of H. M. I., etc., a proprietor in Little Russia, had during several years martyred his serfs and his servants. Immensely rich, but of insatiable rapacity, he wore them out by his exactions and his tyranny. In 1850, when he was living on his domains, the serfs driven to desperation resolved to make a signal example of their lord. Breaking one night into his house, armed, and showing him a bunch of rods newly cut, they offered him the choice of death or corporal chastisement. The chamberlain reasonably chose correction. It was duly administered. When the punishment was over the serfs exacted of him a written promise not to divulge the events of that night. He wrote and signed that noble promise, and what is more, — he kept it, for fear of worse.
Some months after come the recruiting season. The lord selected one of his serfs as the contingent of his commune. This conscript, it appears, had not been one of the least ardent or the least vigorous in administering the nocturnal castigation, and he felt not unnaturally convinced that the lord in naming him for the contingent was satisfying indirectly a vengeance long suppressed. Military conscription, it should be remembered, is regarded with horror by the Russian peasant. The young conscript resolved to take his revenge. Before the assembled military council de recensement he declared aloud that he was made a soldier only because he had thrashed his lord the chamberlain. He was thought, mad.
«Ah! you think me mad, do you?» he replied; «here is something to convince you».
And he drew from his pocket and read out loud the seigneurial document.
The amazament was universal. The revelation was so unexpected, that they forgot to suppress the conscript or the accusing document, which was not even given back to the chamberlain. In the first fit of surprise they drew up a report of the circumstance. The Russian code had not provided for a case of thrashing a chamberlain.
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Creat was the embarrassment of the minister; he referred to the emperor. The emperor, who had kept his chamberlain by his side as long as he only thrashed his peasants, was indignant with him as soon as he got trashed himself. He expelled him from his service and from the empire. The serfs were left unpunished. Ever since our ex-chamberlain has been parading, by order of his master, his striped back and shoulders through all the capitals of the civilized world, and he inscribes his name on Mont St. Gothard.
And to make his story all the more piquant, let me add, that this measled and mangled chamberlain — this cruel and cowardly seigneur, is no ohter than the noble grandson of the harnessed noble-man — of that gluttonous buffoon who was let loose upon a commune of serfs. The thrashers were the descendants of those poor Cossacks bent to the yoke, and cast as a prey to a greedy mountebank.
Well! what do you say to this harnessed father, this striped son, and to the emperor Nicholas carrying on the propaganda sui generis by sending this chamberlain on his travels.
I shall conclude my letter by some new details on Russian society.
There is no law of primogeniture in Russia. Peter the First tried to implant it among us, but the manners of the people resisted it, and at his death the decree was revoked. Nicholas has permitted one or two privileged families of the highest aristocracy to indulge in this caprice; but that is only an anomaly, an absurdity the more.
The rule is for the sons to have en equal share in the distribution of the father’s property. For the nobles it constitutes a rapid descent to poverty. A lord who owned two thousand serfs, held a good position. His two sons are left, each with half the fortune of their father, while they, in their turn, leave a moiety of it to their children. At the same time, the price of everything is increased, more rapidly than the income of the estates on the number of the serfs. Civilization introduces into the families of aristocracy luxurious tastes, and wants unknown to our forefathers, so that, with an estate lessened by three-fourths, the grandson has to supply demands twelve times greater than those
of his grandfather. We must not forget, this important, phase in the question — the manners of the nobles. No people in Europe is more unfitted for habits of order and economy than the Russians and Poles. We must see how, in the course of two or three generations, fortunes, whether great or small, are made, and lost, and passed from hand to hand. The Russians are greedy, very greedy of money, but careless than their neighbours for property in land. They love money, for the pleasure of throwing it away. Economy is unknown amongst us. There is no middle class between niggards and spendthrifts.
In general, when the land is once distributed, the sons tread in the steps of their father. If one of them has need of money he mortgages his estate to the bank; the money is soon squandered, the interest eats up the remaining income, the estate, before long, is sold by auction, the surplus, if there is a surplus, is paid to the ex-lord, and, when he has eaten that, his eyes are opened to his ruin.
One man, in order to relieve his embarrassments, gives himself up to play, without restraint; another begins to drink, from very despair, and dies in his debauchery; another, better advised, takes some official employment, and robs unscrupulously. This man prospers, but his son will be ruined. Between the years 1812 and 1840, a small minority strove to constitute themselves exceptions to the general rule. They were, for the most part, men educated out of Russia, great admirers of political economists, like Say and Malthus. They became industrious, and assumed the manners of the bourgeoisie; but they were few in number, and had few disciples.
But what said the commune in the midst of this eternal come and go of proprietors, this parcelling out of estates, this continual change? The thousand serfs, who obeyed one lord, were each time scattered over three or four communes, varying in extent, each having their own individuality, their own organization, and distinct lands. The lord will have a single management for the whole of his estate. If a distribution takes place, he is compelled to complete the communal lots by means of pecuniary arrangements, and concessions of various kinds. This is practicable, but only up to a certain point. We come to the division of the
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commune itself — sometimes two or three brothers have undivided possession of a village, more or less important. But this division can be effected in spite of them. If the portion of one of them is seized for debts, will the new proprietor submit to the unity of possession, the common management? He will hasten, more frequently, to get rid of it.
The proprietor, who has the largest interest in the commune, taxes and worries the others in all conceivable ways, and while these portions of lords are overwhelmed with embarrassments, with complications, with inextricable disorders, the peasants fall into the same ruin.
The parcelling out of communes, the increase of estates, enclosed and intermixed in every direction, has enforced the attention of the government, and it has been obliged to take measures for arresting the complete ruin of the serfs. Thus it has formed a minimum of serfs, after which no further distribution is allowed. The next step is to fix an indemnity, and to decide on the question of expropriation. Evidently the rights of the nobility do not appear so sacred to the government, when fairly put to the test? how otherwise could the right become weakened in proportion to the number of the peasants?
In 1845 it was permitted to the nobles of Toula to unite under the presidency of the prefects and the marschals. The question was, how to devise measures for the emancipation of the serfs of the province.
Moscow waited for the same powers. From 1842 to 1846 the agitation among the nobility increased, the journals became so bold as to publish articles on emancipation. It would have been well if the government had given some aid to the nobility in the accomplishment of this object; but the hatred of everything that is called liberty or emancipation is so thoroughly ingrained in this family in incurable autocrats, that Nicholas hastily threw all such projects to the winds, on the first arrival of the news of the 24 th of February.
Such is the latest and present phase of this question of serfdom in Russia. The peasant continues deprived of all protection but, that of the customary law (la loi coulumiere): he may be dragged from his family, from his commune, although that be recognised
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by the law; he may be made a servant. The lord has the right to have him flogged, only not to death; he has to right to imprison him in a maison de police for disobedience. Ho may condemn him to military conscription, or pack him off to the mines of Siberia at his own expense. In the two latter cases, the serf at least becomes free. Lastly, it is an established and constant practice to sell serfs, if not separately, at least by family. No land need be given to the peasants except just enough to allow them to vegetate miserably. The lord is under no obligation to his servants beyond supplying them with just enough food and clothing to prevent them perishing of hunger and of cold.
Shall these
