Servia adopted a new constitution in 1869, and is now a constitutional, hereditary monarchy. The person of the prince is inviolable, but his ministers are not let off so easily. There are two kinds of legislatures, or _skaupchinas_, the ordinary and the extraordinary; the former meeting once a year, and the latter summoned under extraordinary circumstances. The members are elected by the people, and the constitution guarantees equality before the law, civil and religious liberty, freedom of the press, and the abolition of confiscation. The religion is princi{ 076}pally Greek orthodoxy. Roman Catholics abound, but are not numerous, and there are a few Jews--less than two thousand--who are compelled to live in Belgrade, as the law will not permit them to dwell in the interior. Here is religious liberty with a vengeance! There are a few Mohammedans, but the number is steadily diminishing. Belgrade, at the time of my visit, contained twelve Mohammedans and nineteen mosques, some of the latter in ruins and the rest getting that way--a great deal of bread to a little sack! Giving each mosque a single worshipper there would still be seven mosques like the little lions in the boy’s picture of the prophet Daniel--they wouldn’t get any!
The army contains about five thousand regulars and one hundred thousand militia. The finances are in excellent condition; there is no public debt, and the taxes, light in comparison with those of some European countries, generally bring a revenue in excess of the disbursements. Three cheers for Servia. Hip, hip, hooray!!
All this time I have kept you standing waiting in the Topchidere
Park, while I have been droning along about Servia and her government, for which you don’t care any more than a cat does for existence. Well, let us get out of the park and return to the city, where we will dine comfortably and drink the wine of the country, and the less said about it the better. Wine culture in Servia is in its infancy, and there is no occasion to go into ecstacies about the native products.
While we are at dinner a gentleman tells us of the old style of executions and their contrast with the present. When the Turks ruled here, a man sentenced to execution was thrown down a bank about ten feet high, upon half a dozen spikes that stood upright. If one of the spikes entered a vital part and killed him instantly, or in a few minutes, his friends had reason to thank fortune. Sometimes a victim would be caught in the fleshy part of the arm or leg, and in this case he might be days in dying. No food nor drink could be given to him, but he must lie there and perish of hunger and thirst and the inflammation of the wound caused by the pitiless iron. My informant said that less than ten years ago a victim of the law lay thus for five days before death came to his relief, and for the first forty-eight hours his { 077}screams were so loud that they could be heard, especially in the stillness of the night, half over the city of Belgrade.