1 every two years. The President of the House of Representatives is named by the Prince, who reserves to himself the supreme control of both Chambers. In him alone is vested the right of initiating new laws; and it is expressly stipulated that if the budget is not voted by the Chamber, it shall be calculated upon the same scale as that of the previous year, and applied irrespective of the vote. The Ministers sit ex officio in the Chambers, and are not responsible. By the 5th article of the statute, they must be listened to whenever they wish to speak. They merely offer projects of law for discussion, but not for approval or rejection. The electoral system introduced by the Prince is a sort of mixture of every experiment on the suffrages of a population which has ever been tried in France. One result is, that the peasants can vote who pay the capitation tax, which includes nearly them all; while in the towns the qualification is placed so high as to exclude the greater part of the artisans, a class always looked upon by despots as dangerous.* It was not likely that the urban population would have voted in favour of a statute depriving them of the right they had hitherto enjoyed of voting. Yet, that such is the case, is proved by the fact that there is only one-fifth the number of voters in Bucharest now that there were formerly. Perhaps the following order issued to the army had something to do with the docility of the people in the matter of voting: "TO THE ARMY. "Officers, Sub-Officers, Corporals, and Soldiers! "Great events are accomplished. "The Elective Assembly has refused its support to my Government for measures calculated to develop our public liberties and the prosperity of the country. "I have dissolved it. "The whole nation is called upon to declare its will. Your duty is to maintain public order, and to see that the will of the Roumains may be freely exfaithful preservers of order and dispressed. Show yourselves, as always, cipline. "Having restrained so long- thanks to your unshakable fidelity - bad passions, you will now have the honour, not less great, of contributing, by your loyal and energetic attitude, to give the country liberty at last, and to reduce to impotence those who compromise the honour and the dignity of the country. "Officers, Sub-Officers, Corporals, aud Privates! "I have always counted upon you, worthy of my confidence. and you have always shown yourselves To-day, I am sure, you will know how to be equal to the mission which I confide to your patriotism. "ALEXANDER JEAN. "The Minister of War, "GENERAL MANO." an In order to facilitate the above "mission," elaborate decree against the press was issued, forbidding "any bill or pamphlet or squib of any kind to be put in circulation at Bucharest, without the authorisation of the Minister of the Interior, and, in the country, of the prefects of the districts," and entering into the details of a most rigorous press censorship. The extent to which Prince Couza violated the constitution can best be appreciated by a reference to Count Walewski's circular, dated the 20th August 1858, explaining the principles of the convention which had been agreed upon by the Powers as embodying the system of administration in Moldo-Wallachia. "I should," says the French Foreign Minister, "make you imperfectly acquainted with the essential characteristics of the Convention of the 19th of August, if I did not add that the principles of 1789, based upon our civil and public right, were fundamentally repro *A peasant paying 48 piastres (tax) has a vote. The citizens of a town containing from 3000 to 15,000 inhabitants, must pay 80 piastres for the same privilege; and if the town contains more than 15,000 inhabitants, the qualification is 110 piastres. power. In vain have I made concession upon concession to the Assemblies. I have pushed the spirit of conciliation to the extent of tolerating grave en have I gone the length even of spon croachments upon my rights. In vain taneously abandoning certain sovereign prerogatives. All has been useless! duced. An elective assembly vot- pealed successively to every party in ing laws and controlling budgets; responsible ministers; equality before the law, and in the matter of taxation; the enjoyment of political and religious liberty; the liberty of the individual guaranteed; the abolition of class privileges-privileges which have been much abused; the principle of 'permanency' introduced into the magistracy,-these are the principal constitutional measures which have been put in force in the Principalities." It will be seen, from the terms of the decrees upon which the people were compelled to vote, how completely the Prince has up set the constitution as thus described in the French despatch; and, in the face of that document, it is somewhat significant that he has acted throughout under the advice and encouragement he received from Paris. Had he not been sure of support he never would have ventured upon a measure so distasteful both to the Russian and Austrian Governments; and it is worthy of note, that while we stood by and looked on, as we generally do now adays when important political changes are taking place, the Russian Consul-General was the only foreign agent who protested against Prince Couza's proceedings, thereby securing to Russia the gratitude of the boyards and a large section of the population. Meanwhile this prince of adventurers, with an effrontery peculiar to his class, not content with perjuring himself and violating the constitution, issues a proclamation to the nation, beginning "Roumains!" which might have been written to order by Emile Girardin, or some other sensation political scribbler of the Boulevards of Paris. After the arbitrary acts of Couza, it reads almost like a burlesque. No sooner had he turned the Assembly out of doors at the point of the bayonet, than he complains of them thus: "In vain have I given multiplied proofs of my scrupulous respect for parliamentary privileges, and have ap "The union of the sister Principalities accomplished, the monastic endowments-the fifth part of the Roumain soil-restored to the national domain, all these great results accomplished by my Government have been forgotten. "The interests of the country, its dignity, its aspirations, and its urgent ficed to culpable passions. As a renecessities, everything has been sacri ward of his devotion to the national cause, the elect of the Roumains has only received outrage and calumny; and in spite of the wisdom of a certain number of deputies, a factious oligarchy has unceasingly thwarted my efforts for the public good, and reduced my Government to impotence. "What has been left to me to do? I have resolved to try a last appeal to the patriotism of the Assembly. I have wished, as the august signataries of the have wished, as the great principles of equality and of justice of our epoch demand, I wished that every Roumain should truly possess, as the price of his labour, a portion of the soil. treaties which have raised Roumania How has the Assembly. responded to my project of a rural law? You all know. It passed a vote of censure upon the Government. It is a law of equity, upon which are based the hopes of three millions of peasants. It was the idea in the persons of his ministers. of the Chief of the State, represented "Such a situation could not last long. "I wish to make you the judges between the assembly and the elect of the Roumains. With this object I presented to the Assembly a new electoral law, the utility of which is attested by the Convention itself, and which assures the country a more complete and truly national representation. "The Assembly refused to discuss It only remains for me to this law. appeal to the nation, to citizens of every rank and class. "Roumains! you are going to be convoked in your parishes. I submit for your acceptance the new law refused by the Assembly, a project of a statute which will complete the benevolent dispositions of the Convention. Deliberate peaceably and in all liberty. "For you for you alone to decide, if the country should be any longer given up to the sterile agitations which for five years have distracted it, compromised its safety, and prevented all progress. "For you to decide whether the Roumain nation is worthy of the public liberties with which I would endow it, and which a privileged majority has refused. "For you, Roumains, to show to Europe by your wisdom that we merit the high sympathies which are accorded to us. "For you to prove that we are really united to-day as on the 5th and 24th of January, in the face of a situation on which the prosperity, the future, and the grandeur of Roumania depend. "Vive Roumania! "ALEXANDER JEAN, COGALNIT To one accustomed to watch the working of a plebiscite, it will be seen that the modus operandi presents few features of novelty. Some of the proclamations of Couza are almost identical with those I saw posted up in Savoy and Nice when the populations of those provinces were forced by the Italian mayors and syndics to vote against their will in favour of annexation to France. There is the same claptrap about order and freedom, and calm and dignity, with the same sting in the last sentence, reminding the people that if they don't exercise their freewill in the desired direction they will suffer for it. Thus the Minister of the Interior, addressing the population of Bucharest, in a proclamation, winds up thus: "Inhabitants of Bucharest! Place all your confidence in your Prince. To-day he calls you to the exercise of your political rights. To-morrow, thanks to the support of the future Assembly, elected this time by the entire nation, he will give you peace, and moral and material wellbeing. "Children of the Capital of Roumania! Be the first to set the example of tranquillity. For myself, I shall know how to hinder and to punish all those who try to disturb it. "The Minister of the Interior, "COGALNITCHANO." The only ingenuity in the whole performance is, the invention of Roumania, which, it will be ob served, Prince Couza crams down his subjects' throats at every mo ment. the "children," as he properly calls The great moral which them, of Roumania should draw from the coup d'état is, that they are much better off under the mild sway of the Turks than the harsh despotism of a Roumain. If the Chri-tians who, under various categories, try to define their mongrel breed, but are still Turkish subjects, would only take warning by the fate of the Roumains, they would be satisfied with King Log, instead of wishing for some King Stork in the form of a Sclavonic savage, to be their ruler. The proof of it is, that the boyards of the Principalities are, for the first time in their lives, clinging to their connection with Turkey as their only safeguard against the tyranny of Couza, which they fear may lead to internal revolution and then to foreign occupation. If they were cut adrift from Turkey, they would have no one to look to or to protect them; so the wise thing for Turkey to do, is to offer them entire separation at her earliest convenience. There never was a time when the Porte might drive a better bargain, nor would there be any proposal more distasteful to a large part of the aristocracy of these provinces, than a severance of the tie which binds them to the Porte. Of course, there are still the ardent youth who would like first to cut the connection with the Sultan, and then the throat of their prince; but all sensible people look upon the Turkish suzerainty as of their souls, they think that by sheet-anchor, and, in the innocence impressing this fact upon the British public they will gain our sympathies. They are still deluded by their the idea that we have a definite Eastern policy as we had once, and that when the Eastern question opens we shall know what course to take. They imagine we have interests at stake in the East which would induce us to interfere in the destiny of their country; and after having lived upon French flummery and ignored our existence all their lives, they now, when we have determined never more to be of the least use to anybody, appeal to us for help, and think that when they threaten us with a crossing of the Pruth and invasion by the Russian army, we shall make as much fuss as we did last time. There can be no doubt that the absence of any aristocracy of position, character, and prestige in the country rendered the coup d'état of Prince Couza comparatively an easy matter. It is a great mistake to suppose that all the landed property in Wallachia is in the hands of the boyards. Out of a population of two millions and a half, thirty thousand are landed proprietors, of whom only two thousand are boyards; but there are not above thirty families of grand boyards, and of these only nineteen are above thirty years old, so that, practically, the country is without an aristocracy. In Moldavia, the principal families are equally mushroom and interpenetrated with a Fanariote element that does not improve the tone of the political morality of the community. Had the principal authority been made hereditary instead of elective, a great principle of stability would have been imparted to the institutions; but without primogeniture among the socalled aristocracy, you get here, as in most other countries where that institution does not exist, a wretched fainéant class, who are incapable of governing themselves, whose chief object is to prevent anybody else from governing, and who are as incapable of undertaking the responsibilities of constitutional government as of appreciating its advantages. It was hardly to be expected, therefore, that Prince Couza could have governed in a strictly constitutional form; but it is this servile imitation of the vice of the age which rouses one's indignation. There were other ways of carrying out his policy without prostituting the name of freedom by using it as a screen for acts of tyranny, and coupling it with equality to secure the co-operation of those classes which are the most dangerous to liberty. It is this mockery of the noblest and highest principles of government that outrages one's moral sense, till one is tempted to prefer a Russian bear, about whom there is no disguise, to these wolves in sheep's clothing, who bring discredit on constitutional government, and are at this moment gulling all Europe, by flaunting before them flags upon which nationality and equality are inscribed, and under cover of which they perform acts of tyranny and despotism unobserved. Better be a highway murderer than a thief in the night; then, at least, one knows how to meet the danger: but as for these midnight assassins that strangle a nation's liberties in the dark, real honest freedom cries aloud at the insidious danger, and the era of responsible government seems farther off than ever; for it has been betrayed and discredited by those who openly professed to respect and admire it, but who have secretly hated and feared it, and have made use of large standing armies to destroy it. As for Prince Couza pretending that his coup d'état had anything to do with the rural law, he announced his intention of a coup d'état for the 2d of Dember, and it did not take place till the first week of May, when the rural law was proposed; moreover, the fact of the Chambers: passing a vote of censure upon a project which he had initiated, was, of course, no excuse for the violent dissolution of the legislative bodies. But the master-stoke of Couza's policy was his visit to Constantino ple. Anybody with a large enough army can make a coup d'état, but it needs a dash of genius to beard the lion in his den, and come out all covered with diamonds. No sooner did the news of the coup d'état reach Constantinople, than a conference met there, and decided, in a protocol, "1st, That several stipulations of the protocol of the Paris Conference of July 30, 1858, have not been carried into execution. "2d, That by a number of successively-issued decrees, the Moldo-Wallachian Government has decided in its own favour several of those matters, the solution of which was reserved to the guaranteeing Powers, and respecting which they have decided in an Act (the Paris Convention) in binding the aforesaid Government. "3d, That the Conference regards those decrees, which, in consequence of their unauthorized character, cannot have the slightest importance in its eyes, as not binding, and considers itself called upon most emphatically to condemn the manner in which the Moldo- Wallachian Government has permitted itself to outstep the sphere of its operations, and to interfere in affairs whose settlement it is not empowered to undertake." In the teeth of this strong condemnation of his conduct, Prince Couza starts straight for Constantinople to meet his accusers face to face, and not merely to account for his conduct, but to win them over to his side. Nothing exasperated his subjects more than this bold step, by which he conciliated the very Power they trusted to to redress their grievances. No sooner oes the outraged boyard appeal to the Porte for protection, than he finds he has been forestalled by his Highness, who has taken the bull by the horns, and pleaded his own cause with such effect, that he has cut away the last piece of standingground from under the feet of the opposition, and left no other alternative to them but a revolution. "Well," laughs the Prince triumphantly to his discomfitted boyards on his return, "I went to Constantinople to put my head into the Sultan's hands, and the Sultan has put your heads into my hands." Payer d'audace is a motto which Prince Couza has found to answer admirably; but, added to the impudence of the chevalier d'industrie, he combines the plausibility without which his character as 3 member of the fraternity would be imperfect. Having heard much of the irresistible fascination of his manner, I confess I was extremely disappointed with it, and astonished that anybody could be taken in by an eye and a mouth which betrayed to the most superficial physiognomist the more prominent features of his character. No one with the most slender experience of Leicester Square, or a slight knowledge of the places of public amusement in the Barrières of Paris, would be deceived for a moment by his Highness. But the Sultan, who has not probably seen a billiard-marker in his life, and does not know the difference between one description of gentleman and another, has been completely gulled by this crafty adventurer, who has not only obtained at Constantinople the condonation from his suzerain of his recent flagrant breaches of the constitution, but was invested with the first class of the order of the Osmanleh in diamonds. Everybody whom he meets he wins. The very priests whom he has despoiled become his friends and admirers, not because, like Mr. Gladstone, he kisses their hands, but because he has felt their pockets; and, finally, he obtains the qualified sanction of the ambassadors of all the protecting Powers to his infraction of that constitution they themselves made him swear to respect. It is true that the Conference at |