status quo antè, they wanted to prevent the possibility of the recurrence of such an event as a Polish insurrection. They raised the cry Russia for the Russians; they declared that the hostile or lukewarm boundary provinces must be Russianised; that their aristocratic organisation ought to be destroyed and replaced by the influx of Russian democracy. The nation, they said, was disgusted with the varnish of Western civilisa tion which had been forced upon it by German rulers. The country could only be regenerated by returning to those genuine national institutions which distinguish Russia from the decaying states of the West. Germany, France, and England had each in its time played a prominent part, but they were old and had outlived their fame; the times of the nobility and the bourgeoisie were past; the future belonged to Russia and to democracy. But the foundation-stone of this future was the consolidation of the present Empire; to crush the foes who endangered the national existence was therefore the first duty. The sympathetic analogy which appears to govern the destinies of the people of Russia and the people of the United States was never more manifest than on this occasion. The Poland of the one was the Southern States of the other. In both rebellion was to be extinguished with an unsparing hand because it threatened the pride of national existence, and represented the decaying influence of an aristocratic party.

Expressed with the energy of patriotic conviction, seconded by the orthodox clergy, these views soon obtained considerable weight, and Katkoff quickly acquired a more powerful sway over public opinion than even Herzen had exercised from his abode in Bayswater. The Government, seriously embarrassed by the wide-spread rebellion and the menacing language of the Western powers, saw immediately what an advantage it might reap from an alliance with this movement, by enlisting into its service the keenest passions of the people. It adopted the new programme of the Moscow Gazette,' and invited all patriots to take part in the national work of defending the menaced independence of the Empire. The combined forces of the Government and of Katkoff's party then addressed themselves to the pacification of Lithuania and White Russia. These provinces, which now form the Russian governments of Kowno, Grodno, and Vilna, had lived under Russian rule till the middle of the sixteenth century, and had once belonged to the Greek Church. They were then conquered by Poland, and the upper classes became thoroughly Polish and Catholic; whilst the peasantry, reduced to strict serfdom, remained faithful to their national and orthodox traditions. In the up

rising of 1862, the Lithuanian nobility made common cause with the Poles; the streets of Vilna and Grodno witnessed the same revolutionary demonstrations as those of Warsaw, From that moment the Russian war-cry became Recovery ' of the original Russian character of the Lithuanian lands'; 're-establishment of the Russian peasants in their rights as legitimate possessors of the soil, and disfranchisement of their 'oppressors, the Polish nobles who had re-kindled the fire of ' rebellion.'

We cannot follow here the consequences to which this policy led; we cannot trace the history of that terrible system by which Muravieff undertook to restore the Russian character of the Western provinces, and how the same system was introduced by degrees into Poland. It may suffice to say that up to this day the success of the experiment of trampling down by brute force a nation of more than five millions, remains undecided. The Polish revolt is noticed in this place, as an essential element in the question before us, simply because the national excitement which it provoked was soon directed against the institutions of the Baltic provinces.

This may seem strange at the first glance, as these provinces had not shown the slightest sympathy for the Polish rebellion, nor could they be expected to do so, having themselves had ample experience of the evils of Polish rule in former times, and the German element in these provinces being even more uncongenial than that of Russia to the Polish character. But it must be remembered that the turn which Russian public opinion took under Katkoff's guidance was directed to the annihilation of all non-Russian institutions in the Empire, and to the establishment of one compact Russian peasant State. The Moscow school regards it as the task assigned by Providence to Russia, to crush the aristocratic elements in Lithuania and Poland as well as in the rest of the western provinces. In the name of this principle war was declared against the Swedes in Finland and against the Germans in the Baltic provinces. The Finnish peasants were to be the lords of Finland; Letts and Esths the undivided masters of Livland, Esthland, and Curland. The original inhabitants of both countries were represented as cruelly oppressed by the landlord class, and desiring to be saved by the Russian democracy. The peasants were promised a general division of land. After the example of Lithuania, all the occupiers were to be transformed into proprietors, and the estates of the nobles were to be divided among the tenants and day-labourers. But this was not all. Individual property in the soil itself was to

disappear, the equal right of all to an equal share of the land, the communistic system of tenure which prevails in Russia, is proclaimed to be the world-redeeming message, destined to solve the social question before which the outworn societies of Western Europe stand helpless and despairing.

We are indebted to Dr. Eckardt, in his work entitled 'Modern Russia,' for the most accurate and authentic account we possess of the land tenures of Russia, which we strongly recommend to the consideration of our readers. Suffice it here to say that by ancient custom, which has been more extensively applied since the abolition of serfdom, all the common village lands are periodically distributed every ten or twelve years between the families constituting the village community, in which alone the property is vested. The tenant or occupier has no more than a limited temporary right in the land he tills; the noble or landlord has no rights over these common lands at all. The consequence is that the tenant has no interest in improving the land he occupies in this manner; and as the village is collectively responsible for its dues, the industrious and wealthy pay for the idle and the indigent. By this Russian rural system the essential conditions of property in land are destroyed. Neither landlord nor tenant is interested in the improvement of the soil, and the consequence is that, since the abolition of all forced labour, there has been a frightful deterioration of the husbandry of the Empirethe peasants living on tracts of ground without either the rights or duties of property.

But neither the Finnish nor the Baltic peasants showed any desire to participate in a system which seemed to them fatal to the interests at least of those who had anything to lose. They had indeed been serfs, and had suffered much in former times from their masters; but those times were gone, and they were emancipated long before the abolition of serfdom had been proclaimed in Russia. They had now become peasantfarmers and proprietors, and they lived on the very best terms with their former lords. Agriculture was in a prosperous state; the Diets advanced money for improvements, particularly for draining the marshy soil. When therefore the Moscow party promised them a new agrarian era, under a system diametrically opposed to that to which they owed their present state of progress, they naturally asked how it was that in the Baltic provinces, where personal property in the soil prevailed, land fetched thirty times and more the price of what it sold for in Russia, where agrarian communism was practised? They knew and saw that in the neighbouring Russian provinces

where the principle of equal and periodically-renewed distribution of the soil is established, the peasant cannot raise himself above the level of his fellow-brethren, that no advantage accrues to him by industry and intelligence. Why then should they adopt a tenure which seems inevitably to cast a blight on all national agriculture wherever it exists?

It is possible that the new gospel of Russian democracy found a favourable reception among the Lithuanian peasantserfs, to whom the estates of their former masters were distributed by Muravieff; if a man has nothing, he will not reject a doctrine which places something within his reach. But by the same reason the Lettish and Finnish peasant was not allured by the bait offered to him, and the Moscow press has hitherto vainly endeavoured to convince him of the advantages of the Russian system. Their daily clamour for an agrarian revolution in the Baltic provinces has indeed done great harm to the landed interest, because the incessant assurances of the Russian papers that the Imperial Government was about to act on their principles created numerous perturbations in the existing conditions of property, particularly after two unusually bad harvests. But in consequence of the urgent representations of the Governor-General, Count Albedinsky, that the sweeping measures advocated by Katkoff and his disciples would throw all the agrarian relations of the provinces into bottomless confusion, the Government remained passive. The result of the communist campaign against the tenure of land in the Baltic provinces has therefore thus far been to connect the peasants more closely with the nobles and the larger landowners for the defence of their common interests, and this state of feeling will probably continue, unless a forcible confiscation takes place.

The second attack of the Muscovite press was directed against the Lutheran Church and the German schools in the Baltic provinces. The capitulation of 1702, by which Livland and Esthland had become members of the Russian Empire, guaranteed to them the right of Protestant worship, whilst in all the other provinces the Orthodox Church alone was recognised. The Russian code, the Swod, forbids members of the Greek Church to pass over to any other religious community; mixed marriages are to be solemnised exclusively according to the orthodox rite; a Lutheran or Catholic priest who admits a member of the Greek Church into his community loses his benefice. Proselytism is punished by banishment to Siberia; the Greek Church alone has the right of converting to its creed those who do not belong to it.

Till 1838 these intolerant enactments were never applied to

Finland and the Baltic provinces; but at that time they were introduced in spite of the undoubted and established privileges of the people, and a Greek bishopric was founded in Riga for the express purpose of conversion. Promises of every kind were held out to those who would pass over to the Orthodox Church-exemption from military service, remission of taxes, free grants of land in Southern Russia, free education of the children at the expense of the Crown, and advantageous employment in the public service.

It is not surprising that many of the poorer classes were deluded by these prospects, particularly as there had been a famine in 1840, and great destitution prevailed in the country. Misled by the deceitful promises of Russian itinerant preachers, about 100,000 of the poorest Letts and Esths passed over to the Foreign Church, as they called it, in order to purchase a better future. These deluded people had to pay dearly for their apostasy; none of the promises made to them were fulfilled, and they found themselves excluded from the educational institutions of their Lutheran brethren. Living in the midst of a Protestant country, they were separated by their nationality from the Russian people, whose crude system of worship soon became disgusting to them; and the Greek priests showed a contemptuous indifference to their fate when once they had been enrolled as members of the Orthodox Church. They had contracted an obligation which they soon found it difficult to shake off. Nevertheless, a mighty reaction soon occurred, the converts poured in crowds to the secular and religious authorities of the country, imploring to be received back into the Lutheran Church; but they were met by the inexorable law that whoever belonged to the Orthodox Church could not leave it again. When the requests and remonstrances of this conscience-troubled multitude met with a flat refusal, the indignant proselytes declared that nothing at least should ever compel them to attend the service of the Orthodox ritual. The Lutheran clergy being forbidden under severe penalties to administer to them the sacramental rites, they thronged in disguise to the Lord's Supper. They introduced a sort of civil marriage amongst themselves, and baptised their own children. The government resorted in vain to means of persuasion and violence, but it was at last obliged to let the matter drop, and to check the misplaced zeal for conversion which had produced such deplorable results. The law against mixed marriages remained in force, however, and in spite of all the representations of the Russian governors, children were torn forcibly from their parents who wished to educate them