Editing Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor (section)

===Legal reform===
[[File:Joseph2pflug 1799.jpg|thumb|Joseph II depicted plowing a field near Slawikowitz in rural southern [[Moravia]] on 19 August 1769]]

The busy Joseph inspired a complete reform of the legal system, abolished brutal punishments and the [[death penalty]] in most instances, and imposed the principle of complete equality of treatment for all offenders. He lightened censorship of the press and theatre.

In 1781–1782, he [[Serfdom Patent (1781)|extended full legal freedom to serfs]]. Rentals paid by peasants were to be regulated by officials of the crown and taxes were levied upon all income derived from land. The landlords, however, found their economic position threatened, and eventually reversed the policy. Indeed, in Hungary and Transylvania, the resistance of the magnates was such that Joseph had to content himself for a while with halfway measures. Of the five million Hungarians, 40,000 were nobles, of whom 4,000 were magnates who owned and ruled the land; most of the remainder were serfs legally tied to particular estates.

After the collapse of the [[Revolt of Horea, Cloșca, and Crișan|peasant revolt of Horea]], 1784–1785, in which over a hundred nobles were killed, the emperor acted. His Imperial Patent of 1785 abolished serfdom but did not give the peasants ownership of the land or freedom from dues owed to the landowning nobles. It did give them personal freedom. Emancipation of the peasants from the Kingdom of Hungary promoted the growth of a new class of taxable landholders, but it did not abolish the deep-seated ills of [[feudalism]] and the exploitation of the landless squatters. Feudalism in the Habsburg monarchy finally ended in 1848.{{Sfn|Padover|1934|pp=293–300}}

To equalize the incidence of taxation, Joseph caused an appraisal of all the lands of the Habsburg monarchy to be made so that he might impose a single and egalitarian tax on land. The goal was to modernize the relationship of dependence between the landowners and peasantry, relieve some of the tax burden on the peasantry, and increase state revenues. Joseph looked on the tax and land reforms as being interconnected and strove to implement them at the same time.

The various commissions he established to formulate and carry out the reforms met resistance among the nobility, the peasantry, and some officials. Most of the reforms were abrogated shortly before or after Joseph's death in 1790; they were doomed to failure from the start because they tried to change too much in too short a time,{{Opinion|date=July 2023}} and tried to radically alter the traditional customs and relationships that the villagers had long depended upon.

In the cities, the new economic principles of the Enlightenment called for the destruction of the autonomous guilds, already weakened during the age of mercantilism. Joseph II's tax reforms and the institution of Katastralgemeinde (tax districts for the large estates) served this purpose, and new factory privileges ended guild rights while customs laws aimed at economic unity. [[Physiocrats|Physiocratic]] influence also led to the inclusion of agriculture in these reforms.