Charles III. (Charles VI. as Emperor of Germany), the brother and successor of Joseph, inaugurated this new policy, and his daughter, Maria Theresa (1740-1780), continued to pursue, during her long reign, with great success, the course traced by her royal father. The protracted wars, whilst laying waste the country and reducing her population, had also retarded her culture, and it became now necessary to find means to remedy both evils. Attempts were made to supply the lack of population by colonizing. The Alföld, the special home of the Hungarian race, was particularly depopulated, and there we see the work of establishing new settlements most zealously carried on during the whole century. The Slavs from the Upper Country, the Servians from the South, and multitudes of German-speaking peoples from the West, soon spread over the great plain, and the numerous villages of the last could be met with at every step. The government was especially solicitous in promoting German colonization, partly because these settlers were industrious, and partly because this course favored the Germanization of the country. But soon the Hungarians, who had been crowded back into the hilly regions of the country, returned to their beloved Alföld, and for a while a regular hand-to-hand fight ensued between them and the strangers for the possession of the broad acres of the fertile plain. Hardly one generation passed and all those motley populations became Magyarized, and proudly proclaimed themselves to be members of the Hungarian community. Only there where the foreign element had settled in compact masses, they remained strangers still, but the national encroachment on their borders went constantly on. In connection with the colonization was also carried on the work of draining the swamps and improving the soil, and we see the population day by day increasing in numbers and wealth. Great changes, too, were effected in the country by means of legislation. Successive Diets endeavored to remedy the many palpable defects, and it may be said that the tribunals existing up to 1848 originated in the time of Charles III. At this period, also, was introduced the system of a standing army and with it that of permanent taxation. Both soldiers and taxes are still granted by the Diet, yet, not for special emergencies only, as they arise, but until the next Diet is convoked. About this time the relations between Hungary and the Austrian provinces were more clearly defined by the _Pragmatic Sanction_ of 1723. By it Hungary and the Austrian provinces were declared inseparable, and the ruler of both was always to be one and the same person from the Hapsburg dynasty, in the regular order of succession in the male and female lines; but, otherwise, Hungary was to remain perfectly independent, and was to be governed by her own laws.