The principality of Roumania is formed by the union of the ancient provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia. It contains about six thousand square leagues of territory, and five million inhabitants. Four millions of the latter belong to the Greek Church, and the rest are Armenians, Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Gentiles, Moslems, and a hundred thousand or so don’t know what they are nor what they belong to. Then there are inhabitants who belong somewhere else, such as Germans, Hungarians, Greeks, English, French, Russians, and some who are ashamed to own the nations of their birth, for reasons best known to themselves.
The various sects and nationalities get along quite well together, with the exception of the Jews, who have a very hard time. They have been whipped and otherwise tortured on account of their opinions or as a cloak to robbery, and until quite recently it was not unusual to hear of the banishment or massacre of all the Jewish inhabitants of a village, town, or district. A better sentiment, or rather a less barbarous one, seems to prevail within the last year or two, and it is to be hoped that the persecutions are at an end or soon will be.
As an illustration of the treatment of the Jews, a gentleman told me that one day in Bucharest he heard screams issuing from a yard at the back of the hotel where he was lodged. He went to the window and saw a girl of eighteen or twenty tied to a stake. Her clothing was stripped from her shoulders and a strong man was whipping her while two others stood by. The gentleman asked what she had done, and was told “She is a Jewess!” No other cause was alleged, and the men appeared surprised when the stranger wished to know what crime she had committed.
The government of Roumania is very much like that of Servia, a constitutional principality which is independent, except that it pays a yearly tribute to Turkey. Servia pays twenty-five thousand pounds, and Roumania twice that amount. A member of the Hohenzollern family, under the title of Prince Charles of Roumania, occupies the throne, and his hereditary right is guaranteed by the Sultan, while the independence of Roumania is guaranteed by the seven powers that signed the treaty of Paris—Austria, France, England, Italy, Prussia, Russia, and Turkey. The constitutional rights of the people are like those of Servia, but the finances are not in as good condition, for the reason that the government has created debts in order to construct railways, and make other internal improvements. The network of railways already finished and now constructing is very good, and when united with the Austrian system, the resources of Roumania will be rapidly developed. The standing army has about twenty-five thousand men, and the militia includes every able bodied citizen.
In case of war one hundred thousand men could be put in the field in a very short time.
It must be a great consolation to Servia and Roumania that they are able to make so much trouble as they do, or rather that so much trouble is made about them. They are the bases of the “Eastern Question,” and if it were not for these two principalities, the ministers of foreign affairs in Turkey, Russia, and Austria would have their labor reduced one half, if not more. The correspondence that has passed between those governments concerning the principalities, is nearly as voluminous as that about the Alabama claims; in the past five centuries the principalities have been the cause or the object of about a dozen wars, and very likely will be the cause of fresh wars in time to come.