But also no: learning more about this age made me realize that pre-Napoleonic Western Europe was even less liberal than I had expected. It is hard to learn about this age and not feel that policy was set entirely by and for the benefit of a small clique that held the levers of power.
Certainly some Western monarchies had more liberal pretensions than others. England of course is the prototypical example, and probably was the most liberal in practice. But it was a pretty big outlier amongst Western monarchies.
Learning more about Charles XII (Sweden), Augustus II (Saxony and Poland), Louis XIV (France): which one of these considered the suffering of the common people when they embarked on their wars of conquest and personal aggrandizement? Consider also how readily nobles traded realms when a larger or more prosperous fief came along. It's hard not conclude that these rulers treated their states as nothing more than inherited estates, to use and dispose of as they wished.
Comparing France, Spain, Austria to Peter's Russia: how much more liberal were these Western states?