ABSTRACT
The constitution proposed in 1782 by Leopold of Tuscany, though never implemented, would have shared with an elected assembly the former royal prerogatives of making treaties, declaring war and raising troops. Opposition to royal prerogatives from an institution meant that royal ministers had temporarily offended more of its members than they had conciliated, not that they all considered constitutional principle to be at stake. Institutional historians stress instead the bureaucratic features of the so-called 'administrative monarchy' in later Bourbon France and the German states, codes of procedure and job descriptions, professional training and high standards of public service. The pole-star in England and on the Continent was the monarch. The wider concept of 'absolutism', in which regal power embraced taxation and law-making at will, admittedly eliminates England from consideration. It also eliminates all early modern states apart from Russia, none of which subscribed to such despotic arrangements.
