to Austrian pretensions.  Peace is requisite for her, in order that her Parliament may occupy itself in developing the riches of the soil and the economic interests of the country; but the organisation of a strong defensive army is equally necessary to protect those interests from grasping and despotic States in her vicinity, and because, ’by the development of all the forces of the nation, Roumania will become an element of order, peace, and progress in Eastern Europe.’  In fact, she must make herself, by peaceful measures, what Michael the Brave succeeded for a very short time, and from motives of personal ambition, in making her by the sword in his day, the arbiter of surrounding nations, the Belgium of the East, which no aggressive despot would dare to assail; and she must become sufficiently strong to resist not only inimical but friendly foreign occupations, which have such a demoralising effect upon her people.

On this undertaking her Government has already for some years past been embarked.  It has secured railway property for the State which was in the hands of aliens, has begun to improve watercourses, created national credit institutions, reduced the interest upon the national debt, increased the value of Roumanian securities, and has generally followed, as it still pursues, the ways of ’peace, retrenchment, and reform.’[201]

We have no wish to patronise Roumania even in words, for her best friend is he who tells her to depend entirely on her own resources and develop those herself; to carve her fortunes, and to shape her ends.  But when we look upon her sufferings, reflecting how for ages she has lain beneath the claws of savage enemies, quailed under despots who sucked the lifeblood of the nation, and then compare her constitutional democracy with ours—­nay, if alone from a material point of view we weigh the interest we have in her prosperity, we cannot fail to see that in the East is rising up a Power, in part of our creation, young and weak as yet, but full of hope and promise; and therefore, in concluding this imperfect record of her ‘past and present,’ we heartily commend her future to the earnest watchfulness of every English friend of liberty.

[Footnote 200:  According to some, there are more.]

[Footnote 201:  Although we have endeavoured as much as possible to avoid burdening this popular treatise with statistics, one set of figures which have been kindly supplied to us by friends at Bucarest and in London is so significant, and indeed of such general interest, that we must claim the reader’s indulgence for giving it in extenso.  It comprises the values of Russian, Turkish, and Roumanian securities from 1870 to 1880, which are as follows:—­