payment of the tribute if we can obtain a guarantee that we shall be no longer treated as a Turkish pashalick, and that the Porte will keep her faith as we keep ours. But Turkey wants money, and we have it to give her. It is the opinion of all our best men that it would be safer and wiser to purchase the quit-rent we pay to Turkey for our country, say at fifteen or twenty years' value.

"We should then become our own masters, and it is the general belief among us that we should be better governed by a foreign ruler. Call him duke, prince, or hospodar, as you will. Yet we have not cast our eyes on any particular prince; and it is possible, that if the supreme power were only made hereditary in any one of our four or five principal families, the government would work well after the first pangs of jealousy were over. Our young men are all for a republic and a presidency, with other utopian schemes, for which we are by no means far enough advanced. This has injured us; most of our youth were also compromised in the affair of 1848, and their elevation would be strenuously opposed by Russia and Austria. Our elders are objectionable from very different reasons; few, perhaps none, have escaped the taint which attached to all our politicians of the last generation. The antecedents of no family or man among us are completely satisfactory.

"Our curse has been the instability of our government. There was always a possibility of overturning the reigning prince, by intrigues at Constantinople, St. Petersburg, or Vienna. There were always plenty of aspirants to power who desired to effect this. Hence the immense influence of the Russian consul, who was always ready to offer the aid of the Czar to that party which promised most; hence the base system of bribery and corruption, the intrigues and cabals at Stamboul; hence the fierce jealousies among our principal families. No plain-dealing man could thrive in the country; to be honest was to remain obscure. We have few public amusements, no clubs, no press, no literature, little education, and no political life worthy of the name; we have been driven to trifling, gambling, and intrigue; when infamy seemed the only road to honour, there were enough to take it. We have seen a father receive a Russian

decoration for his daughter's shame; rewards given for treason at the hearth to spies on their own kindred; I have heard men of no mean position among us, boast of knavery which should have sent them to the galleys; you will meet in the stateliest of our houses, men known to have committed burglaries, to have cheated at cards, spies, and ravishers of pure women. Russia tried hard to degrade us as a people; it is sharp to own that she succeeded, but it is true.

"And so the honesty and intellect of our land cries aloud to you to save us. We love the French: most of our youth have been educated in Paris; their minds have been formed by the great French authors, and they have been taught to think by her statesmen and publicists; we love them for the brilliancy of their national character, for their light wit and graceful bearing, for their sparkling philosophy, for their chivalry and valour. But we do not look with more confidence than the rest of the world, on the stability of their government; we cannot rely on them. France is fond of changing her political agents, and has often disavowed them when they promised us fairly; therefore, all that is thoughtful and masculine in the land turns to great England, and our statesmen and public men hope in you only.

"Do with us as you will, we shall be contented. We shall have no jealousy of a prince you may choose for us. We submit ourselves blindly to your guidance; for we have long learned to respect and admire your good faith, and your unvarying honesty. We have read of the simple and manly eloquence of your Commons, till it has stirred our hearts like the call of a trumpet with a silver sound, and its echo will never die away from There are great among us. men in England whom we toast at our banquets, and honour in our homes; who utter no public word we do not register. May they take compassion upon us, for our burthen is sore. As yet, the worst abuses of our worst governments are suffered to go on. There is a party, a small one now, it is the Russian party, who are interested in supporting them : who still look to St. Petersburg to renew their license to pillage, and our shame; but the rest of us are listening with parched ears for only one word from you to bid us hope.

If it is spoken, our national troubles will clear away like the mists of the morning."

So spoke the Boyard, as we scudded in our little carriage up and down the chaussée, bowing to the fair ladies who drove there in crowds to show their luxury and beauty, and watching the Austrian officers as they rode about in Coventry, no man speaking to them, or mixing with them.

CHAPTER XXX.

The author expresses a singular opinion. Convenient course recommended to the reader. Remarkable instance of national modesty. The author distressingly refers to the weary treaty of Balta Liman and "1848." Agreeable prospect held out to the aristocracy, and becoming contempt for the people. Startling proposal for the abolition of monopolies. Life peerages, and other combustible matters. Raging of the Reform fever, and necessity for quarantine on vessels from Galatz. Disposition of Wallachians to flare up and join the union. Good reasons for raising the value of house property at Bucarest expressed by the inhabitants of that capital. They propose to purchase an allied army, and believe that Russia is passing through a valuable course of study. Their reprehensible project for curtailing a superfluous vice-royalty. Their present violent pacification and wrathful hopes.

THE best way to find out what is really best to be done, in most cases, is to ascertain what the persons chiefly interested appear to want, and then to form our opinions on their own statement of their case, corrected by all we can gather likewise from unprejudiced people.

I will endeavour to sum up, therefore, the questions relating to the Danubian Principalities in as short a chapter as possible, and the reader who does not consider himself interested, or who is disinclined to sit in judgment on these matters, may at once turn to the next. The Boyards, who represent all the education and intelligence of these countries, desire, in a word, a constitution and a foreign prince. They wish to purchase their independence of Turkey, by paying fifteen or twenty years of the tribute at once. They say that Wallachia and Moldavia, joined together under

one government, would make a respectable European state, with a population of four millions.

They desire that the supreme power should be made hereditary. They object to the principle of electing the sovereign, as disturbing men's minds, and wasting the public money. They assert that they shall never be able to agree on the choice of a native prince; that the nomination of one would only excite dangerous jealousy; and that there is no one among them fit, by his education or antecedents, for supreme power, or who would be able to secure the loyalty, or curb the license of the aristocracy, or be free from foreign influence and dishonest followers.

A prince of one of the smaller powers, Belgium or Portugal, would appear to suit them best, as least likely to arouse the jealousy of the great powers, and most free from political bias towards Russia or Austria. They do not require a prince of their own religion, but suggest that his children should be brought up in that faith, lest Russia should, hereafter, endeavour to work on the religious feelings of the people, as she has hitherto done. They require a representative system, as most in accordance with the ancient traditions of the country; for it was not till after the treaty of Balta Liman, that their general assemblies were suppressed, and they preserved a constitution which had many elements of freedom, till the luckless year of 1848, when the rash torrent which destroyed so much liberty elsewhere, swept also over theirs.

They propose to limit the right of voting to the higher classes, as the only persons yet sufficiently educated to exercise it; all public schools having been abolished since 1848, and the ignorance of the people being as yet deplorable.

They desire the abolition of slavery, and the establishment of perfect equality before the law. Equal taxation; the abolition of vexatious privileges and monopolies; the eligibility of all classes to all posts in the public service; life peerages, conferring a seat in the chamber, as a means of raising the importance of the nobility, who would now be the only class capable of checking any undue assumption of power on the part of the prince. They desire a sweeping reform in all branches of the administration, and that ability

or service rendered to the state, shall be the only claim for office; a responsible ministry; a chamber of which twothirds shall be composed in equal parts of nobles and landholders, and the remaining third of meritorious men, of whom no property qualification shall be required, but who shall not, nevertheless, be paid by the state; finally, that all persons shall be eligible to vote at the age of twenty-five, and to be elected at thirty.

Respecting the union of Wallachia and Moldavia, they assert that it is the ardent desire of all parties to see those two countries united. In 1817, when the Customs union was proposed, it was carried without a dissentient voice, although it was disadvantageous, on the one hand, to the distillers of Wallachia, and to the trade in cattle of Moldavia. Every man was prepared to sacrifice a private interest for the public good.

Bucarest is proposed as the capital of the new state, because it is the most popular and flourishing town. It has also the advantage of being removed at a safe distance alike from the frontiers of Austria, Russia, and Turkey, an advantage not possessed by Yassy, Galatz, or Ibraila, which have been put in competition with it.

They consider that their safety would be assured by the establishment of a fortress at the mouths of the Danube, which should be garrisoned by British and French troops till they could organize a military force of their own; for this they would agree to pay, and then, as they differ both in manners and sympathy from Russia, they would oppose a formidable barrier to her encroachment, should she ever be disposed to forget the lesson she is now receiving. Lastly, there would be an immense saving of expense in the establishment of a single government for the two states. Meanwhile, as things now are, the Moldo-Wallachians will remain quiet just so long as they are coerced by foreign bayonets, and no longer. And this is briefly what the Boyards say.