In regard to the peasants the attitude of the Government is to some extent contradictory. Last year it favored the widest extension of their suffrage; now, as we have seen, it takes the opposite course—apparently having become disillusioned as to the conservative tendencies of the village. At the same time it seeks by all possible means to win over the peasant to the Government cause; and though, in so far as concerns the present election, this policy is unlikely to have much effect, yet for the future of Russia, compared with which, of course, the success of this or that Government is utterly insignificant, the measures now being taken in regard to the land are of supreme importance.

burial, &c., and on the tillage of the soil on a par with the moozheeks. They are consequently looked upon with suspicion and dislike by the latter, and naturally have little or none of that spiritual and moral influence which we are now told must in future be their only weapon of offence and defence against heresy. The White clergy are not to blame for this state of things, a state against which the better of them have long protested in vain; but assuredly the holy Orthodox Church must put its house in order if it is to hold even its own in future. Thanks to that Church's neglect, the average peasant has but the most elementary religious ideas; in fact, as a recent observer tells us, to the moocheek religion and nationality are synonyms, and if he is ever ready to defend his Church with his life it is because to him Orthodox spells Russian, and Russian Orthodox. His conception of the Deity is still Pagan, or at least preChristian. As Peroon to his heathen ancestry, as Jehovah to the Jews, as their favorite idol to all savage tribes, the God of the Russian peasant, and not only the peasant, is in a sense his own peculiar possession. General Stoessel, in his proclamation to the garrison on taking up the command at Port Arthur, declared that the "Russian" God had always maintained the righteous cause, and would assuredly do so on that occasion. And at a great conflagration in St. Petersburg, where a small chapel remained untouched in the midst of the flames, a boatman was heard to exclaim "See! the Russian God cannot burn!"

It has often been remarked that the Russian has produced hardly anything original. The samovar was once held to be an exception, but it derives from Holland. There are four things, however, that he does claim, and rightly, as quite exclusively his own-his race, his faith, his language, and his God.

In the first place the Emperor granted recently some thirteen million acres of the appanage estates, serving as a provision for the Imperial family. as well as a considerable extent of Crown lands, for sale on easy terms through the Peasants' Bank to villagers whose allotments of the communal land were insufficient to support them and their families. And unheard-of novelty in Russia-the "lustructions" for the carrying out of this measure, issued on October 28, for the guidance of the Land Settlement Commissions nominated ad hoc, were framed so as to enable the sales to be effected with the least possible delay.

It cannot be doubted that the peasants will largely and promptly avail themselves of the opportunity of acquiring fresh land thus graciously of fered them, seeing that already they have been steadily purchasing, from or through the Peasants' Bank, proprie tary land at higher prices. Thus during the twelve months ending November 3, 1906, they actually completed the purchase, with the help of loans granted by that institution, of 534,689 dessiatines for a total sum of 60,304,750 roubles; or at the rate of 113 roubles

per dessia tine, and further transactions had been approved, though not completed, to the extent of over 20,000,000 roubles. This was apart from land bought outright by the bank itself with a view to re-selling to the peasants-namely, 562 estates, containing 830,459 dessiatines, for 102,921,797 roubles, or at the rate of 124 roubles per dessiatine-uncompleted transactions under this head figuring for nearly twice as much again.

It is therefore evident that in various ways the number of peasant proprietors of peasants owning land individually and not merely as members of the commune is largely on the increase, the movement being favored by the fact that in present conditions and circumstances many landowners are naturally willing and even anxious to sell their estates. The future for them is uncertain, and the opportunity of selling at reasonably good prices may not recur. Apart from this, the extent of Crown lands at the disposal of the Government is so large that together with the appanage estates it would more than suffice to provide every remaining landless peasant with a sufficient allotment; so that were this the only question, were there no complications, the solution of this part of the agrarian difficulty would be simple in the extreme. But such, unfortunately, is not the case. The grant of new land in, often, far-away places is all very well for certain classes of the population; but for others, and the large majority, it is of little or no use. The peasant, though he sank gradually to the position of a serf, a slave, a mere chattel, whose very life was at the mercy of his master, never acquiesced in the justice of that position. His view of the matter was condensed in the well-known saying addressed to the land- and serf-owning class. "We belong to you, but the land belongs to us," and to this he held tenaciously un

til set partially free by the reform of 1861. He then received, on what have turned out to be very onerous terms, a portion-roughly, one half, and the worst half-of his master's estate.. With the growth of the population, the increased cost of living, and the impoverishment of the soil, each householder's share in the land thus acquired by the commune has dwindled and deteriorated until it is far from sufficient for his needs. What he wants in the first place is not appanage or any other land at a distance, but the other half of the land his fathers once owned-i.e. the property of the local landed proprietor, meadow, field, and forest, lying in the immediate vicinity of his own holding. That is his demand, and "he won't be happy till he gets it." Hence the first democratic Dooma, representing to a small extent only the rural population, but eager at all costs to secure its suffrages, declared for the forced expropriation of land held by other than peasants, and without compensation, thus occasioning the volte-face already mentioned in the ranks of the Zemstvos. Sooner or later there can be little doubt that expropriation will be adopted, but no merely "Liberal" Ministry, such as that of M. Stoleepin, will dare even to discuss the idea of "no compensation." Sooner or later the peasants will have the land, that is. certain; but, unless the democratic elements get the upper hand completely.. some means will be found to compensate, even if inadequately, the present owners, who, in fear of the future, are. showing even now that wisdom which consists of "speaking with your enemy in the gate."

But the need of the peasant is not only more land. The whole system of ownership is at fault, and it has long been recognized by competent observers that nothing short of the abolition of the communal system of land tenure.

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-not necessarily of the commune itself -can ever raise the moozheek from his present miserable condition and restore agriculture to even its former level. Yet a flourishing agriculture is and must ever be the prime necessity in Russia, the indispensable basis of her moral and material well-being. M. Witte is now the object of the most virulent, the most outrageous, the most unjust attacks; in the judgment of history it is probable that he will stand condemned as a statesman for having fostered industry to the almost complete neglect and, to a large extent, at the expense of agriculture. peasants form the vast majority, at least 80 per cent., of the population of the whole empire; and in the long run it is they who pay for everything. what extent they have been impoverished of late years, what is the true state of the rural population as a whole, is at once the most important question of the day and the one most difficult to answer. That it has been impoverished is beyond doubt. It is stated by many authorities that the peasant has reached the lowest stage short of absolute, irretrievable ruin; Prince Obolensky recently declared that 35 per cent. of the peasants were horseless a fact, if true, of terrible significance; another writer states that of the peasants belonging to the communes 30 per cent. are horseless, houseless, and landless; and the repeated famines in what were once the richest provinces undoubtedly go far to prove the general contention. On the other hand, the very same moocheek who was declared bankrupt, who had not a copeck wherewith to meet either taxes or arrears of land redemption, has, in these last years of trouble and famine. found ready cash to a colossal and rapidly increasing amount to spend on vodka, supplied on a monopolist basis by the State, which thus indirectly obtains from him far more ready money

than ever it did before. For example. information received by the Governor of Yaroslavl shows that the peasants of that province, notwithstanding the failure of the crops, drank this year 62,924 vedros of vodka more than last. the total amount spent being over three million roubles.

Sir D. M. Wallace so long ago as 1877, in the first edition of his admirable work on Russia, explained the communal system as it obtained there, and pointed out its more obviously weak points, the most salient being the absolute bar it puts to any agricultural improvement. Russian writers have recently laid stress, from another point of view, on the harm that results to morality from a system that disallows real ownership to the vast majority of a population dependent mainly on the land. The peasant's ideas as to property, loose in the extreme, are declared to be the direct, the inevitable result of the conditions in which he is placed. The many disabilities under which he suffers, all of which centre in the communal system, are said to be responsible for the admitted degradation of his character; and the abolition of that system is expected, therefore, to raise him not only materially but morally. Only when he has property of his own. individually, will he learn to respect the property of others; only then will there be any inducement to exercise the common virtues of honesty, sobriety, industry, and thrift; only then, in short, may we hope to see the moozheek put on some semblance of that ideal peasantry imagined and bodied forth by so many writers, Russian and foreign, during the last century.

As a matter of course each party in the present electoral struggle professes to be the only genuine representative of the peasant and his needs; each claims the exclusive possession of a remedy for all the ills from which he suffers each would have us believe in

its power to raise and let loose this mighty and terrible force; or satisfy and keep it quiet. Now the revolutionary propaganda has undoubtedly made some progress in the village, but to what extent is not known to any human being. The Russian peasant as a result of his past and present conditions is eminently distrustful of parties and agitators. He has been stirred to insurrection many times, it is true; his jacqueries are terrible to recall; but he was never disloyal. If he rebelled against the reigning sovereign it was always in the name of some pretender, in the legitimacy of whose claim he honestly believed. He is quite disenchanted with the old régime, but it is practically certain that he still clings to the belief that not the Tsar but his evil counsellors are to blame; and the success of the recruiting for the new year goes far to show that this is indeed the case. It is probable that he puts little faith in the promises of the Revolutionists; but it has dawned on his intelligence that for some reason or other every one is inclined to make much of him, to seek his favor. A glimmering, faint as yet, begins to illumine his darkness, showing him to some extent his own importance. It is pretty certain that before long he will begin to realize his strength; and much, very much, depends on the way in which he may choose to exert it.

For, in any case, the future of Russia depends mainly on the attitude of the peasantry, which, in the long run, shapes that of the army, renewed, as it is, every three years from their midst. It is no wonder, then, that at last even the Government should have awakened to the importance of conciliating the moozheek, and that at the present crisis it should be devoting a large part of its attention and efforts to the endeavor to forestall its enemies in the matter of agrarian reform.

We have said that the Kadets and

the whole Left declared for forced expropriation without compensation; and at the last permitted meeting of that party in Moscow it was decided to draw up a complete programme of agrarian reform to be presented to the new Dooma. The Cabinet of M. Stoleepin could not, of course, compete on these lines with the Radicals and Democrats, but, as we have seen, it adopted various important measures with a view to satisfying the land hunger of the peasant; and, realizing that a great change has come over public opinion, even in the most Conservative quarters, in regard to the communal system, it has-again by the exercise of the ingenuity which in this case perhaps is not so very far removed from statesmanship-practically abolished it; or, to speak more precisely, it has "done" nothing, having, according to its own acknowledgment, no right to legislate, but it has "discovered" that, owing to the approaching termination of the land redemption payments, the communal system, in so far as it is compulsory, automatically ceases to exist; that the peasant has henceforth the right not only to leave the commune (that was granted to him in 1903, when the Emperor, on M. Witte's advice, did away with the common responsibility for the taxes), but to claim, as his own individual and absolute property, his share of the communal land. This great reform was published and lucidly explained in the columns of the "Daily Telegraph" by its well-informed St. Petersburg correspondent many days before its appearance in the official Press of Russia. What its eventual effect will be it is impossible to say; we cannot even tell how it will be received by those whom it is intended to benefit or cajole; but of its vast importance there can be no doubt.

The opponents of the Government are, of course, furious at having the

ground thus cut from under their feet. They inveigh against this new infraction or evasion of the Fundamental Laws; and it is difficult for impartial observers to refuse them some modicum of sympathy. For the fact is patent that the Ministry on the eve of a general election is hurrying through, one after another, reforms of far-reaching significance with little study or preparation, and by methods, to say the least of it, open to serious criticism. To the Socialists, of course, the abolition of the communal system of land tenure is a retrograde step, acceptable only to those of them who look upon the temporary triumph of the bourgeois and the "land-grabber" as a necessary stage in the progress towards the prevalence of their own ideals. the Individualists it is a long-needed reform. But both agree in condemning the way in which it has been granted, and unite in abuse of the Government. M. Kovalievsky calls it an unheard-of coup d'état. One organ of the Left predicts that it will be looked upon as quite the most unhappy memorial of the present Ministry's constructive work.

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On the other hand the extreme Right is no better satisfied. Thus M. Sharapoff, in the "Rouskoe Dielo," calls the new law revolutionary, and says:

With the dissolution of the commune bloody civil war in the village becomes inevitable. Men will attack one the other hedge-stakes in hand. All animal instincts, all dark passions. are let loose; woe to the wretched peasant! The kingdom of the usurer, the drunkard, the hooligan, is at hand; and these sanguinary elements will henceforth tear the commune to pieces.

as newly interpreted, while those who have little or none of the communal land lose, once for all, their chance of securing their rightful share. The existence of a peasant proletariat receives for the first time the sanction of law, and a wide prospect is opened up for its increase by the temptations now offered to the weaker brethren to sell or mortgage their land. In short. Russia enters into the path trodden with such doubtful benefit by the Western nations, and in course of time the land will gravitate into the hands of the few, while the many will swell the ranks of the acreless proletariat. And, the wish being father to the thought, one critic of the Government adds that the Dooma will now have to face, inevitably, fatally, the forced expropriation of the landed estates belonging to private persons; for the favor now extended to the more substantial peasants must strengthen irresistibly the claims of the rest. But all these objections and many others apply only to the methods and details of the reform, and though by no means devoid of weight must be discounted as coming from the enemies of the Government. The Dooma should yet be able to devise some means of averting the worst evil feared-the formation of large estates, the concentration of the land in comparatively few hands.

A problem of very exceptional complexity has been cut, we are told, like the Gordian knot. Those peasants who happen to be in the enjoyment of better or larger allotments will naturally make haste to profit by the law