KING MILAN.
KG MILAN has won the game,—won it, we suspect, INas we argue below, more completely than is as yet quite understood either in London or Belgrade. We have ventured all through the struggle to predict that it would be so ; that the King, when fairly pushed to the wall, would fight like a dying fox, and would find in his own mental powers resources whereby to deliver himself from all his enemies. The truth is that the King has been so unpopular in Servia since his defeat by the Bulgarians, and in Europe since his unjust repudiation of his Queen, that his personal claim to rule his country has been absurdly underrated. He is by far the ablest man in his own dominions,—a great orator, an astute and well-informed diplomatist, and so good a manager of men, that he converts politicians who enter his Cabinet with the single intention of reversing his policy, into his obedient servants. Nobody respects the King, but nobody gets the better of him. He belongs, in truth, to a type of character perfectly well known in the West, and constantly depicted in fiction, the selfish volup- tuary with gifts and brains, who does not like facing shot because it might hurt him, but who has a fox-like tenacity, and who possesses in his clearness of thought as to his own purposes and his own resources, the equivalent of strong will. Throughout the contest, the King, it is stated, has never despaired, and the result shows that he understood both his people and his position better than any of those around him. For a moment, it is true, his prospects looked very black. The violent repudiation of Queen Natalie had irritated public opinion and the Russianising party to such a degree, that when he promised a new and more Liberal Constitution, the people, though pleased with the concession, sent up a majority of Radicals to the Constituent Assembly. Greatly annoyed, and apparently surprised as well, the King cancelled the elections, only to find that the majority against him had doubled, and that, in truth, the dynasty had only four friends left in the Great Skuptschina. Nearly every man in that Assembly came up pledged to demand certain changes in the proposed Constitution, and a majority were willing to persist in their resistance even if the King threatened to resign. A Regency on his son's behalf would, they thought, just suit them.
There was no mistaking a ylaiscite of that sort, and the King immediately decided upon his course. It was a won- derfully adroit one. He granted at once, without argu- ment or demur, every demand about which he did not care, more especially his separate power of signing treaties and military conventions, and the right of making preventive arrests, and. took his stand upon three easily understood points. He would not give up the control of foreign policy, he would not alter the clause under which the peasantry must elect one graduate in every three members, and he would not resign. On the contrary, if he were defeated, he would dissolve the Great Skuptschina, leave the regular Skupt- schina unsummoned, and govern by his old prerogatives, which are most extensive, without a Parliament at all. Receiving, doubtless by arrangement, the great Committee of the Radical Party, he announced to them his decisions in language so plain that it at once carried conviction of its sincerity, and left them to consider his ultimatum. The Committee took very little time, and were in very little doubt. Though its members were mostly peasants and country priests as ignorant as the peasants themselves, they had educated men among them, who knew perfectly well that, in refusing to resign, the King had baffled them, that the Army would obey orders, that an insurrection of scattered peasants was most difficult to organise, and that if they overthrew the King by insurrection instead of law, Servia would in a week be occupied by the Austrian brigades encamped in Bosnia. They advised submission; and although the Russian agents made desperate exertions, and bribed every man who would take a bribe—the fact was publicly stated by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, himself a Liberal "who had sat in chains for Servia" —the Skuptschina on Wednesday voted the new Constitu- tion by 494 to 75. Moreover, with the natural admira- tion of rude men for a strong King who has beaten them in a visible struggle, the members of the Radical majority cheered the King who had granted such a fine new Con- stitution most heartily.
The King, therefore, is safe from all but assassina- tion, and we suspect his political power will be rather strengthened than diminished. He has given up little of serious importance to a man without constitutional scruples. He remains head of the Executive ; he can select his own Ministers, though it must be from the dominant party ; and the rule about graduates will always give him a strong party in the regular Skuptschina, educated men in Servia. looking Westward, and not East- ward, for their guidance. As for treaties, the policy of Servia is guided by secret understandings, not treaties, and the moment war breaks out, the King will be again Dictator,—first, because he is the ablest man ; and secondly, because he can in a time of national danger suspend the Constitution. As to the military conventions, the loss of the King's power to invite Austrian troops into Servia, against which that clause is intended to guard, will make only the small differena; that when they arrive it will be necessary, "for the pro- tection of the people," to suspend the laws, so that the King may govern instead of the Commandant of the Austrian Army of Occupation. There is no force in Servia with which to protect the Constitution except the populace of Belgrade, which will have no chance what- ever against the Austrian infantry, and will probably not move. In peaceful times, again, the King will master his Cabinet, as he always has done, by leaving to them the details and directing great things himself. It is not even wished that he should be a constitutional King in the English sense, and he has -already shown once for all that it is dangerous to push him to the wall. The majority against him can never be greater than it was on Tuesday, and he beat that majority face to face. The concession of personal freedom to the peasantry, the admission of Radicals to office, and the new tone of a popular Ministry in internal affairs, will immensely diminish the sense of oppression,—perhaps even give to the King the character he claims, that of a political benefactor. The peasantry, it is clear, have not lost their old feeling for the Obreno- vitch family ; they are fully conscious of their own ignorance, and they do not try any more than any other Continental population to interfere with the conscription. King Milan is, therefore, probably safe till the great war arrives, and his future will be decided by that, and not by any popular decision whatsoever. He is not a Sovereign for whom it is possible to feel the smallest enthusiasm, or even liking ; but he has faced a revolution, and conquered it by sheer strength of brain.
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