ROUMANIA. 



721 



Rosetti, President of the Court of Cassation 

 and a member of the Senate, was invited to 

 form a Cabinet, which was constituted on 

 April 2 as follows: President of the Council 

 and Minister of the Interior, T. Rosetti; Min- 

 ister of Foreign Affairs, P. P. Carp, formerly 

 Minister Plenipotentiary to Vienna ; Minister 

 of Education and Provisional Minister of Com- 

 merce, J. Majoresco; Minister of Justice. A. 

 Marghiloman; Minister of Finance, M. Gher- 

 mani; Minister of Public Works, Prince A. B. 

 Stirbey ; Minister of War, Gen. C. Barossi, 

 Adjutant-General of the King. Prince Stirbey 

 and Ghermani belong to the Old Conservative 

 party. The first act of the new ministry was 

 to release the imprisoned deputies and journal- 

 ists. The majority promised to vote the budg- 

 et and observe an expectant attitude if the 

 new elections were postponed till the autumn, 

 whereas the minority demanded that they 

 should take place soon. The ministry promised 

 to hold the elections as soon as the agitated 

 state of public feeling subsided, and on April 

 15 the regular session was closed. 



Peasant Insurrection. Just before the closing 

 of Parliament the new Cabinet had to deal 

 with an outbreak of agrarian discontent which 

 began in the sub-prefecture of Urticeni in the 

 Jalornitza district, and spread into the neigh- 

 boring districts of Prahova and Hoof. In the 

 sub-prefecture of Panteleimon in the Hoof dis- 

 trict, which reaches to the city-bounds of 

 Bucharest, the entire peasantry rose against 

 the local authorities, the landlords, and the 

 tenant farmers, and stoned the military that 

 were sent out to restore order, but commanded 

 nt to use their weapons. In the village of 

 Stefanesci, near the capital, the mayor was 

 shot by the insurgents. In many places they 

 attacked unpopular estate stewards and extor- 

 tionate farmers, and in others the local officials, 

 whom they accused of keeping back the money 

 that the Government had given to relieve their 

 distress. The occurrence of disturbances in 

 various other sections of the country showed 

 that agencies had been at work to foment 

 trouble, and the fact that hawkers of Russian 

 pictures of saints and of the Czar had told the 

 peasants of many villages to demand land of 

 the Government, and said that if it were re- 

 fused Russian troops would come to their aid, 

 as well as the story of large sums left for each 

 village by the Russians, which was spread 

 among the gypsy communes of Shindrelita, in- 

 dicated the source of the agitation. Premier 

 Rosetti declared in the Chamber that the in- 

 stigators of the disturbance were not Rouma- 

 nians. The Government adopted severe meas- 

 ures to put down the disturbances. Bands of 

 peasants who were marching to Bucharest to 

 present their grievances to the Government 

 were fired into by detachments of soldiers, and 

 many were shot. The territorial militia was 

 first called out, but it showed open sympathy 

 with the rioters, and was replaced by regular 

 soldiery. The important iown of Kalarasch 

 VOL. xxvni. 16 A 



was on April 17 entirely in the power of the 

 insurgents, until a detachment of troops ar- 

 rived, and in the encounter that took place 

 killed a large number of peasants. At Perish, 

 north of Bucharest, the insurgents attacked 

 the railroad station. At Budescht the troops 

 killed or wounded more than 100 peasants. 



The troubles had their root in the same con- 

 ditions that have caused uprisings in the Rus- 

 sian peasantry. When serfdom was abolished 

 there were 72,108 peasants possessing two 

 yoke of oxen, to whom were alloted 11 pogon, 

 or 13J acres, each; 199,791 who had a single 

 team, and received 7 pogon, or 8f acres; and 

 l:j4. ( .'9o without draught-animals, whose share 

 was 4 pogon, or 5 acres, for each family. The 

 right to pasturage and wood, which they had 

 enjoyed as serfs, was taken away from them, 

 and the land that was assigned to them was 

 usually selected by the land-owner from the 

 poorest or the most inaccessible part of his 

 estate. The peasants, who were made to pay 

 in installments the price of good land, often 

 found their allotments measured out in worth- 

 less bogs or rocky hills. The boyars have al- 

 ways lived away from their estates as a ride, 

 the smaller landlords entering the professions 

 or the Government service. Since the eman- 

 cipation of the serfs they have been accustomed 

 to lease their estates, usually for three or five 

 years, to speculative farmers, Jews, Greeks, 

 and Bulgarians, whose rent depends not so 

 much on the extent or quality of the land as 

 on the number of peasants living on the prop- 

 erty. The peasants are kept in a condition of 

 practical serfdom by these tenant farmers, who 

 exact so many days' labor for fuel and fodder 

 that the peasants are compelled to purchase on 

 the farmers' terms. Advances of money the 

 peasants likewise contract to repay in work. 

 The peasants are forbidden by law to alienate 

 their allotments, and are thus prevented from 

 acquiring one from another enough land to 

 make them independent of the land-owners and 

 farmers. The boyars will not sell land to 

 peasants on any terms, although a considerable 

 part of their estates must remain idle for want 

 of labor to cultivate it. The peasants' allot- 

 ments, originally much too small because the 

 villages possess no common pastures, have 

 been divided by inheritance. In the gypsy 

 villages there are large numbers of cottiers 

 who have no land. The peasants often rent 

 land, usually the poorest that there is, from the 

 farmers or landlords, paying a third of the prod- 

 uce crop and in addition agreeing to work 

 for their landlords, who often exact so much 

 labor that the peasants are unable to attend to 

 their own crops. A deficient maize and fodder 

 crop in 1887 was followed by a severe winter. 

 The peasants were compelled to sell the cattle 

 that they could not feed, and were in conse- 

 quence reduced to extreme misery. The Gov- 

 ernment took measures to relieve distress, but 

 the aid did not reach the sufferers soon enough, 

 and was altogether insufficient. The insurrec- 



