardly fairly peaceful. In some places, including Bräker's home town, Wattwil, both churches held services in the same building. [Chronik, p 183, Simond, p 114]

The Toggenburg had no written code of law except for matters of inheritance, and from criminal cases there was no right of appeal. Court fines were paid to the Landvogt, even money paid as compensation went to him rather than to the injured party. Johann Gottfried Ebel quoted by Voellmy [v 2 p 42] mentions bastardy cases where rich citizens had to pay a thousand guilders - a large sum of money - not to the girls who were bearing their children, but to the Landvogt! Heavy fines were levied for other offences against morality such as drunkenness and cursing. The costs of litigation, always charged to the litigants, made justice very expensive.

The taxes levied by the Landrat were very heavy, because they had to maintain the Landvogt and his household and the higher officials of his government. The Landvogt's salary alone was double the revenue raised in Appenzell. Ebel, quoted by Voellmy, [v 2 p 41] says that so much land was taken up by pasture for livestock needed to pay taxes, that there was no room for the less profitable crops which would have fed the people, grain had to be imported from Swabia. In another passage quoted by Böning [biog. p 15] Ebel lays the blame for the poverty of the Toggenburg on its rulers: "Of necessity this little population, in spite of all their industry and activeness, cannot enjoy such riches as in Appenzell Ausserrhoden. Too large a portion of its citizens must be without property, for many costly properties lie in the dead hands of the ruling abbey and other monasteries; general welfare like that in Appenzell cannot be brought about, and the number of needy people and beggars must be higher than it is there." Even those peasants who nominally owned their land might be forced to mortgage it to some rich creditor. Ebel was writing at the end of the century, but it appears that very little had changed during most of Bräker's lifetime.

Ebel was an "outsider" witness (he came from Frankfurt am Main), but it seems that some influential natives of the Toggenburg could also find room for improvement there. Voellmy also quotes [v 2 p 70] Elias Stadler, Bannerherr of the Toggenburg, who made a speech to the Moral Society of Lichtensteig on 8th May 1775 about the condition of their homeland. He describes its constitution as "seltsam", which means "peculiar" in both senses of the word, but praises its provision for equal rights in religion. Speaking of the election of officials, however, he says that

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