In November 1753, at the request of the Empress Maria Theresia, the aged Baron Johann Christian Bartenstein (he was then 63) wrote two memorials on the working of Count Friedrich Wilhelm Haugwitz's new System (‘neue Sistemate’) of finance and government, introduced in 1748–9. Bartenstein had recently, and reluctantly, ceded control of the Austrian Monarchy's foreign policy to Kaunitz, and assumed the largely otiose function of Austrian and Bohemian Vice-Chancellor, or third man in the hierarchy of the Directorium in Publicis et Cameralibus, created in 1749 to deal with the main areas of internal finance and administration, and headed by Haugwitz himself. Bartenstein's sharp-sighted observations on the ‘Systemate in internis’ were thus drafted at a time when he was a relative newcomer to domestic business. In January 1756, again at the empress's request, he compiled a much longer memorial, running to over 100 pages, in response to four specific questions. These were as follows. Could the provinces (‘Länder’) support the new level of taxation? Should the existing system of collecting taxes be retained? How could the System be made more acceptable to lord and peasant? How could credit, and internal and foreign trade, be encouraged, and the prosperity of the provinces increased? The greater length of Bartenstein's response, though partly due to recapitulation and expansion of his earlier conclusions, reflected his increased experience, and better grip on his subject; and also the mounting difficulties which the System was encountering with each passing year.