Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

viewed as a kind of liberator, merely because he had incurred legal punishments. The blame can only fall on the judge. People here, avow then- hatred of morals just as others would elsewhere say, ' I detest arbitrary government.'

I brought witli me to Russia a preconceived opinion, which I possess no longer. I believed, with many others, that autocracy derived its chief strength from the equality which it caused to reign beneath it. But this equality is an illusion. I said, and heard it said, that when one man is all-powerful, the others are all equal, that is, all equally nullities; which equality, if not a happiness, is a consolation. The argument was too logical to prove practically true. There is no such thing as absolute power in the world; there are arbitrary and capricious powers; but, however outrageous they may become, they are never heavy enough to establish perfect equality among their subjects.

The Emperor Nicholas can do every thing. But if he often did all that he could do, he would not retain this power very long. So long, therefore, as he forbears, the condition of the nobleman is very different from that of the mugic or the tradesman whom he ruins. I maintain that there is at this day, in Russia, more real inequality in the conditions of men than in any other European land.

The circumstances of human societies are too complicated to be submitted to the rigour of mathematical calculation. I can see reigning under the Emperor, among the castes which constitute his empire, hatreds which have their source solely in the abuses of secondary power.

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CONDITION OF THE SERFS

In general, the men here use a very soft and specious language. They will tell you with the most benigu air that the Russian serfs are the happiest peasants upon earth. Do not listen to them, they deceive you : many families of serfs in distant cantons suffer even from hunger; many perish under poverty and ill treatment. In every class in Russia, humanity suffers ; and the men who are sold with the land suffer more than the others. It will be pretended that they are protected by a legal right to the necessaries of life; such right is but a mockery for those who have no means of enforcing it.

It will be further said that it is the interest of the nobles to relieve the wTants of their peasants. But does every man always understand his interests ? Among us, those who act foolishly lose their fortunes, and there is the end of it: but here, as the fortune of man consists in the life of a number of men, he who mismanages his property may cause whole villages to perish of famine. The government, when attracted by too glaring excesses, sometimes puts the unprincipled nobleman under guardianship; but this ever-tardy step does not restore the dead. The mass of sufferings and unknown iniquities that must be produced by such manners, under such a constitution, with so great distances and so dreadful a climate, may be easily imagined. It is difficult to breathe freely in Russia when we think of all these miseries.

The nobleman has, in the government of his estates, the same difficulties to contend with as regards the distances of places, the ignorance of facts, the influence of customs, and the intrigues of subalterns, that the emperor has in his wider sphere of action ; but

AND OTHER CLASSES.

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the nobleman has, in addition, temptations that are more difficult to resist; for, being less exposed to public view, he is less controlled by public opinion and by the eye of Europe. From this firmly-established order, or rather disorder of things, there result inequalities, caprices, and injustices, unknown to societies where the law alone can change the relations of society.

[t is not correct, then, to say that the force of despotism lies in the equality of its victims ; it lies only in the ignorance of liberty and in the fear of tyranny. The power of an absolute master is a monster ever ready to give birth to a yet greater — the tyranny of the people.

It is true that democratic anarchy never lasts; whilst the regularity produced by the abuses of autocracy arc perpetuated from generation to generation.

Military discipline, applied to the government of a state, is the powerful means of oppression, which constitutes, far more than the fiction of equality, the absolute power of the Russian sovereign. But this formidable force will sometimes turn against those who employ it. Such are the evils which incessantly menace Russia, — popular anarchy carried to its most frightful excess, if the nation revolt, and the prolongation of tyranny, applied with more or less rigour according to times and circumstances, if she continue in her obedience.

Duly to appreciate the difficulties in the political position of this country, we must not forget that the more ignorant the people are, and the longer they have been patient, the more likely is their vengeance to be dreadfid. A government which wields power

94THE PRESENT POLICY A RESULT OF

by maintaining ignorance, is more terrible than stable: a feeling of uneasiness in the nation—a degraded brutality in the army—terror around the administration, a terror shared even by those who govern—servility in the chureh — hypocrisy in the nobility — ignoranee and misery among the people— and Siberia for them all: such is the land as it has been made by necessity, history, nature, and a Providence ever impenetrable in its designs.

And it is with so decayed a body that tins giant, scarcely yet emerged out of Asia, endeavours now to influence by his weight, the balance of European poliey, and strives to rule in the councils of the West, without taking into account the progress that European diplomacy has made in sincerity during the last thirty years.

At Petersburg, to lie is still to perform the part of a good citizen; to speak the truth, even in apparently unimportant matters, is to conspire. You would lose the favour of the emperor, if you were to observe that he had a cold in his head. *

But once for all, what is it that can have induced this badly-armed colossus to eome to fight, or at least to struggle, in the arena of ideas with which it does

* While this is going through the press, the Journal desDel·at* is protesting in favour of a Russian who has ventured to print in a pamphlet that theRomanows, less noble than he is. ascended the throne, as all the world knows, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, by means of an election contested with theTroubetzkoi (who were first elected), and against the claims of several other great families. This accession was agreed to in consideration of some liberal forms introduced into the constitution. The world has seen to what these guarantees have brought Russia.

THE SYSTEM OF PETER THE GREAT.95

not sympathise — of interests which do not yet exist for it ?

Simply the caprice of its masters, and the vain glory of a few travelled noblemen. Unlucky vanity of parvenus, which has enticed the government to run blindfold against difficulties that have caused modern communities to recoil backwards, and that have made them regret the time of political wars, the only wars known in former times !

This country is the martyr of an ambition which it scarcely understands; and, all wounded as it is, it strives to maintain a calm and imposing air. What a part has its head to sustain ! To defend by continual artifices a glory built