696 



ROUMANIA. 



The values of the principal classes of imports 

 and exports were as follow : 



The number of vessels entered at Danubian 

 ports in 1880 was 19,875, of 2,969,848 tons; 

 number cleared, 18,564 tonnage, 3,174,131. 



Communications. Railroads have contributed 

 greatly to the development of Roumanian com- 

 merce and industry. The first line was built 

 in 1869, to connect Bucharest with the Dan- 

 ube at Giurgevo. On July 1, 1882, there 

 were 914 miles completed and 568 miles in the 

 course of construction. Nearly the entire net- 

 work was constructed by the state. The cost; 

 was 376,450,000 lei ; gross receipts in 1881, 

 22,800,745 lei; expenses, 16,854,441 lei. 



The length of telegraph lines in 1882 was 

 4,622 kilometres; length of wires, 9,640 kilo- 

 metres; messages sent in 1882, 1,213,903; re- 

 ceipts, 4,076,921 lei; expenses, 3,659,549 lei. 



The post-office forwarded 15,432,128 letters, 

 newspapers, and packets, in 1882. 



The Army. By the law of 1868, last modified 

 by the act of June 8, 1882, the military forces 

 are composed of the permanent army and its 

 reserve and the territorial army and its re- 

 serve, constituting the active army, the militia, 

 and the civic guard in the urban, and the levy 

 in mass for the rural communes. All Rou- 

 manians are obliged to serve three years in the 

 active and five in the reserve permanent army, 

 or the same period in the territorial army ; or, 

 if legally exempt, are enrolled in the militia, 

 together with those who have completed their 

 term of service, until they have passed the 

 thirty-sixth year of their age, from which time 

 of life they are inscribed for ten more years in 

 the civic guard, or levee en masse. The effective 

 of the permanent army in time of peace is 19,- 

 812 officers and men, with 2,945 horses and 

 180 pieces of artillery. The strength of the 

 territorial army is about 100,000 men, with 

 90 cannon. There is a naval force of four 

 dispatch - boats, three gunboats, a torpedo - 

 boat, and eight launches for the Danube po- 

 lice. 



Finances. The capitation-tax of nine lei, or 

 francs, with a higher rate for merchants, was 

 reduced to three francs per head of the peasant 

 population on the 1st of January, 1882. The 

 state derives the chief part of its revenue from 

 this source, from its valuable domains and 

 salt-mines, and from tobacco and salt monopo- 

 lies. 



The budget for 1882-'83 states the revenues 

 as follow : 



RECEIPTS. Lei. 



Direct taxes 25,190,000 



Indirect taxes 51,836,000 



Domains 18,481,600 



Ministries 17,282,522 



Miscellaneous 7,817,922 



Tithe of direct taxes for collection 2,519.000 



Total revenue 122,627,044 



The following were the main heads of the 

 budget of expenditures : 



EXPENDITURES. L el 



Public debt 45,45s',481 



War Ministry 26,404,838 



Ministry of Finance 13,755.997 



Ministry of the Interior 9,705.959 



Worship and Instruction 11.831,890 



Public Works 8,705,959 



Ministry of Justice 4,276,496 



Foreign Affairs 1,550,001 



Council of Ministers 63 560 



Reserve fund 1,874,660 



Total 122,627,044 



The public debt has been contracted since 

 1864. Two thirds of the borrowed sums have 

 been employed in the construction of railways. 

 A sinking fund exists for the redemption of all 

 loans between 1888 and 1968. The principal 

 loans bear interest at 5 and 6 per cent. The 

 nominal amount of the debt, April 1,1883, was 

 593,191,006 lei. About one third was held in 

 the country, and the rest mainly in Germany. 



The Danube Question. The form in which the 

 jurisdiction of the Danubian Commission was 

 prolonged was an infringement on the inde- 

 pendence of Roumania. In the Berlin Treaty, 

 as well as in the previous ones, the principle 

 of the equal rights of all the sovereign riverain 

 states was not denied. International law fur- 

 thermore universally intrusts to the immediate 

 riparian states the administration of regulations 

 for international rivers. Yet at the London 

 conference which, in February, extended the 

 powers of the commission for the minimum 

 term of eighteen years, and extended its juris- 

 diction to Galatz, Roumania was offered only 

 a deliberative voice, while Austria was by a 

 fiction granted the privileges of a riverain 

 state for a stretch of 1,221 kilometres where 

 it is none. This result, compromising the 

 rights of Roumania and humiliating to na- 

 tional feeling, she has striven for years to 

 prevent. When it was finally accomplished, 

 the anti- German feeling in Roumania rose 

 to a dangerous pitch. Gen. Brialraont, the 

 distinguished Belgian engineer officer, was 

 summoned to Roumania to plan a system of 

 fortifications for the frontier and the capital. 

 Senator Gradisteano, on the occasion of the un- 

 veiling of a monument of Stephen the Great at 

 Jassy, uttered belligerent threats against Aus- 

 tria. The difficulties of this young and striving 

 nation, situated within the circle of the East- 

 ern maelstrom, and in danger of being swept 

 away by one or the other of the mighty pow- 

 ers on either side, suggests in critical emer- 

 gencies desperate action, to which the hot 

 and eager temperament of the Roumanian peo- 

 ple is prone. Obliged to maintain an army 

 in a constant state of preparation for war, 





