Nikita had no hopes that any good would come from such a Skup[vs]tina.
In 1912 it had been different; with a budget of some 6,200,000 perpers
(or francs), including the Russian subsidies and the revenues from the
Italian tobacco monopoly, the royal civil-list comprised 11 per cent. of
the expenses, while the police accounted for 12 per cent., agriculture
and commerce 11/2 per cent., public works 4 per cent. and education 5
per cent. The Skup[vs]tina of that period had not caused him to pay more
attention to the people's requirements. The darkness in which they lived
was so profound that when Montenegro had to pay the interest on a
six-million-franc loan from Great Britain no one in Cetinje could
calculate how much was due; a telegram was therefore sent to London
asking for this information and the date when payment should be made. If
his people did not prevent him from allocating merely 11,000 francs to
the Ministry of Justice for the increase of salaries and so forth, while
the Ministry of the Interior received 700,000 francs for the work of
spying, the expense of killing people and various propaganda--both these
items being labelled "special expenses"--then Nikita had no fault to
find with his Skup[vs]tina. Things were almost as satisfactory as before
1907, when for the first time a budget was issued and the people were
told how their contributions were spent. The personal property of the
sovereign had indeed been formally separated from that of the State in
1868; but Nikita's manipulations were so little supervised that, even
when he had established the Skup[vs]tina, he could say with truth,
"L'etat c'est moi." The Skup[vs]tina of 1918 was going to make vast
changes.