Government and The basis of the constitution is that established in 1772 under Swedish domination, although this, re formed in 1789, slightly modified in 1869 and 1882, was again substantially or radically re formed in 1906. Before that time the National Parliament or Diet consisted of the four es tates, the nobles, clergy, burghers and peasants; at present there is but one Chamber of 200 members chosen by direct vote. Every Fin nish citizen (man or woman) 24 years of age or over and not disqualified by pauperism, etc., has the right or privilege of suffrage. Both sexes are eligible to the Diet. The grand duchy is divided into 16 electoral districts and each district is subdivided into voting circuits. The Diet lasts for three years unless sooner dissolved and each session for about 90 days.
The educational system is well planned and has good results. According to statistics for 1915 the number of students at the university was 3,435, including 799 women, and the technical high school had 516 students, in cluding 27 women. There are in the capital 2 commercial high schools, 72 lyceums, 16 continuation classes for boys and girls, 22 ele mentary schools for boys and girls, 25 girls' schools, 40 preliminary schools; in the country 3,179 primary schools (of higher grade) with 149,026 pupils, and schools of lower grade with 73,335 pupils. There are also training colleges for teachers, navigation schools, com mercial, technical, horticultural and forestry schools, etc.
Language and The language of the Finns (Finnish or Chudic) belongs to the northern division of the Ural-Altaic family of languages and is most nearly allied to the languages of the Esths, Lapps, Mordvins, Voguls and Hungarians. It possesses all the German vowels, a, e, i, o, u, a, ii, which again give eight double vowels and 12 diphthongs. Like the other Altaic languages it adheres to the "law of harmonic sequence of vowels,' according to which the vowels are divided into classes, heavy (a, o, u) and light (e, i, etc.), and only vowels of the same class can occur in the same word. The language is remark ably rich in declensional forms, there being as many as 15 different cases expressing such re lations as are expressed in English by near, to, by, on, in, with, without, along, etc. By this means these cases are made to express the relations of space, time, cause, etc. There is no dis tinction of gender in Finnish nouns. The pos sessive pronoun is indicated by suffixes. The verb resembles the noun in•its capability of tak ing on different shades of meaning by corre sponding modifications and is in this respect a remarkable philological The Fin nish proper is divided into three principal dia lects, the Karelian or eastern; the Savo in cen tral Finland; and the Tavastian in the west.
This latter was used in the original translation of the Bible and thus became the parent of the literary Finnish.
Finnish literature is valuable chiefly for its rich stores of national poetry, which has been collected only in modern times. Longfellow's 'Hiawatha' is, in style, an imitation of the Fin nish epic. The old and popular poetry of the Finns, as it appears in the various rumor or bal lads, is governed by rules of "quantity" as in that of the Greeks and Romans, not by accent; rhyme occurs only rarely; alliteration is em ployed as a rule. These poems, which had been preserved by oral tradition, were collected by Lifmnrot, and in 1835 he published them, under the title of (Kalevala,' with a second enlarged edition in 1849. He also published in 1840 (Kanteletar,' a collection of 592 ancient lyric poems and 50 old ballads; the (Suomen kansan sanalaskuja' (1842), a treasury of 7,077 popular proverbs; and (Suomen kansan arwoituksia' (1844), a collection of 2,188 riddles. Another work that deserves notice is Eero Salmelainen's collection of legends and stories in prose, 'Suo men kansan satuja ja tarinoita) (4 vols., 1854 62). The first book in the Finnish language was printed at Abo in 1544, its author being Michael Agricola, afterward bishop of Abo, who also translated the New Testament and part of the Old into Finnish. A coinplete Fin nish Bible appeared in 1642. Lonnrot's Finnish Swedish dictionary has been published by the Finnish Literary Society and •Dr. Donner has a dictionary of the Finno-Ugric languages in German. Finnish is becoming more and more the vehicle for imparting instruction. There are many establishments for the higher educa tion of both sexes in which the Finnish tongue is used, and about half of the students at Helsingfors University speak Finnish. Works on science and history, as well as poetry, have been written in Finnish in recent times, and there are now a considerable number of Fin nish newspapers. Population (estimate by the Russian Central Statistical Committee 1 Jan. 1914), 3,241,000. Pop. of Helsingfors, the cap ital (with Sveaborg), 167,083.
Consult Caspar, J. J., 'La Resistance Legale en Finlande' (Paris 1913) ; Chalhoub. M.. (La Finlande' (Paris 1910); Feodorov, Y., (The Finnish Revolution In Preparation 1889-1905' (Petrograd 1911); Pouvreau, Y.,