The old régime in France—a monarchical bureaucracy working amid the survivals of a medieval society and a welter of prescriptive powers—had often displayed signs of weakness and instability. But these shortcomings in no way signified to contemporaries that the old régime was on the verge of disruption. The monarchy was taken for granted both by conservative and by revolutionary thinkers, and both, in their different ways, endowed the monarchy with an idyllic past. Conservatives, opposing the innovations of the growing bureaucracy, claimed to have discovered evidence of an old constitution under which the monarchy had worked in harmony with other powers of the realm. The revolutionary thinkers—that is to say those who wished to bring about radical changes in administration—thought in terms of absolute monarchy. They had in mind the royal power served by an enlightened bureaucracy, which would govern for the common good, unimpeded by medieval institutions and vested interests. The despotic state was merely to collect taxes (in moderation), maintain an army and a navy, and provide for police and justice. It was to be truly despotic in restricted functions and it was to maintain conditions under which natural laws would prevail, unhindered by medieval prejudice and unnecessary regulation. This idea of a powerful government which would reduce and simplify the tasks of government runs through all French eighteenth-century liberal thought; and it is here that even Rousseau finds some common ground with the Encyclopaedists and the Physiocrats.