long forbidden by the law». He then asked the Council of State by virtue of what regulations peasants were sold individually? The

Council of Stale, knowing no law which authorized a sale of the kind, referred to the Senate. In vain were the archives of that corps searched for precedents: not a scrap could be found approaching to such an authorization; but ordonnances and laws in a contrary sense abounded. In ukase of Peter the First addressed to the Senate, the czar is indignant that men should be sold in Russia «like cattle»; and he ordains the preparation of a law prohibiting such a traffic, and prohibiting in general the sale of men without the land — «if possible». The Senate did nothing. A century later, it did worse than nothing. Too deeply interested in the maintenance of this traffic of human flesh, it resuscitated a tariff of registration (tarif de l’enregistrement), dating so far back as the reign of the empress Anne. This tariff maintained, among other things, that the duties were to be paid on the sale of men on the land (dans la terre). The Council of State, after long debates, acknowledged that this tariff was not a legal basis for their sales; drew up a new law, corrected and recorrected it, and finally sent it up to the minister of the interior. This took place at the lime of the Congress of Verona.

Council of Slate, minister, emperor, not a soul has ever breathed a word of it since.

This precious history is related to us by Nicholas Turgenieff. The author was then Secretary of State, and took part in drawing up the project of law in question. He terminates the recital by an anecdote profoundly sad in its significance. The President of the Council, Count Kotshubey, a man of that profoundly cynical humour which experience often brings with the loss of illusions, approaching Mr. Turgenieff after the sitting, said to him with a smile, half of bitterness, half of raillery: — «Only imagine, the emperor is persuaded that for the last twenty years men have been no longer sold in retail».

This anecdote makes one’s blood boil.

The emperor Nicholas introduced some restrictions to this sale of men. But he, too, unhappily did more harm in trying to do some good. Such is the result of half-measures and of arbitrary acts. The law in forbidding the noble who has no land to buy serfs, implicitly recognises the right of buying serfs in the noble who does possess land. This law was a mistake; it gave a legal

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basis to the sale of men, and opened the door to the most monstrous abuses, by omitting to regulate in the slightest degree this abominable traffic.

On the pretext of colonizing a piece of land, already covered with a surplus population, one may purchase entire families of servants, of cooks, of painters, of washerwomen, of musicians. The government, it is true, is too modest to allow the sale of serfs to be publicly announced in the journals; matters are transacted more decently. The public advertisements will not tell you of «a coachman», but of the services of a coachman. And besides, is not the Russian government bound with England by a solemn treaty to combat the slave trade? Has not the czar, too, declared every negro free who touches the soil of his empire? What business have the Russian serfs to be born white like their masters? The existence of this class of serfs is extra-legal, abandoned without regulation to the arbitrary will of the nobles.

The caprice, the interest, of the lord alone dictates his every act; his cruelty is tempered only by the knife or the axe of the peasant, and probably the difficulty of the situation will be thus cut through, for the nobles wait and do nothing, the government takes measures which it fails to execute. The nobles break their contract with the peasant, or they allow him to purchase his redemption by paying the maximum auction price. There remain only two resources for the oppressed — if he wishes to gain his freedom, the scythe and the axe. The blood then spilt will recoil on the ruling house of Romanoff, and what torrents must flow! The terrible example left us by Pugatcheff is warning enough!

What always astonishes me is the absolute, radical incapacity of the czars. Alexander contemplated, Nicholas was said to be preparing a measure of emancipation. After forty years what is the result? The absurd ukase of April 2, 1842.

But, it will be asked, what are the means at the disposal of the government? Its means? Suffice it to say, it could if it would. When did the Russian government grow so scrupulous in the choice of its means? Did it want for means when, in the 18th century, it introduced serfdom into Little Russia, and, in the 19th, organized military colonies? By what means did it cut up Poland into Russian provinces, and reduce the united Greek

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to the orthodox Russian church? Was the government of St. Petersburg over embarrassed? What crimes and cruelties has it ever flinched from in the accomplishment of its terrorist designs?

The emancipation of the peasant will happily not necessitate the cruelty, nor the immorality, which was indispensable in the perpetration of those crimes by the government. The whole people will be in favour of such a measure. All the civilized nobles, all those in Russia who can be called an «Opposition», are bound, at the risk of disavowing their principles, to support the government in this.

There will remain, then, none but the most retrograde section — the most tenacious of the privileges of the nobility. Well! this party has preached so vehemently the religion of passive obedience, that the government, for once, may demand a single practical illustration of its favourite doctrine. Besides, what rights do such persons possess? They have robbed the people by the grace of the czar, and the disgrace of the czar will arrest their robberies. There is no reason why the government should refuse an indemnity to the actual usufructuaries of a past iniquity. The government may propose a series of financial measures; the greater part of the property of the nobles is mortgaged in the banks of the State: overwhelmed with debts they cannot even pay the interest.

Let the State, instead of transforming foundling hospitals into shameful peasant markets2[2], enter into an arrangement with the peasants on lands for sale, and content itself with receiving annuities therefrom.

If it were in want of disposable capital for the purpose, it has but to raise a loan exclusively applicable to that purpose; or rather it has but to hold aloof to let the nobles create committees in the provinces; lo let who will make collections and form associations. Two guarantees only would be required of the government; first, that the money should not be diverted from its destination; next, that there should be no prosecutions against

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persons of good will. Besides, what projects have been invented, published, and submitted to the government, since 1842? It has neither the courage nor the capacity to resolve to take some step. Perhaps it feels that its own hands are not pure, its heart not free from stain. At all events it does nothing.

But what is the people about? Does not a people which submits to such a tyranny deserve it? Yes, it deserves it, as Ireland deserves the famine, and as Italy deserves the yoke of Austria. I am so accustomed to hear that ferocious cry of vae victis, that it no longer excites my surprise. Up, and to arms against all that suffer, unpitied, unredressed! It is not enough that the landless labourer (proletaire) is poor, and starving: let us crown his bitter life with a derision more bitter still. The Russian peasant is a serf: let us reproach him with it; let us say that he has deserved his chain; and then turn away our eyes from his hideous sufferings. Still, before abandoning him for ever, let us thank those forgotten slaves for the wisdom which we have gained at the cost of cruel hunger of some — the fierce sweat of many — the brutal degradation of all; let us who are the double blossom of this glorious civilization, be grateful, whose smiling gardens are watered with the blood and tears of the poor.

I am ill at ease when I speak of the «People». It is the word most twisted from its meaning, and least understood in this «democratic» age. The idea attached to the word is, for the most part, vague, rhetorical, superficial. It is one moment vaunted to the skies, the next, dragged in the mire. Unhappily, the noble indignation of the heart, no less than the most exalted declamation, fails to express an exact and true notion of what is meant by the «People» — that large foundation of granite, cemented by immemorial traditions — that vast ground floor (rez-de-ckaussee), upon which is scaffolded the paltry baraque of our political institutions.

To the question, to what does the Russian people look? I answer — the commencement of a social revolution in Europe, and that, unconsciously, by the force of their position, and by instinct. Already, thanks to the socialistic movement, the question of emancipation has made immense progress. Government, nobles, people, no longer believe in the possible emancipation of the commune — that is, of the peasant, without the land. And still regarded from the point of view of an absolute and imprescriptible right of possession, there is no visible solution of the problem. An emancipation, based on that which