SERVIA,
YOUNGEST MEMBER OF THE EUROPEAN FAMILY:
OR, A
RESIDENCE IN BELGRADE,
AND
TRAVELS IN THE HIGHLANDS AND WOODLANDS OF THE INTERIOR,
DURING THE YEARS 1843 AND 1844.
BY
ANDREW ARCHIBALD PATON, ESQ.
CHAPTER XXXI.
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 Napoléon. 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:—Hypothèque was translated as if it had been Apotheke, and made out to be a depôt of drugs! When the translator was asked for the reason of this extraordinary prominence of the drug depôt 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 vivâ 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 800l. 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 [318]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.
