By the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, Maria Theresa retained possession of all her ancestral inheritance except Silesia, Parma, Placentia, and Guastalla. “She recovered the imperial dignity, which had been nearly wrested from the House of Austria, and obtained the guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction from the principal powers of Europe. Her father had left her without a single florin in the treasury; and after eight years of war and the loss of several states in 1750, her revenues exceeded those of her predecessors by six millions. “All the new laws and regulations, the changes and improvements which took place, emanated from Maria Theresa herself, and they were all more or less wisely and benevolently planned, and beneficial in their effects.” Her first war was purely one of self-defence, and the sword was drawn in a just cause. Her enemy, Frederick the Great, acknowledged that “the Austrian army acquired, under the auspices of Maria Theresa, such a degree of perfection as it had never attained under any of her predecessors, and that a woman accomplished designs worthy of a great man.” Maria Theresa was a conscientious Catholic, but she did not allow the Pope of Rome to dictate the affairs of her kingdom, and she realized the necessary distinction between temporal and spiritual jurisdictions. “She suppressed the pensions charged at Rome upon benefices; and forbade the alienation of property in favor of ecclesiastical bodies.” She intrusted the spiritual governments of convents to bishops, but placed their secular matters in the hands of magistrates. She so restrained the power of the Inquisition, then existing in her Italian dominions, that the check she placed upon the despotic operations of that diabolical institution, led to its final abolishment in Lombardy and Tuscany at a later period. Maria Theresa was ever ready to make sacrifice of personal ease for the good of her subjects. She was heard to say:— “I reproach myself with the time I spend in sleep as so much robbed from my people.” “No sooner did Maria Theresa find herself settled in peaceful security, than she prepared to carry out her systems of internal reform. The vestiges of war were effaced; agriculture was revived; commerce and the arts were encouraged; shipping interests were regarded; roads constructed and repaired; Vienna was enlarged and embellished; manufactories of woollen cloths, of porcelain, of glass, and of silken stuffs, were established. Science flourished in the foundation of several universities and colleges; while one of them, still enjoying celebrity, bears its sovereign’s name in gratitude to its foundress—‘Collegium Theresianum.’