The Prince.--The Government.--The Senate.--The Minister for Foreign
Affairs.--The Minister of the Interior.--Courts of Justice.--Finances.
Kara Georgevitch means son of Kara Georg, his father's name having
been Georg Petrovitch, or son of Peter; this manner of naming being
common to all the southern Slaaves, except the Croats and Dalmatians.
This is the opposite of the Arabic custom, which confers on a father
the title of parent of his eldest son, as Abou-Selim, Abou-Hassan, &c.
while his own name is dropped by his friends and family.
The Prince's household appointments are about £20,000 sterling, and,
making allowance for the difference of provisions, servants' wages,
horse keep, &c. is equal to about £50,000 sterling in England, which
is not a large sum for a principality of the size of Servia.
The senate consists of twenty-one individuals, four of whom are
ministers. The senators are not elected by the people, but are named
by the prince, and form an oligarchy composed of the wealthiest and
most influential persons. They hold their offices for life; they must
be at least thirty-five years, and possess landed property.
The presidency of the senate is an imaginary dignity; the duties of
vice-president being performed by M. Stojan Simitch, the herculean
figure I have described on my first visit to Belgrade; and it is
allowed that he performs his duties with great sagacity, tact, and
impartiality. He is a Servian of the old school, speaks Servian and
Turkish, but no European language. The revolutions of this country
have brought to power many men, like M. Simitch, of good natural
talents, and defective education. The rising generation has more
instruction, and has entered the career of material improvements; but
I doubt if the present red tape routine will produce a race having
the shrewdness of their fathers. If these forms--the unavoidable
accompaniments of a more advanced stage of society,--circumscribe the
sphere of individual exertion, they possess, on the other hand, the
advantage of rendering the recurrence of military dictatorship
impossible.
M. Petronievitch, the present minister for foreign affairs, and
director of the private chancery of the Prince, is unquestionably the
most remarkable public character now in Servia. He passed some time in
a commercial house at Trieste, which gave him a knowledge of Italian;
and the bustle of a sea-port first enlarged his views. Nine years of
his life were passed at Constantinople as a hostage for the Servian
nation, guaranteeing the non-renewal of the revolt; no slight act of
devotion, when one considers that the obligations of the contracting
parties reposed rather on expediency than on moral principles. Here he
made the acquaintance of all the leading personages at the Ottoman
Porte, and learned colloquial Turkish in perfection. Petronievitch is
astute by education and position, but he has a good heart and a
capacious intellect, and his defects belong not to the man, but to
the man's education and circumstances. Although placable in his
resentments, he is without the usual baser counterpart of such pliant
characters, and has never shown himself deficient in moral courage.
Most travellers trace in his countenance a resemblance to the busts
and portraits of Fox. His moral character bears a miniature
resemblance to that which history has ascribed to Macchiavelli.
In the course of a very tortuous political career, he has kept the
advancement and civilization of Servia steadily in view, and has
always shown himself regardless of sordid gain. He is one of the very
few public men in Servia, in whom the Christian and Western love of
_community_ has triumphed over the Oriental allegiance to _self_, and
this disinterestedness is, in spite of his defects, the secret of his
popularity.
The commander of the military force is M. Wucics, who is also minister
of the interior, a man of great personal courage; and although
unacquainted with the tactics of European warfare, said to possess
high capacity for the command of an irregular force. He possesses
great energy of character, and is free from the taint of venality;
but he is at the same time somewhat proud and vindictive. His
predecessor in the ministry of the interior was M. Ilia Garashanin,
the rising man in Servia. Sound practical sense, and unimpeachable
integrity, without a shade of intrigue, distinguish this senator. May
Servia have many Garashanins!
The standing army is a mere skeleton. The reason of this is obvious.
Servia forms part of one great empire, and adjoins two others;
therefore, the largest disciplined force that she might bring into the
field, in the event of hostilities, could make no impression for
offensive objects; while for defensive purposes, the countless
riflemen, taking advantage of the difficult nature of the country, are
amply sufficient.
Let the Servians thank their stars that their army is a skeleton. Let
all Europe rejoice that the pen is rapidly superseding the sword; that
there now exists a council-board, to which strong and weak are equally
amenable. May this diplomarchy ultimately compass the ends of the
earth, and every war be reckoned a civil war, an arch-high-treason
against confederate hemispheres!
The portfolios of justice and finance are usually in the hands of men
of business-habits, who mix little in politics.
The courts of law have something of the promptitude of oriental
justice, without its flagrant venality. The salaries of the judges are
small: for instance, the president of the appeal court at Belgrade has
the miserable sum of £300 sterling per annum. M. Hadschitch, who
framed the code of laws, has £700 sterling per annum.
The criminal code is founded on that of Austria. The civil code is a
localized modification of the _Code Napoleon_. The first translation
of the latter code was almost literal, and made without reference to
the manners and historical antecedents of Servia: some of the blunders
in it were laughable:--_Hypotheque_ was translated as if it had been
_Apotheke_, and made out to be a _depot of drugs_! When the translator
was asked for the reason of this extraordinary prominence of the drug
depot subject, he accounted for it by the consummate skill attained
by France in medicine and surgery!
A small lawyer party is beginning in Belgrade, but they are disliked
by the people, who prefer short _viva voce_ procedure, and dislike
documents. It is remarked, that when a man is supposed to be in the
right, he wishes to carry on his own suit; when he has a bad case, he
resorts to a lawyer.
The ecclesiastical affairs of this department occupy a considerable
portion of the minister's attention.
In consequence of the wars which Stephan Dushan, the Servian emperor,
carried on against the Greeks in the fourteenth century, he made the
archbishop of Servia independent of the patriarch of Constantinople,
who, in turn, excommunicated Stephan and his nominee. This
independence continued up to the year 1765, at which period, in
consequence of the repeated encouragement given by the patriarchs of
Servia to revolts against the Turkish authority, the nation was again
subjected to the immediate spiritual jurisdiction of Constantinople.
Wuk Stephanovitch gives the following anecdote, illustrative of the
abuses which existed in the selection of the superior clergy from this
time, and up to the Servian revolution, all the charges being sold to
the highest bidder, or given to courtiers, destitute of religion, and
often of common morality.
In 1797, a Greek priest came to Orsova, complaining that he had not
funds sufficient to enable him to arrive at his destination. A
collection was made for him; but instead of going to the place he
pretended to be bound for, he passed over to the island of New Orsova,
and entered, in a military capacity, the service of the local
governor, and became a petty chief of irregular Turkish troops. He
then became a salt inspector; and the commandant wishing to get rid of
him, asked what he could do for him; on which he begged to be made
Archbishop of Belgrade! This modest request not being complied with,
the Turkish commandant sent him to Sofia, with a recommendation to the
Grand Vizier to appoint him to that see; but the vacancy had already
been filled up by a priest of Nissa, who had been interpreter to the
Vizier, and who no sooner seated himself, than he commenced a system
of the most odious exactions.
In the time of Kara Georg, the Patriarchate of Constantinople was not
recognized, and the Archbishop of Carlovitz in Hungary was looked up
to as the spiritual head of the nation; but after the treaty of
Adrianople, the Servian government, on paying a peppercorn tribute to
the Patriarch of Constantinople, was admitted to have the exclusive
direction of its ecclesiastical affairs. The Archbishop's salary is
800_l_. per annum, and that of his three Bishops about half as much.
The finances of Servia are in good condition. The income, according to
a return made to me from the finance department, is in round numbers,
eight hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars, and the expenditure
eight hundred and thirty thousand. The greater part of the revenue
being produced by the _poresa_, which is paid by all heads of
families, from the time of their marriage to their sixtieth year, and
in fact, includes nearly all the adult population; for, as is the case
in most eastern countries, nearly every man marries early. The
bachelors pay a separate tax. Some of the other items in the budget
are curious: under the head of "Interest of a hundred thousand ducats
lent by the government to the people at six per cent." we find a sum
of fourteen thousand four hundred dollars. Not only has Servia no
public debt, but she lends money. Interest is high in Servia; not
because there is a want of capital, but because there are no means of
investment. The consequence is that the immense savings of the
peasantry are hoarded in the earth. A father of a family dies, or _in
extremis_ is speechless, and unable to reveal the spot; thus large
sums are annually lost to Servia. The favourite speculation in the
capital is the building of houses.
The largest gipsy colonies are to be found on this part of the Danube,
in Servia, in Wallachia, and in the Banat. The tax on the gipsies in
Servia amounts to more than six thousand dollars. They are under a
separate jurisdiction, but have the choice of remaining nomade, or
settling; in the latter case they are fiscally classed with the
Servians. Some settled gipsies are peasants, but for the most part
smiths. Both settled and nomade gipsies, are alike remarkable for
their musical talents. Having fought with great bravery during the war
of emancipation, they are not so despised in Servia as in some other
countries.
For produce of the state forests, appears the very insignificant sum
of one hundred and twenty-five dollars. The interior of Servia being
so thickly wooded, every Servian is allowed to cut as much timber as
he likes. The last item in the budget sounds singularly enough: two
thousand three hundred and forty-one dollars are set down as the
produce of sales of stray cattle, which are first delivered up to the
captain of the district, who makes the seizure publicly, and then
hands them over to the judge for sale, if there be no claimant within
a given time.