Budget for the present year

The simplest and shortest way of answering these questions will be, I think, to take the ordinary Budget for the present year and to explain its salient features. The financial statement, which was issued early this year, and which will be submitted to the Sobranje at the commencement of the approaching session, has at all events the merit of being short and simple. Converted into English pounds sterling, and leaving out fractions of pounds, the figures of the Budget for 1894 stand as follows:—

The Budget, therefore, shows a nominal deficit of £47,978. As, however, the receipts are believed to have been calculated, as usual, below their real yield, the probabilities are that this year, as heretofore, the final Budget will show a surplus.

The receipts, which I have given under their general headings as stated in the Budget, are composed of the following items:

Licenses for the sale of tobacco

The Direct Taxes consist of the land-tax, that is, of a tenth of the gross value of the produce of any farm, calculated on the average yield of the four preceding years; the taxes levied on goats, sheep, and pigs, the duty being tenpence a head on the first named and sixpence a head on the two latter; the licenses for the sale of tobacco, spirits, and sundry other small articles. What proportion these different taxes bear respectively to the total of close upon a million and three-quarters derived from direct taxes, that is, to some seven-sixteenths of the whole revenue, is not stated in the Budget But I gather that the land-tax constitutes the main item of this source of revenue.

The Indirect Taxes consist of the import and export duties levied at the frontier, and of the excise duties upon raw tobacco grown in the country, upon the manufacture of beer and spirits, and upon the production of native salt

The Imposts are made up of fees charged for registration, for succession duties, for legal certificates, for passports, and for licenses to shoot fish and carry arms.

The Parliament

The Sobranje was not in session during my sojourn in Sofia. As a rule it meets in October and adjourns before Christmas. I cannot, therefore, speak of its sittings from personal observation. The Chamber is a fine building, looking like an opera-house, and is of the usual Sofiote brick-and-stucco order. It stands on the outskirts of the town, at the head of the Constantinople Road, and seemed to me, when I visited it, well constructed for the purpose of a Legislative Chamber. Over its portals is inscribed in Bulgarian the national motto of Belgium, Uunion fait la force, by which, I presume, the union between Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia is commemorated. The procedure employed in the Assembly is modelled upon that of the Belgian Chambers.

Chamber is open to the public

The Ministers need not be members of the Sobranje, though they generally are so in fact; but by virtue of their offices they have a right, whether they are members or not, to take part in the debates, though they can only vote on a division, in the case of their being deputies. Votes are given by ballot, and the Chamber is open to the public. In the early days the majority of the deputies were peasant farmers by occupation as well as by birth; but gradually the representation of the constituencies has passed into the hands of the trading and professional classes, and only some ten per cent, of the members are at present peasants living solely upon the farming of their own lands.

This change, however, signifies far less in Bulgaria than it would elsewhere. The traders, lawyers, doctors, and journalists, who compose the great majority of the Sobranje, are, with rare exceptions, sons of peasants interested indirectly, if not directly, in the land, and belonging by birth, education, and character to the same category as their constituents. Officers in active service and priests are not allowed to sit as deputies.

Each successive Ministry

If the Ministry were to abstain from all interference with the elections, the machinery of administration would infallibly fall out of gear. Until the electorate learn to care about choosing their own representatives, the choice has got to be made for them. In as far as I could observe, the fact that each successive Ministry has more or less manipulated the elections is not resented as a grievance by the mass of the population. This system of governmental intervention opens the way, of course, to many abuses; but for the present the evils of non-intervention would, in the opinion of thinking Bulgarians, exceed the evils of intervention; and in politics, after all, everything is only a choice of evils.

Average sentiment of the nation

Moreover, when all is said and done, the Sobranje, however elected, represents fairly enough the average sentiment of the nation. Given the conditions which I have tried to explain, the Ministers, whoever they may be, are bound, whether they like it or not, to govern in accordance with the sentiments of their fellow-citizens ; and, this being so, a more or less nominated assembly represents the country quite as fairly as any other. As things are it would be very difficult to find candidates for the Sobranje who were prepared to support a policy opposed to the deliberate convictions or prejudices of the country.

Even if such candidates were forthcoming, it would not be easy to secure their return. So long as the sovereign and the Ministers have in the last resort no practical means of coercing the deliberate will of the nation, that will must dictate the general policy of the Government For the present the existing system of administration seems to me to provide as large an amount of self-government as is called for by the actual requirements of the Peasant State.

Of course, with the increase of wealth and the spread of education these requirements will become greater, and the elections will have to be conducted with stricter regard to the ethics of popular representation. But no Parliament, however elected, could be more truly representative of the Bulgarian people—using the word representation in its real, not nominal sense—than the Sobranje is to-day.

Favour or disfavour of the Government

This danger is obviated by the fact that the elections are not left to take care of themselves. To illustrate my meaning let me cite one case out of a score of similar cases reported to me. My informant in this particular instance was an old English resident, who had passed most of a long life in the country, and who, though very friendly to the new order of things, is in a position that renders him absolutely indifferent to the favour or disfavour of the Government. This gentleman assured me that not very long ago, on the occasion of the election in his town of a representative to the Sobranje, he took the trouble of counting the number of electors who presented themselves at the polling booth.

According to his observation, some 200 electors out of a total of 10,000 recorded their votes. On the poll being declared, it was announced that the numbers for the Ministerial and oppo-sition candidate were respectively 3500 and 3000. On commenting afterwards on this discrepancy to the return-ing officer, who was a personal friend of his own, he re-marked that he himself had only seen 200 electors present themselves at the poll.

Admitted that on various occasions

The answer, given in perfect good faith, was to this effect: “ You surely must be mistaken in your counting, for there were really 500 genuine votes recorded.” In like fashion it seems to be admitted that on various occasions, when opposition candidates have been returned by small votes, the elections have been annulled on one pretence or another by the order of the administration, and fresh elections have been held, at which care was taken to avoid the recurrence of a similar mishap. I believe that practices of this kind have been common under every Bulgarian administration.

Great allowance must fairly be made for this mode of working the elections. After centuries of subjection Bulgaria was suddenly provided with Parliamentary institutions, adapted only to States whose people had been trained for generations in the practice of self-government.

Bulgarian Parliament

All experience shows that, when a representative body is possessgd of the power of making its will supreme, it soon learns how that power can best be exercised. There are already signs that the Bulgarian Parliament is becoming more of a substantive reality. On one or two occasions a Minister has had to resign, not because he lost the confidence of the sovereign, but because he failed to command the approval of the National Assembly. The electors are beginning to realize that by returning to the Sobranje representatives pledged to support their own interests, they can secure these interests being duly protected.

Really formidable opposition

The Government no longer find it as easy as it used to be to regulate the result of the polls, and I was assured by the political opponents of the then existing Ministry that, at the next election, the dissatisfaction of the peasants with the increasing burden of the taxes on agriculture would manifest itself in the return of a really formidable opposition. I am not at all certain how far this is true ; but the mere fact that such an assertion should be made with confidence, shows that Parliamentary institutions are gradually becoming a real factor in the public life of Bulgaria. I should say that at present the Sobranje has very little initiative in the administration of public affairs.

At the same time, it constitutes a formidable barrier against any permanent arbitrary action on the part of the Sovereign or the Ministers, provided always that that action is one to which popular opinion is distinctly hostile. The Sobranje also exercises a limited, though increasing, influence on the course of legislation. Thus, whatever may be the defects of the Bulgarian Government, it*has the practical advantage that the policy of the administration must necessarily be in harmony with the will of the nation upon all points—and as yet these points are not many in number—concerning which the nation has a distinct will of its own.