ENGLAND'S ROLE IN THE ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISTIC THEORY OF STATE

"England is the only European country to go ahead of the others in the field of economic life. If we compare our own agriculture with that of England, we find them as opposing as light and shadow, and we can soon tell that the English have well outrivalled us."1 These are the words of J. H. von Justi, the famous German Kameralist of 1760 describing the relationship of England and the Continent. In contemporary Europe several similar opinions can be found comparing agriculture, industry, commercial life or politics to those in England. England's sudden rise to eminence in certain fields of cultural and economic life was recognized by merchants, agriculturists, scientists and artists alike and part of official Europe, i. e. rulers, statesmen, and high-ranking officials also shared this sentiment. The admiration for England became incorporated into the ideology of a certain political system, namely of enlightened absolutism, and it remained there in spite of the turns and changes of everyday politics. We can find in the countries concerned dozens of decrees encouraging the imitation of the English pattern in certain aspects of economic and cultural life, and also the indirect connections became more and more intensive. In short: enlightened absolutism in Europe was taking pains to catch up with England. This attitude is the more surprising because the social systems of the model-country and those wanting to imitate it were not identical. The bourgeois revolution had swept over England a century earlier, while the absolutistic systems mentioned above had not yet experienced such a transformation. Did then the policy of enlightened absolutism mean that by weakening its own social basis it wished to assist the bourgeoisie in carrying a revolution to victory and overthrowing the system itself? To believe this would be totally unhistorical on our part. What, then, did the enlightened rulers expect from the decrees inviting the emulation of the English example? What did they actually notice of developments there? And last but not least, what did they achieve and how did England react to this policy of closing up ? These are the problems the author wishes to throw light upon in the following pages. The example of the two great monarchies in East-Central Europe, that of the Habsburgs and the Hohenzollerns, has been chosen to illustrate the policy of enlightened absolutism. First we should speak, however, not of these countries, but of the changes in England that had drawn their attention. It is a well-known fact that the prosperity after the Revolution and the Civil War soon spread to affect nearly all spheres of the life of the state. The compromise