Grant concessions

The Government has the right to grant concessions to any company, native or foreign, for the working of mines, the reclamation of lands, or the establishment of manufactures; and the Ministers are not indisposed to accord such concessions. But the concessionaire, when he has obtained his concession, finds himself hampered and thwarted at every step by the claims of the commune in which his enterprise has to be conducted.

The authority of the commune within its own area is very great; and any member of the commune can raise difficulties which would militate against the concession being worked successfully, on the plea that it interfered with his supply of water, his rights of pasturage, or the cultivation of his lands. There is as yet no clear law with reference to the relative rights of the State and the commune, when the rights of the former come into conflict with local interests. The communal system is so identified with the ideas and customs of the nation, that it is difficult to modify the powers of the State over the internal administration of the communes to the disadvantage of the latter, until the Bulgarian public are brought to see that they have a personal interest in augmenting the legal authority of the central Government.

Increased prosperity

In view of the greatly increased prosperity of the trading classes, and the rapid growth of the towns, the peasantry consider—and this opinion of theirs is also held by the Government—that they contribute an unduly large proportion to the public revenue. Not only is the land-tax unreasonably heavy, so heavy, indeed, as to cripple the resources which ought to be available for the improvement of the land; but, owing to the taxes being now collected directly by the Government instead of indirectly by the farming system, and owing to the repayment of these taxes being at present enforced in cash and not in produce, the burden of taxation weighs more heavily nowadays on the peasants than it did in the old times.

Any proposal, therefore, to shift the burden of taxation to any material extent from agriculture to trade would not only be just in itself, but would be so popular as to reconcile public opinion to a considerable restriction of communal autonomy. For the present, however, the Capitulations stand in the way of any adequate redistribution of the taxes as against the towns and in favour of the country. Bulgaria is still nominally an integral portion of the Ottoman Empire, and is, therefore, subject to the provisions of the Capitulations.