The period which preceded the French Revolution and the era of war, from the troubles of which modern Europe was to be born, may be characterised as that of the benevolent despots. The State was everything; the nation nothing. The ruler was supreme, but his supremacy rested on the assumption that he ruled his subjects for their good. This conception of the _Aufgeklärte Despotismus_ was developed to its highest degree by Frederick the Great of Prussia. ‘I am but the first servant of the nation,’ he wrote, a phrase which irresistibly recalls the definition of the position of Louis XVI. by the first leaders of the French Revolution. This attitude was defended by great thinkers like Diderot, and is the keynote to the internal policy of the monarchs of the latter half of the eighteenth century towards their people. The Empress Catherine of Russia, Gustavus III. of Sweden, Charles III. of Spain, the Archduke Leopold of Tuscany, and, above all, the Emperor Joseph II. defended their absolutism on the ground that they exercised their power for the good of their subjects. Never was more earnest zeal displayed in promoting the material well-being of all classes, never did monarchs labour so hard to justify their existence, or effect such important civil reforms, as on the eve of the French Revolution, which was to herald the overthrow of the doctrine of absolute monarchy. The intrinsic weakness of the position of the benevolent despots was that they could not ensure the permanence of their reforms, or vivify the rotten fabric of the administrative edifices, which had grown up in the feudal monarchies. Great ministers, such as Tanucci and Aranda, could do much to help their masters to carry out their benevolent ideas, but they could not form or nominate their successors, or create a perfect body of unselfish administrators. When Frederick the Great’s master hand was withdrawn, Prussia speedily exhibited a condition of administrative decay, and since this was the case in Prussia, which had been for more than forty years under the rule of the greatest and wisest of the benevolent despots, the falling-off was likely to be even more marked in other countries. The conception of benevolent despots ruling for their people’s good was eventually superseded, as was certain to be the case, owing to the impossibility of their ensuring its permanence, by the modern idea of the people ruling themselves. [Sidenote: The Condition of the Labouring Classes.] [Sidenote: Serfdom.]