After long delay and months of seclusion from his subjects, Alexander
III. has been crowned Czar of all the Russias. The coronation
ceremonies took place at Moscow, in the Church of the Assumption,
in the Kremlin, within whose walls all the Romanoffs have been
crowned. Vast concourses of people thronged the streets and crowded
the thoroughfares of the city, the Kremlin was packed with a dense
mass of humanity, intent on witnessing the imposing ceremonies of the
coronation. Princes of every rank and government officials of all
degrees were present from all parts of his broad domains to do homage
to their master. The crowned heads of Europe sent their representatives
to grace the august occasion and to convey their greetings and good
wishes to the new-made monarch.
The pageant of the coronation is said to have been the most magnificent
spectacle witnessed in Europe in modern times. It is estimated that not
less than ten millions of dollars were expended in its preparation.
The czar was everywhere received by his subjects with the greatest
enthusiasm, seeming to betoken the utmost loyalty and reverence toward
their rightful monarch. Nothing occurred to mar the pomp and splendor
of the occasion. No bombs were thrown, no mines were exploded, no
hostile demonstrations of any kind were made; everything seemed to
indicate the return of an era of peace and security in the lately
perturbed realm of Russia.
The crown with which the czar was invested is said to be worth not less
than three millions of roubles, but it is as heavily ladened with cares
as with jewels. No other ruler in Europe to-day has so unenviable a
throne or rests under such heavy burdens and responsibilities. His vast
domains have no bond of integral unity, save the military power, while
in whole provinces the inhabitants are but one remove from barbarism.
In addition to this the Nihilistic organization, which pervades all
Europe, is strongly intrenched in his kingdom, and may, like a sleeping
volcano, burst out in the future, as it has in the recent past,
with terrible fury and disastrous results. Its representatives are
everywhere; in the towns, cities and country; in the army and palace;
among peasants and princes of the realm. Their threats of violence
forced the czar into involuntary seclusion, and were the cause of his
long delay in assuming the crown.
While the deeds of violence which have characterized the Nihilistic
movement can not but be deprecated, they find some palliation in the
fact that Russia has been the worst governed country in all Europe. Its
czar is an absolute despot, and inasmuch as princes are not usually
slow to use all the power placed at their disposal, Russian subjects
have for centuries experienced all the ills coincident with an absolute
despotism. It is true that serfdom has been abolished, but the tardy
justice which accomplished this great work but whetted the appetite of
the Russian people for larger liberty, and for the rightful privileges
conceded by other European governments to their subjects. Their demands
in this direction have been hitherto sternly denied. Every effort for
their attainment has been met with the most determined opposition
on the part of the government. For even slight political offenses,
men are seized, and, with a mere apology of a trial, are condemned,
and sentenced to penal servitude in the mines of Siberia. They are
compelled to labor there from twelve to eighteen hours per day, at the
hardest kind of toil and under the surveillance of brutal overseers.
They are furnished but a meager supply of food, and that of an inferior
kind. They are exposed to the stern severities of the Siberian winters,
with but a scant supply of clothing and little shelter. Within five or
six years death usually kindly puts a terminus to the sufferings of the
miserable exiles.
It is barbarities like these on the part of the government that has put
the sword and the bomb in the hand of the Russian Nihilist. Goaded by
opposition and aggravated by the denial of the rights of citizenship,
its subjects have resorted to the worst of revolutionary measures to
secure the redress of their wrongs and the possession of the rights
conceded to the subjects of other European states. It is to be hoped
that the new czar may learn from the lessons of the past that the
days of despots and autocrats are numbered, and that the nineteenth
century of the Christian era is an age when the rights of subjects can
not be disregarded, even by crowned heads, with impunity. The only
possible way in which Alexander III. can secure the prolonged peace
and perpetuity of his kingdom is to adopt a liberal policy toward his
subjects, institute measures to redress their many and grievous wrongs,
and surrender to the people or their representatives a portion of
the power now lodged in his hands, which is by far too great for any
monarch to possess, and which renders him alike dangerous to the state
and to his subjects.