The Express.
London, England, 1849-11-13 00:00:00

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*lr "Fir dub, without farther apology,
Ina affairs of this mendiglk
_in-
of t3ervia, whose iey is
se indeed it ham long n, that
bey Is filmerkmatal question. Servia is a province, as
4eselHiosilyeemied year readers, inhabited by Bois-
. A'ef the Omsk rite and tributary to the Peete,
*Mob, in time of peace,
.a few thousand
.574
yearly. acquit all its obligations. It has an
pleas, a misistry, and senate of its own.
17 in number, deem amongst the IMOlli
Isfrn@didpersousges for life irremovably by the
=snot performing the fauctioes of an irre-
diet, am the only constitutional check
Oa
the government, in which, of course, they
seestquently share. Nevertheless, the utmost
freedom of speech, prootioal liberty,. and prosperity
prevail. The Serbs owe their independence to
the resistanos made by Bata George against
the then undisciplined levies of the Porte, to
the protection of Ramis, and Austria intriguing on its
awn behalf, sad to the moderation of the Ottoman
▪ est in them matters. A literal competition of
good offices, in fact, prevailed between Russia
&ad Austria, solicitor= to acquire, and Turkey anxious
'to retain, her footing in this province. The material
prosperity of the people is due to the exceeding eigh-
ties of the soil and abundance of land, which, where
not covered with oak forests or coppice, presents for
miles the aspect of an English park, or groans beneath
heavy harvests of the Indian corn or grape.
The poetical liberty the serfs enjoy is
to be attributed to equality of condition?,
to the absence of a regular army, the
metal armament of the inhabitants, and
the fact that there are three candidate@ for
sovereign power at least, besides the missing Prince
Alexander Kara Georgewitch, a weWintentioned,
unambitious individual, broeght a few years back
into power, on an interest opposed to Russia, which
isgssace he sines wanted -fortitude to resist. Old
the ex-ruler, an energetic despot of the Ali-
Pipits of Janina school, still looks forward to a re-
relsestion. Young Mooch. his son, has oleo his pre-
tensions, his party, and the teenage of Russia, not
',that t here is any understanding, but, on the contrary,
a deadly hate between the son and father, wham
1" young hopeful" answered publicly to a driver the
other day, who boasted to the eon of having had the
honour to convey his illustrious sire, and of the gene-
rous gratuity he had received, "I would have
given you doable to have broken the old rascal's
neek.". Taal weakness does not, indeed, seem a
failing amongst the Serbs. The fierce Kara, or Black
George (who, by the way, it will be remembered, was
treacherously eold by old Mooch to the Turks),
the hero of the Servian revolution, and father of the
present prince, is well known to have put to death hie
own father, to prevent his falling into the hands
of the Turks—" an instance of antique greatness of
soul," say his partisans. "To get rid of an incom-
brance—a 'pees of unexampled ferocity," say his de-
tractors. In addition, there is in the country a cer-
tain Voutehich, another hero of the war of indepen-
dence, a popular idol—patriotic, no doubt, but
igno-
rant and ambitious ; in his turbulent old age is
always hatching revolutions on his "own hook,"
and has alternately made propositions all
round with edifyingimpartiality to Turks, Megrim
Austrian', and Rosman. Roasts, on her part, gives
support and encouragement to all these parties and
labours successfully by coquetting with them all round
to make one outbid the or in subserviency. I must
not omit to name the patriarch or primate Reietchitch,
a most finished scoundrel, who thought for some time
to play the part of a Pius IX., and establish, under
Russian protection, through the intermedinm of
Austria, and by eventually deceiving both his patrons
—a Slavonic th . His reverence just now has
fallen, in profound • dit with all parties, to the
ground between the heap of stools he was attempting
to pile up.
It is a hopeful and, politically speaking, a redeem-
ing trait with the Berrien% that thew compact with
Russia is always—like the invocation of the devil
in the dark ages by the would-be astrologer
and chemist—based on the secret hope of cheating
the tempter and dishonestly withholding their forfeit
souls by the dexterous use of holy water or an op.
Fortune repentance. The Servians are to some extent
influenced by the similitude of their faith and len-
gmge to the Russian. They cannot either be un-
mindful that to her intercession their independence
and equality of condition is owing ; for
the stipulations*Yull of the treaty securing their present
relations with the Porte, by providing that no Turk
after the expiration of a year should hold real pro-
perty in the principality or reside out of the
*spinets of a fortress, threw all the estates
of the Mahomedans at nominal prices into
the market. On the other band, the dread of
Russian restraint and serfdom is so general, and
the ambition of becoming the centre of a Sclavonian
confederation, is so prevalent, that it is only to their
awe of Russia that they yield. They are imposed on
by the great and apparently unreststed inthence of
the cabinet of St. Petersburg in those countries to
which their attention is called incessantly by its
agents, and hence as a pie aller look forward to
Ind in the acknowledgment of its supremacy the
'Desolation of forwarding those views of ambition
which are commonly entertained, from the senator to
the peasantry—that peasantry to which want of space
laligestnto abrugtoloyrr_turn. Let the reader imagine
the "

n• I LI •
Aiire !OMNI!

aultilleifim is become unpopular.
It is to be reinarked, aslaprioof of the tendency of the
vorarsmeet to bide with the strongest, and be Mu-
iby the agora distant signs. that when Chary'
till4tert renewed thewar yrjth Ansrris, the Seawall
r olauteers were all withdrawn ; but on the news of
ileet4feat of,Novarre,Vhich reached in an incredibly
space of time, poured spin directly over the
the. The effects of this campaign—of the mis-
of the Magyars, and the intervettion of the
Rimians on the pablio—are very different from what
might have been anticipated ; a growing respect
for the Hungarians has been its result, though an
incomprehensible extant of misapprehension is still
prevalent with regard to their rata and, alum
Something of this is due to the means afforded
them of judging the ill-faith, and what for
the Serbs is more contemptible, the weakness of Aus-
tria by the side of Russia. I mud make here the re-
mark that perhaps the Serbs are the people least
wedded to prejudice of any I have ever met with.
Their inordinate • sense or Nell-interest and instinc-
tive acuteness in pursuing it, preserve them from it.
The moment their unwilling ignorance is dispelled,
they discard at once, however rooted their growth,
the prepossessions which other races cherish. After
this hasty outline—too long already for the limits of
a letter—l shall dash at once into fragmentary dia-
logue and disjointed reminiscence', all comprised
within the last month and extending up to yester-
day. On crossing the Turkish frontier I was struck
with the several appearance of prosperity. It is true
outside the 'films were generally rows of
watched huts, but these were Bulgarian immigrants.
At Altxintre some fermentation existed in conse-
quence of the severities of a bey against the Bulga-
rians of a proximate district. The bey had been re-
primanded by the Pscha of Ni..., but the affair had
originated in the assassination and plunder of some
obnoxious Bulgarians by Berrien sympathisers, who
were abetted by the Bulgarian population. The Bid-
*rums look on Servia as the tree land of
Isiodps. Their higher clergy are in organised
miliserrienoy to Russia. Everybody talks polities
lttl ileasia with the utmost freedom. All the grid-
ewes of a village gather round the stranger fano-
tionaries, and plunge in media, rem without hesi-
tation:. Inconsistent with this practical absence of
all restraint it was Angular to remark the outward
signs of Russian inoculation. A quiumntine on the
Russian footing seriously interrupts communication
with, and alienates from Turkey, in one
plass twelve, in another four-and-twenty hours,
with expenses and formalities; its great disadvantage
is that it only allows egress or ingress at all on three or
four points of an extended frontier. The officials and
employes are in • uniform nearly Russian. At Gar-
guschevax the natchalnik, or chief of the circle, bad
served three years in the Russian army, and was a
mere third rate Russian officer. In a day's journey
on horseback more formalities of signing and coun-
tersigning passports took place than is met with in
travelling all Turkey, and, indeed, I might add all
Frazee. The muskets of the gelid at Negolin, and
all other places I subsequezely visited, were Russian,
with the Tonle mark—of wretched manufacture, it is
tree, and likely to prove most calamitous presents.
Arrived at Belgrade, you find that General Laraine,
the Russian consul-general, hes taken up his quarters
in the beet apartments of the house of Petronovich,
the prime minister—that he arrogates for his govern-
ment, in all his official communications, the style of
protecting power in &rein, the same as Mohlo-Wal-
his, which is, I believe, a mere unrecognised as-1
samption. The other day, at the fanetal service for
the Grand Duke Michael of Russia, General Laccine
ordered his carriage to be drawn up before that of
the reigning prince, and stepped into it, in full view
et the assembled crowd. At the quarantain of Negolin,
the other day, a despatch to the consul-general having
been opened to fumigate it, because exceeding a
certain thickness, the most determined effort was
made to abstract it from the courier's presence, for
the benefit of the Russian agent, who was ascertained
to have crossed the Danube from the Walachian
station. A despatch was retarded twenty hours the
other day, by the same influence with the post-
masters.