What was the policy of the Austrian Hapsburgs toward the institutions of the country? It was essentially Austrian, and tended toward absolutism, influenced nevertheless by the teachings of the French philosophical school. It aimed at the diminution of the liberty of the clergy and the recognition of the state as superior to the church; at strengthening the sovereign power, overriding the national institutions and the ancient and well-established privileges; at conferring political initiative on the Austrian governor-general of Belgium; at depriving the Belgian nobility of any participation in political affairs; at recruiting public officers from among the jurists only; at avoiding any brutal attack upon the national institutions, but at undermining them in a secret manner. It cannot be denied, however, that the Austrian government did its best to restore the material welfare of the country; and the manufacturing and agricultural interests were fostered by two Austrian ministers, both of Italian nationality, Antoniotto di Botta Adorno, under Maria Theresa, and Count Giovanni Giacomo di Belgiojoso, during the reign of Joseph II. This Emperor had a sincere desire to promote the material welfare of the Belgian people, and it is a historical fact that at the beginning of his reign he visited Belgium incognito, accompanied by one of his ministers, in order to examine into everything himself and to take such measures as he might find to be necessary. Unfortunately he was somewhat of an idealist, imbued with the theories of the French philosophy of the eighteenth century and the teachings of “Febronianism.” France was at this time the center of an intellectual and moral current, which exerted a powerful influence on the courts and the higher classes of all Europe. The social, philosophical, economical, and governmental doctrines of the Encyclopaedists and the Physiocrats attacked the basis of the existing society. They proposed the creation of an entirely new social and political order, breaking with tradition, and conceived of as independent of any Christian idea. On the other hand, the doctrines of the superiority of the state over the church were already promulgated, since Van Espen, a Belgian jurist of the seventeenth century, had supported them. They were codified in 1763 by Febronius, the suffragan bishop of Treves, who developed them to the extreme limit. He proposed breaking up the Catholic church into national churches, under the supervision of the state. His book had an immense success at the German courts, even those of the ecclesiastical principalities.