AUSTRIA-HUNGARY. 



65 



day reserved for the service of the mosques; 

 and one apportioned, on a kind of feudal ten- 

 ure, among the spahis, or Turkish cavalry. 

 The rent was at first one ninth of the products ; 

 but after the janizaries, or foot-soldiery, ac- 

 quired rights in the land, the Icmets, or peas- 

 ants, were gradually reduced to wretched serf- 

 dom. The rent was increased to one third, 

 and finally one half, the product of the land, 

 which the peasant had to deliver at his land- 

 lord'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 regula- 

 tions forbidding the Jcmet to gather his crops 

 until they had been viewed by the l)eg, or land- 

 lord, even though, as frequently happened, ow- 

 ing to the absence or carelessness of the land- 

 lord, 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 pay- 

 able 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 ten- 

 ants could not be evicted except for cause and 

 by magisterial decree. The enforcement ot 

 the new laws by Omer Pasha resulted in a 

 sanguinary outburst of fanaticism and an exo- 

 dus 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 con- 

 flict 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 re- 

 garding 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 inexperi- 

 enced men, associate with the wealthy Mussul- 

 man land-owners, but have no unofficial inter- 

 course with the peasantry. The bureaucratic 

 formalism of the authorities bears harder on 

 the people than the easy-going Turkish regime, 

 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 cul- 

 tivation of new lands, the colonization of Ger- 

 man laborers, and other local remedies. The 

 increase of brigandage, and the sympathy of 

 TOL. XXIT. 5 A 



the people for the Jiaiduto, or highway robbers, 

 are symptoms of the impoverishment of the 

 peasantry and their alienation from the authori- 

 ties. 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 Chris- 

 tian rule to be free forever from their Moham- 

 medan 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 firm- 

 ly 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 

 fiegs, 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 radi- 

 cal solution of the land question. The most 

 likely plan is the creation of a peasant pro- 

 prietary 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. 



Austria. Austria proper, or Cisleithania, has 

 been governed, since the recognition of Hun- 

 garian independence, by a twofold Legislature, 

 a central body, called the Reichsrath, and local 

 assemblies, or Provincial Diets, for the indi- 

 vidual 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 life- 

 members appointed by the Emperor for distin- 

 guished merit and ability, in number 105. The 

 Abgeordnetenhaus, or House of Deputies, con- 

 sists, under the electoral law of 1873, of 353 

 members elected by four different constituen- 

 cies: 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 



