and the payment from the Hungarian treasury, 1,998,235 guldens, leaving 99,911,763 guldens to be assessed on the two monarchies. Foreign Affairs.-The reconciliation of Austria and Russia is Prince Bismarck's last and greatest achievement in the interest of European peace. The war-cloud that overcast Europe upon the conclusion of the AustroGerman alliance parted with the failure of Russia and France to join in a counter-alliance. But in the Balkan Peninsula, Russia continually stirred the elements of disturbance, and by secret machinations and half-disguised manifestations of dissatisfaction and jealousy endeavored to thwart the political and commercial progress of Austria and the German people in southeastern Europe long after her own internal dangers and the strength of the Central European League afforded a double preventive against the predicted struggle between the Slav and the Teuton. The open encouragement of the Herzegovinian insurgents in the Russian press showed the danger of the situation. The bond of sympathy between the Slav races and the position of the Czar as the traditional protector of the Balkan peoples creates for both powers a situation of perplexity and embarrassment. The fixing of boundaries to their several spheres of interests, so as to obviate jealousy and misunderstanding, is the only mode of meeting in a pacific spirit the difficulties that must arise. The circumstances of the Herzegovinian insurrection, and, still later, the favor shown by the Czar to the Prince of Montenegro, and the marriage of the daughter of the latter to the Servian pretender, showed the will and the power of Russia to throw obstacles in the path of Austria. A change in the attitude of Russia was observable in the autumn of 1883, when the Russian troops were ordered back from the German frontier. In January M. de Giers visited Vienna, after conferring with Bismarck at Varzin, a fact which proved the sincerity of the rapprochement. When the three Emperors met at Skiernievice in the autumn (see GERMANY), it was seen that a degree of concord has been reached, which clarifies the atmosphere in southeastern Europe, and dispels the dangers of the Eastern question in that quarter. The basis of the Austro-Russian understanding is not known. If Russia has secured the acquiescence of the German powers in the union of Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia, she has saved her honor in gaining the dearest point of the San Stefano Treaty, and can extend her commercial enterprise and political influence in the direction of Constantinople, while leaving Austria scope to win the Serbs and Albanians, and continue her slow advance toward the Ægean. The question of the division of the Balkan Peninsula belongs to the remote future. Thus far Russia has only succeeded in vexing Austria in the western Balkans, while on the other side Austro-German combinations, depending on the jealousies of the

youthful states of Roumania and Bulgaria, and upon the personal predilections of their rulers, have no lasting basis. If Austria-Hungary exceeds the provisions of the Berlin Treaty by incorporating Bosnia and Herzegovina, Russia will naturally seek compensation in the quarter where her greatest interests lie. A cessation of the intrigues and rivalries of the two powers in all the petty states of the Balkan Peninsula would conduce to healthier political conditions in those principalities. The meeting of the Emperors in September does not signify the admission of Russia to the AustroGerman military alliance, but, according to the explanation of Tisza in the Hungarian Parliament, assurance of peaceful relations similar to those between Italy and the allied empires.

The Occupied Provinces.-The Turkish provinces, placed under Austro-Hungarian administration by the Treaty of Berlin, have a total area of 61,065 square kilometres. The popula tion of Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to a census taken in 1879, is 1,158,440, comprising 496,761 Greek Catholics, 448,613 Mohammedans, 209,391 Roman Catholics, 3,426 Israelites, 249 of other creeds. The population of the Sandjak of Novi-Bazar is 168,000.

Among the conditions of the friendly understanding between Austria and Russia, which was sealed by the meeting of the three Emperors at Skiernievice, is supposed to have been the withdrawal of Russian objections to the complete annexation of the occupied provinces, in return for which Austria will place no hindrance in the way of the union of Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia. The Imperial Government is probably in no haste to proceed to the incorporation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, not only because of the difficulty as to which of the two monarchies they should be attached, or whether they should be administered as an imperial province, but for fear of provoking the ill will of the Mohammedans and hindering the extension of Austrian influence in the Balkan Peninsula by the reforms that must be carried out in order to insure the well-being and contentment of the rayahs. Under the convention of April, 1879, the Austro-Hungarian Government undertook merely to administer the laws as they stood. The evils that drove the Christian peasantry repeatedly to rebellion and provoked the interference of Europe remain the same. The lot of the rayah is in fact harder than under the pashas. The rents and tithes are collected more rigorously and punctually by the Austrian officials, and to these burdens are added the tobacco monopoly and indirect taxes and the obligatory military service, the introduction of which led to the Herzegovinian insurrection.

The cause of Bosnian troubles has always been agrarian. When the Osmanlis first conquered the country, the land was divided into three parts, one of which was retained by the Sultan; one held as Vakuf, or ecclesiastical property, the revenues of which are to this

day reserved for the service of the mosques; and one apportioned, on a kind of feudal tenure, among the spahis, or Turkish cavalry. The rent was at first one ninth of the products; but after the janizaries, or foot-soldiery, acquired rights in the land, the kmets, or peasants, were gradually reduced to wretched serfdom. The rent was increased to one third, and finally one half, the product of the land, which the peasant had to deliver at his landlord's house. After the great insurrection of 1850 the land laws were modified, through the intervention of the powers. Rent was fixed at one third of all products, except the hay-crop, of which the landlord received one half. If buildings, stock, and tools were furnished by the landlord, he was paid even shares with the tenant. This system is still in force. When first put in practice it was evaded by regulations forbidding the kmet to gather his crops until they had been viewed by the beg, or landlord, even though, as frequently happened, owing to the absence or carelessness of the landlord, they rotted on the ground; requiring him to pay his tretina, or third, as assessed on the standing crop at the inspection, though it might be partly or wholly destroyed before it could be garnered; and making the rents payable in gold, though for lack of communications it was often impossible to market the grain. The new land law provided that Christians could acquire property in land, and that tenants could not be evicted except for cause and by magisterial decree. The enforcement of the new laws by Omer Pasha resulted in a sanguinary outburst of fanaticism and an exodus of Christians into Croatia and Slavonia. This led to the first interposition of Austria, and a new edict of the Porte in 1859, for the protection of the tenantry. By 1875 the conflict had again reached a pitch where the Porte was powerless to enforce the laws. When the Austro-Hungarian Government assumed the administration it promised to have the existing laws judicially tested and impartially executed. The decisions that have been pronounced regarding the landlord's share in the crops, the mode of its appraisement, and the conditions of payment, betray a bias in favor of the landlord rather than in the interest of the rayah. The Austrian officials, mostly young and inexperienced men, associate with the wealthy Mussulman land-owners, but have no unofficial intercourse with the peasantry. The bureaucratic formalism of the authorities bears harder on the people than the easy-going Turkish régime, under which, in bad seasons, they could by bribes and petitions escape part of their taxes and rents, or have the payment deferred. The chasm between the Government and the people is widening. The economic condition of the country has visibly deteriorated, in spite of improved means of communication, the cultivation of new lands, the colonization of German laborers, and other local remedies. The increase of brigandage, and the sympathy of VOL. XXIV.-5 A

the people for the haiduks, or highway robbers, are symptoms of the impoverishment of the peasantry and their alienation from the authorities. Besides the perennial agrarian question and the pressure of the taxes, the Bosnians suspect the Austrians of a design to suppress their nationality, the evidence of which they see in the recruiting law and the propaganda of the Roman Catholic religion. Among their complaints is that of the lack of schools in which their own language is used. The land question, however, transcends all other causes of disaffection. They expected under Christian rule to be free forever from their Mohammedan oppressors, and to become the owners of their lands. Austria has disappointed them, and seems to have assumed the government only with the intention of handing them over again to Turkey, with their fetters more firmly fastened than before they first attracted the intercession of Europe. Hence the agitation in favor of union with Servia. Their Servian brothers, they think, would drive out the begs, and restore to them the heritage of the land. A reform of taxation would afford a partial relief; but the Austrian Government is precluded from any effectual readjustment, since the only property-owning class, the Turkish landlords, is exempt from taxation. When the provinces are definitively annexed there will be an irresistible demand for a radical solution of the land question. The most likely plan is the creation of a peasant proprietary by the expropriation of the landlords and the vakuf by means of a credit operation and the repayment of the purchase-money through a long series of years by the peasants, a method that has been carried out in many states without fiscal loss.

8

Austria.—Austria proper, or Cisleithania, has been governed, since the recognition of Hungarian independence, by a twofold Legislature, a central body, called the Reichsrath, and local assemblies, or Provincial Diets, for the individual provinces. The Reichsrath consists of an upper house, or House of Lords, and a lower house, or House of Deputies. The House of Lords is composed of the princes of the blood royal, 14 in number in 1882; the territorial nobility, numbering 53; the archbishops (10), and bishops of princely rank (7); and lifemembers appointed by the Emperor for distinguished merit and ability, in number 105. The Abgeordnetenhaus, or House of Deputies, consists, under the electoral law of 1873, of 353 members elected by four different constituencies: 1, the people of the rural districts; 2, the people of the towns; 3, the chambers of commerce in the large towns; 4, the large landed proprietors.

The Cabinet. The President of the Council of Ministers is Count Eduard Taafe, Minister of the Interior, appointed Aug. 12, 1879. The minister of National Defense is Major-Gen. Count Z. von Welsersheimb, appointed June 26, 1880. F. Ziemialkoffsky, appointed at the

great influence down to 1879. It fell through its efforts to impose the programme of the Liberal party in Germany upon Austria, to liberalize the social and religious institutions of the country, and Germanize the Czechs and other nationalities. The combination of Czechs, Feudalists, and Clericals, who reversed this policy, have already accomplished more in the direction of decentralization than the Constitutional party did toward imposing the German language and ideas on the Slav peoples by extending the sphere of central authority. Count Taafe, as well as independent politicians, has within a year or two labored to form a middle party that would attract the German elements that can reconcile themselves to accomplished facts, and would enable the Government to resist further tendencies to disintegration.

The War of Languages.-The language question in Bohemia became a more serious matter when it extended from the arena of parliamentary discussion into the field of social life. The success of the Czechs in restoring their national tongue as the language of the courts, of official intercourse, and of instruction, did not settle the question for those parts of Bohemia where there is a preponderant or considerable German element. The German party responded with a proposition to separate from the kingdom the German districts. There followed a social persecution of the Czechs in those districts more grievous than the Germans had suffered in the Czechish districts during the earlier stages of the conflict. In the Reichsrath the Constitutionalists offered a challenge, by presenting Count Wurmbrand's resolution affirming German to be the state language of Cisleithania, which the House of Deputies rejected by 186 votes to 155, after a declaration of the ministry that a statute was unnecessary, since the position of German as the actual language of the state was not assailed. A proposal to refer the language question in Bohemia to a committee composed of members of all the groups, which should codify and harmonize the ordinances in force in the various districts, was broached by the Left and withdrawn when the Czechish party showed a willingness to accept this plan. The Liberals threatened to abstain from legislative work, but changed their mind in order to follow the National Liberals of Germany in the new path of social legislation, offering the normal work-day bill in earnest of their conversion to socialistic principles. The language conflict was transferred to the Bohemian Diet, where the German Liberals fought a losing battle with interpellations and fruitless motions.

Suspension of the Constitution in Vienna.-Austria and Hungary were until recently free from socialistic agitation. For three or four years past refugees from Germany and agents from Switzerland have spread among the industrial population the Anarchist doctrines in a dangerous and revolutionary form. Still, the Governments of the two monarchies felt no inclina

tion to copy the anti-Socialist enactments of Germany. The invitation from Germany and Russia to join in a treaty for the extradition of Socialists and revolutionists was rejected. In 1883 a murder for the sake of robbery was committed by persons who were evidently connected with Anarchist associations. The police began to subject the Socialists to an exasperating surveillance, and to treat them as a quasi-criminal class. Collisions occurred, and finally a policeman, Hlubeck, was murdered. On New-Year's-eve a Jesuit preacher in the Vienna suburb of Favoriten, who had offended the Socialists by defending the rights of property, was stoned from the chancel and the congregation dispersed in a panic. On the 10th of January a money-changer, named Eisert, was robbed and murdered in the suburban Marienhilf-Strasse by a band of Socialist desperadoes. A number of revolting crimes, notably the murder of Count Majlath, chief judge in Hungary, and the series of murders committed by Hugo Schenk, who enticed away several women on promise of marriage and killed them for the sake of their money and valuables, alarmed people at this time with the idea of an epidemic of crime. On the 26th of January, in the suburb of Floridsdorf, the detective Bloch, who had been active in tracking out the murderers of Hlubeck, was assassinated. After this deed the Government felt the necessity of providing against a state of terrorism, though still averse to special anti-Socialist legislation. Count Taafe therefore took advantage of an act, passed May 5, 1869, to meet a state of insurrection. This law empowers the Government to suspend constitutional rights in particular localities. On Jan. 30 a decree of the ministry was issued suspending civil rights in Vienna, Kornenburg, and WienerNeustadt, the judicial districts of the metropolis. The rights suspended are the inviolability of the post, the guarantee against domiciliary visits without warrant, the liberty of association, the right of assembly, and the freedom of the press. Another decree, based on the law of May 23, 1873, suspends trial by jury, enacting that certain crimes shall be tried by a bench of six judges. Both decrees remain in force till Dec. 31, 1884. Count Taafe had difficulty in finding a majority in the House of Deputies to confirm these decrees. The Constitutional party denounced them as a reactionary stroke aimed against the freedom of political and religious opinions, while among the young Czechs and other liberal sections of the majority there was a reluctance to consent to the exercise of dictatorial powers and the employment of repressive measures.

Anarchist Trials. The murderer of Bloch, the detective, was arrested while escaping, and was tried in June. He proved to be a shoemaker, named Stellmacher, a young man of remarkable intelligence and resolution, who was deeply versed in socialistic theories, and had been active in their propagation. Facts were revealed