Prime Minister's Office (Finland)
The Senate of Finland was founded on 18 August 1809 in the Grand Duchy of Finland when Emperor Alexander I of Russia signed a standing order on its establishment at Peterhof Palace. The Senate was initially called the Governing Council until it was renamed as the Senate in 1816. The Senate of Finland was divided into the Economic and Judicial Divisions; the Economic Division was further divided into departments, such as the Office Administrative Department (; ). On 1 October 1892, the Office Administrative Department was disbanded and the modern equivalent position of Prime Minister in the Senate, the Vice-Chairman of the Economic Division, was granted a support office in its place. The new unit was called the Office of the Economic Division (; ). Following Finnish independence in 1917, the unit was renamed as the Prime Minister's Office on 27 November 1918 with the operations and staff remaining intact.
Instrument of Government (1772)
In the Grand Duchy of Finland, created in 1809 from the eastern third of Sweden as part of the Russian Empire, the 1772 Constitution had a peculiar status. While the Russian Tsars, reigning in Finland as Grand Dukes, never gave any indication that they considered their autocratic powers limited by any constitution, a theory was developed in Finland that the old Instrument of Government remained in force, "mutatis mutandum", with Finland's position as part of the Empire having the nature of a personal union. This theory was, however, never put forward officially and never accepted in St. Petersburg. It did gain considerable popular currency in Finland, so that Russification measures instituted from the 1890s onwards were commonly decried as an "unconstitutional" assault on the country's autonomy. The "Constitutionals" ("perustuslailliset") were an important political faction in Finland at this time, and their legacy of constitutional legalism has had a significant effect on later Finnish politics.