ich may be regarded as the Servian constitution) is
vested in local courts in each province, consisting of a president and
three members, from which an appeal lies to the supreme courts of
Belgrade and Posharevatz; but reference is always made in the first
instance, in minor cases, to the _Courts of Peace_ (as they are called,)
consisting of the village magnates, with whose patriarchal arbitration
the litigants are usually satisfied, law and lawyers not being held in
high estimation. "The courts of law have something of the promptitude of
Oriental justice, without its flagrant venality;" but the salaries of
the judges are small, that of the president of the appeal court at
Belgrade not exceeding L300 a-year. But it is the financial department
that presents the most striking contrast to other European states, in
the unheard-of phenomenon of a national debt due not _from_ but _to_ the
government; the revenue so much exceeding the expenditure, that a sum of
a hundred thousand ducats has been lent to the people at six per cent,
and forms an item on the credit side of the budget! The total annual
outlay, according to the financial returns, including the tribute to the
Porte and the civil list of the Prince, (the latter equivalent to about
L20,000 English,) is 830,000 dollars; while the income reaches 887,000,
principally derived from the _poresa_, or capitation-tax paid by heads
of families, a separate tax being levied on bachelors. Such is at
present the flourishing state of the principality of Servia, "the
youngest member of the European family," the views of Russia on which,
somewhat prematurely developed by the famous "Servian question," will be
more clearly understood by a preliminary sketch of its previous history.

The political existence of modern Servia may be considered to date from
1804, in February of which year a general rising took place of the
Christian population against the Moslems, provoked by the massacres and
atrocities committed by the spahis, who held lands in the province by
military tenure, and whose chiefs had thrown off the authority of the
Pasha of Belgrade, and embraced the party of the famous Paswan-Oghlu,
Pasha of Widdin, who was then in open revolt against Selim III., as the
champion of the janissaries and the _ancien regime_, against the civil
and military reforms which the Sultan was striving to introduce. The
principal leaders of the Servians were Slavatz, (or as Mr Paton calls
him, if the sa