HOW FREEDOM GROWS IN RUSSIA.
Among the nations of the world whose policy looks to carrying out the
views of Adam Smith, in bringing the artisan as near as possible to
the food and the wool, Russia stands distinguished. The information we
have in reference to the movements of that country is limited; but all
of it tends to prove that with the growth of population and wealth,
and with the increased diversification of labour, land is acquiring
value, and man is advancing rapidly toward freedom. "The industry of
Russia," says a recent American journal--
"Has been built up, as alone the industry of a nation can be, under a
system of protection, from time to time modified as experience has
dictated; but never destroyed by specious abstractions or the dogmas
of mere doctrinaires. Fifty years ago manufactures were unknown
there, and the caravans trading to the interior and supplying the
wants of distant tribes in Asia went laden with the products of
British and other foreign workshops. When the present emperor mounted
the throne, in 1825, the country could not produce the cloth required
to uniform its own soldiers; further back, in 1800, the exportation
of coloured cloth was prohibited under severe penalties; but through
the influence of adequate protection, as early as 1834, Russian cloth
was taken by the caravans to Kiachta; and at this day the markets of
all Central Asia are supplied by the fabrics of Russian looms, which
in Affghanistan and China are crowding British cloths entirely out of
sale--notwithstanding the latter have the advantage in
transportation--while in Tartary and Russia itself British woollens
are now scarcely heard of. In 1812 there were in Russia 136 cloth
factories; in 1824, 324; in 1812 there were 129 cotton factories; in
1824, 484. From 1812 to 1839 the whole number of manufacturing
establishments in the empire more than trebled, and since then they
have increased in a much greater ratio, though from the absence of
official statistics we are not able to give the figures. Of the total
amount of manufactured articles consumed in 1843, but one-sixth were
imported. And along with this vast aggrandizement of manufacturing
industry and commerce, there has been a steady increase of both
imports and exports, as well as of revenue from customs. The increase
in imports has consisted of articles of luxury and raw materials for
manufacture. And, as if to leave nothing wanting in the
demonstration, the increase of exports has constantly included more
and more of the products of agriculture. Thus in this empire we see
what we must always see under an adequate and judicious system of
protection, that a proper tariff not only improves, refines, and
diversifies the labour of a country, but enlarges its commerce,
increases the prosperity of its agricultural population, renders the
people better and better able to contribute to the support of the
Government, and raises the nation to a position of independence and
real equality among the powers of the globe. All this is indubitably
proved by the example of Russia, for there protection has been steady
and adequate, and the consequences are what we have described."--_N.
York Tribune_.
The reader may advantageously compare the following sketch, from the
same source, of the present position of Russia, so recently a scene of
barbarism, with that already laid before him, of her neighbour Turkey,
whose policy commands to so great an extent the admiration of those
economists who advocate the system which looks to converting the whole
world outside of England into one vast farm, and all its people, men,
women, and children, into field labourers, dependent on one great
workshop in which to make all their exchanges:--
"Russia, we are told, is triumphant in the Great Exhibition. Her
natural products excite interest and admiration for their variety and
excellence; her works of art provoke astonishment for their richness
and beauty. Her jewellers and gold-workers carry off the palm from
even those of Paris. Her satins and brocades compete with the richest
contributions of Lyons. She exhibits tables of malachite and caskets
of ebony, whose curious richness indicates at once the lavish
expenditure of a barbaric court, and the refinement and taste of
civilization. Nor do we deem it of much account that her part of the
exhibition is not exclusively the work of native artisans. Her satins
are none the less genuine product of the country because the
loveliest were woven by emigrants from the _Croix Rousse_ or the
_Guillotiére_, seduced by high wages from their sunnier home in order
to build up the industry of the Great Empire and train the grandsons
of Mongol savages in the exquisite mysteries of French taste and
dexterity. It matters not that the exhibition offers infinitely more
than a fair illustration of the average capacity of Russian labour.
It is none the less true that a people who half a century ago were
without manufactures of any but the rudest kind, are now able by some
means to furnish forth an unsurpassed display, though all the world
is there to compete with them.
"We are no lover of Russian power, and have no wish to exaggerate the
degree of perfection to which Russian industry has attained. We do
not doubt that any cotton factory in the environs of Moscow might be
found imperfect when contrasted with one of Manchester or Lowell. We
are confident that the artisans of a New-England village very far
surpass those of a Russian one in most qualities of intelligence and
manhood. Indeed, it is absurd to make the comparison; it is absurd to
do what travellers insist on doing--that is, to judge every nation by
the highest standard, and pronounce each a failure which does not
exhibit the intellect of France, the solidity and power of England,
or the enterprise, liberty, and order of the United States. All that
should be asked is, whether a people has surpassed its own previous
condition and is in the way of improvement and progress. And that, in
respect of industry, at least, Russia is in that way, her show at the
Exhibition may safely be taken as a brilliant and conclusive proof."
Russia is powerful, and is becoming more so daily. Why is it so? It is
because her people are daily more and more learning the advantages of
diversification of labour and combination of exertion, and more and
more improving in their physical and intellectual condition--the
necessary preliminaries to an improvement of their political
condition. Turkey is weak; and why is it so? Because among her people
the habit of association is daily passing away as the few remaining
manufactures disappear, and as the travelling pedler supersedes the
resident shopkeeper.
It is said, however, that Russian policy is unfavorable to commerce;
but is not its real tendency that of producing a great internal
commerce upon which alone a great foreign one can be built? That it
does produce the effect of enabling her people to combine their
exertions for their common benefit is most certain; and equally so
that it tends to give her that direct intercourse with the world which
is essential to the existence of freedom. The slave trades with the
world through his master, who fixes the price of the labour he has to
sell and the food and clothing he has to buy, and this is exactly the
system that Great Britain desires to establish for the farmers of the
world--she being the only buyer of raw products, and the only seller
of manufactured ones.
So long as Russia exports only food and hemp, she can trade with
Brazil for sugar, and with Carolina for cotton, only through the
medium of British ships, British ports, British merchants, and British
looms, for she can need no raw cotton; but with the extension of
manufactures she needs cotton, which she can draw directly from the
planter, paying him in iron, by aid of which he may have machinery. In
illustration of this, we have the fact that so recently as in 1846,
out of a total consumption of cotton amounting to 310,656 cwts., no
less than 122,082 cwts. had passed through British spindles; whereas
in 1850, out of a total consumption more than one-half greater, and
amounting to 487,612 cwts., only 64,505 cwts. had passed through the
hands of the spinners of Manchester.
The export of raw cotton to Russia has since largely increased, but
the precise extent of increase cannot be ascertained, although some
estimate may be formed from the growth of the consumption of one of
the principal dyeing materials, indigo; the export of which from
England to Russia is thus given in the London _Economist_:--
1849. 1850. 1851. 1852.
----- ----- ----- -----
Chests, 3225....... 4105....... 4953....... 5175
We have here an increase in three years of almost sixty per cent.,
proving a steady increase in the power to obtain clothing and to
maintain commerce internal and external, directly the reverse of what
has been observed in Turkey, Ireland, India, and other countries in
which the British system prevails; and the reason of this is that that
system looks to destroying the power of association. It would have all
the people of India engage themselves in raising cotton, and all those
of Brazil and Cuba in raising sugar, while those of Germany and Russia
should raise food and wool; and we know well that when all are
farmers, or all planters, the power of association scarcely exists;
the consequence of which is seen in the exceeding weakness of all the
communities of the world in which the plough and the loom, the hammer
and the harrow, are prevented from coming together. It is an unnatural
one. Men everywhere seek to combine their exertions with those of
their fellow-men; an object sought to be attained by the introduction
of that diversification of employment advocated throughout his work by
the author of _The Wealth of Nations_. How naturally the habit of
association arises, and how beneficial are its effects, may be seen
from a few extracts now offered to the reader, from an interesting
article in a recent English journal. In Russia, says its author--
"There does not prevail that marked distinction between the modes of
life of the dwellers in town and country which is found in other
countries; and the general freedom of trade, which in other nations
is still an object of exertion, has existed in Russia since a long
by-gone period. A strong manufacturing and industrial tendency
prevails in a large portion of Russia, which, based upon the communal
system, has led to the formation of what we may term 'national
association factories.'"
In corroboration of this view of the general freedom of internal
trade, we are told that, widely different from the system of western
Europe,
"There exists no such thing as a trade guild, or company, nor any
restraint of a similar nature. Any member of a commune can at
pleasure abandon the occupation he may be engaged in, and take up
another; all that he has to do in effecting the change is to quit the
commune in which his old trade is carried on, and repair to another,
where his new one is followed."
The tendency of manufacturing industry is
"For the most part entirely communal; the inhabitants of one village,
for example, are all shoemakers, in another smiths, in a third
tanners only, and so on. A natural division of labor thus prevails
exactly as in a factory. The members of the commune mutually assist
one another with capital or labor; purchases are usually made in
common, and sales also invariably, but they always send their
manufactures in a general mass to the towns and market-places, where
they have a common warehouse for their disposal."
In common with all countries that are as yet unable fully to carry out
the idea of Adam Smith, of compressing a large quantity of food and
wool into a piece of cloth, and thus fitting it for cheap
transportation to distant markets, and which are, therefore, largely
dependent on those distant markets for the sale of raw produce, the
cultivation of the soil in Russia is not--
"In general, very remunerative, and also can only be engaged in for a
few months in the year, which is, perhaps, the reason why the peasant
in Russia evinces so great an inclination for manufactures and other
branches of industry, the character of which generally depends on the
nature of raw products found in the districts where they are
followed."
Without diversification of employment much labour would be wasted, and
the people would find themselves unable to purchase clothing or
machinery of cultivation. Throughout the empire the labourer appears
to follow in the direction indicated by nature, working up the
materials on the land on which they are produced, and thus economizing
transportation. Thus--
"In the government of Yaroslaf the whole inhabitants of one place are
potters. Upward of two thousand inhabitants in another place are
rope-makers and harness-makers. The population of the district of
Uglitich in 1835 sent three millions of yards of linen cloth to the
markets of Rybeeck and Moscow. The peasants on one estate are all
candle-makers, on a second they are all manufacturers of felt hats,
and on a third they are solely occupied in smiths' work, chiefly the
making of axes. In the district of Pashechoe there are about seventy
tanneries, which give occupation to a large number of families; they
have no paid workmen, but perform all the operations among
themselves, preparing leather to the value of about twenty-five
thousand roubles a year, and which is disposed of on their account in
Rybeeck. In the districts where the forest-trees mostly consist of
lindens, the inhabitants are principally engaged in the manufacture
of matting, which, according to its greater or less degree of
fineness, is employed either for sacking or sail cloth, or merely as
packing mats. The linden-tree grows only on moist soils, rich in
black _humus_, or vegetable mould; but will not grow at all in sandy
soils, which renders it comparatively scarce in some parts of Russia,
while in others it grows abundantly. The mats are prepared from the
inner bark, and as the linden is ready for stripping at only fifteen
years of age, and indeed is best at that age, these trees form a rich
source of profit for those who dwell in the districts where they
grow."
We have here a system of combined exertion that tends greatly to
account for the rapid progress of Russia in population, wealth, and
power.
The men who thus associate for local purposes acquire information, and
with it the desire for more; and thus we find them passing freely, as
interest may direct them, from one part of the empire to another--a
state of things very different from that produced in England by the
law of settlement, under which men have everywhere been forbidden to
change their locality, and everywhere been liable to be seized and
sent back to their original parishes, lest they might at some time or
other become chargeable upon the new one in which they had desired to
find employment, for which they had sought in vain at home. "The
Russian" says our author--
"Has a great disposition for wandering about beyond his native place,
but not for travelling abroad. The love of home seems to be merged,
to a great extent, in love of country. A Russian feels himself at
home everywhere within Russia; and, in a political sense, this
rambling disposition of the people, and the close intercourse between
the inhabitants of the various provinces to which it leads,
contributes to knit a closer bond of union between the people, and to
arouse and maintain a national policy and a patriotic love of
country. Although he may quit his native place, the Russian never
wholly severs the connection with it; and, as we have before
mentioned, being fitted by natural talent to turn his hand to any
species of work, he in general never limits himself in his wanderings
to any particular occupation, but tries at several; but chooses
whatever may seem to him the most advantageous. When they pursue any
definite extensive trade, such as that of a carpenter, mason, or the
like, in large towns, they associate together, and form a sort of
trades' association, and the cleverest assume the position of a sort
of contractor for the labour required. Thus, if a nobleman should
want to build a house, or even a palace, in St. Petersburgh, he
applies to such a contractor, (_prodratshnik_,) lays before him the
elevation and plans, and makes a contract with him to do the work
required for a specified sum. The contractor then makes an agreement
with his comrades respecting the assistance they are to give, and the
share they are to receive of the profit; after which he usually sets
off to his native place, either alone or with some of his comrades,
to obtain the requisite capital to carry on the work with. The
inhabitants, who also have their share of the gains, readily make up
the necessary sum, _and every thing is done in trust and confidence_;
it is, indeed, very rare to hear of frauds in these matters. The
carpenters (_plotniki_) form a peculiar class of the workmen we have
described. As most of the houses in Russia, and especially in the
country parts, are built of wood, the number and importance of the
carpenters, as a class, are very great in comparison with other
countries. Almost every peasant, whatever other trade he may follow,
is also something of a carpenter, and knows how to shape and put
together the timbers for a dwelling. The _plotniki_ in the villages
are never any thing more than these general carpenters, and never
acquire any regular knowledge of their business. The real Russian
_plotniki_ seldom carries any other tools with him than an axe and a
chisel, and with these he wanders through all parts of the empire,
seeking, and everywhere finding, work."
The picture here presented is certainly widely different from that
presented by Great Britain and Ireland. A Russian appears to be at
home everywhere in Russia. He wanders where he will, everywhere
seeking and finding work; whereas an Irishman appears hardly to be at
home anywhere within the limits of the United Kingdom. In England, and
still more in Scotland, he is not acknowledged as a fellow-citizen. He
is _only an Irishman_--one of those half-savage Celts intended by
nature to supply the demand of England for cheap labour; that is, for
that labour which is to be rewarded by the scantiest supplies of food
and clothing. The difference in the moral effect of the two systems is
thus very great. The one tends to bring about that combination of
exertion which everywhere produces a kindly habit of feeling, whereas
the other tends everywhere to the production of dissatisfaction and
gloom; and it is so because that under it there is necessarily a
constant increase of the feeling that every man is to live by the
taxation of his neighbour, buying cheaply what that neighbour has to
sell, and selling dearly what that neighbour has to buy. The existence
of this state of things is obvious to all familiar with the current
literature of England, which abounds in exhibitions of the tendency of
the system to render man a tyrant to his wife, his daughter, his
horse, and even his dog. A recent English traveller in Russia presents
a different state of feeling as there existing. "The Russian
coachman," he says--
"Seldom uses his whip, and generally only knocks with it upon the
footboard of the sledge, by way of a gentle admonition to his steed,
with whom, meanwhile, he keeps up a running colloquy, seldom giving
him harder words than _'My brother--my friend--my little pigeon--my
sweetheart_.' 'Come, my pretty pigeon, make use of your legs,' he
will say. 'What, now! art blind? Come, be brisk! Take care of that
stone, there. Don't see it?--There, that's right! Bravo! hop, hop,
hop! Steady boy, steady! What art turning thy head for? Look out
boldly before thee!--Hurra! Yukh! Yukh!'
"I could not," he continues, "help contrasting this with the
offensive language we constantly hear in England from carters and
boys employed in driving horses. You are continually shocked by the
oaths used. They seem to think the horses will not go unless they
swear at them; and boys consider it manly to imitate this example,
and learn to swear too, and break God's commandments by taking his
holy name in vain. And this while making use of a fine, noble animal
he has given for our service and not for abuse. There is much
unnecessary cruelty in the treatment of these dumb creatures, for
they are often beaten when doing their best, or from not
understanding what their masters want them to do."
Of the truth of this, as regards England, the journals of that country
often furnish most revolting evidence; but the mere fact that there
exists there a society for preventing cruelty to animals, would seem
to show that its services had been much needed.
The manner in which the system of diversified labour is gradually
extending personal freedom among the people of Russia, and preparing
them eventually for the enjoyment of the highest degree of political
freedom, is shown in the following passage. "The landholders," says
the author before referred to--
"Having serfs, gave them permission to engage in manufactures, and to
seek for work for themselves where they liked, on the mere condition
of paying their lord a personal tax, (_obrok_). Each person is rated
according to his personal capabilities, talents, and capacities, at a
certain capital; and according to what he estimates himself capable
of gaining, he is taxed at a fixed sum as interest of that capital.
Actors and singers are generally serfs, and they are obliged to pay
_obrok_, for the exercise of their art, as much as the lowest
handicraftsman. In recent times, the manufacturing system of Western
Europe has been introduced into Russia, and the natives have been
encouraged to establish all sorts of manufactures on these models;
and it remains to be seen whether the new system will have the
anticipated effect of contributing to the formation of a middle
class, which hitherto has been the chief want in Russia as a
political state."
That such must be the effect cannot be doubted. The middle class has
everywhere grown with the growth of towns and other places of local
exchange, and men have become free precisely as they have been able to
unite together for the increase of the productiveness of their labour.
In every part of the movement which thus tends to the emancipation of
the serf, the government is seen to be actively co-operating, and it
is scarcely possible to read an account of what is there being done
without a feeling of great respect for the emperor, "so often," says a
recent writer, "denounced as a deadly foe to freedom--the true father
of his country, earnestly striving to develop and mature the rights of
his subjects."[179]
For male serfs, says the same author, at all times until recently,
military service was the only avenue to freedom. It required, however,
twenty years' service, and by the close of that time the soldier
became so accustomed to that mode of life that he rarely left it. A
few years since, however, the term was shortened to eight years, and
thousands of men are now annually restored to civil life, free men,
who but a few years previously had been slaves, liable to be bought
and sold with the land.
Formerly the lord had the same unlimited power of disposing of his
serfs that is now possessed by the people of our Southern States. The
serf was a mere chattel, an article of traffic and merchandise; and
husbands and wives, parents and children, were constantly liable to be
separated from each other. By an ukase of 1827, however, they were
declared an integral and inseparable portion of the soil. "The
immediate consequence of this decree," says Mr. Jerrmann,[180]
"Was the cessation, at least in its most repulsive form, of the
degrading traffic in human flesh, by sale, barter, or gift.
Thenceforward no serf could be transferred to another owner, except
by the sale of the land to which he belonged. To secure to itself the
refusal of the land and the human beings appertaining to it, and at
the same time to avert from the landholder the ruin consequent on
dealings with usurers, the government established an imperial
loan-bank, which made advances on mortgage of lands to the extent of
two-thirds of their value. The borrowers had to pay back each year
three per cent of the loan, besides three per cent. interest. If they
failed to do this, the Crown returned them the instalments already
paid, gave them the remaining third of the value of the property, and
took possession of the land and its population. This was the first
stage of freedom for the serfs. They became Crown peasants, held
their dwellings and bit of land as an hereditary fief from the Crown,
and paid annually for the same a sum total of five rubles, (about
four shillings for each male person;) a rent for which, assuredly, in
the whole of Germany, the very poorest farm is not to be had; to say
nothing of the consideration that in case of bad harvests,
destruction by hail, disease, &c., the Crown is bound to supply the
strict necessities of its peasant, and to find them in daily bread,
in the indispensable stock of cattle and seed-corn, to repair their
habitations, and so forth.
"By this arrangement, and in a short time, a considerable portion of
the lands of the Russian nobility became the property of the state,
and with it a large number of serfs became Crown peasants. This was
the first and most important step toward opening the road to freedom
to that majority of the Russian population which consists of slaves."
We have here the stage of preparation for that division of the land
which has, in all countries of the world, attended the growth of
wealth and population, and which is essential to further growth not
only in wealth but in freedom. Consolidation of the land has
everywhere been the accompaniment of slavery, and so must it always
be.
At the next step, we find the emperor bestowing upon the serf, as
preparatory to entire freedom, certain civil rights. An ukase
"Permitted them to enter into contracts. Thereby was accorded to them
not only the right of possessing property, but the infinitely higher
blessing of a legal recognition of their moral worth as men. Hitherto
the serf was recognised by the state only as a sort of beast in human
form. He could hold no property, give no legal evidence, take no
oath. No matter how eloquent his speech, he was dumb before the law.
He might have treasures in his dwelling, the law knew him only as a
pauper. His word and honor were valueless compared to those of the
vilest freeman. In short, morally he could not be said to exist. The
Emperor Nicholas gave to the serfs, that vast majority of his
subjects, the first sensation of moral worth, the first throb of
self-respect, the first perception of the rights and dignity and
duty of man! What professed friend of the people can boast to have
done more, or yet so much, for so many millions of men?"--_Ibid_, p.
24.
"Having given the serfs power to hold property, the emperor now," says
our author, "taught them to prize the said property above all in the
interest of their freedom." The serf
"Could, not buy his own freedom, but he became free by the purchase
of the patch of soil to which he was linked. To such purchase the
right of contract cleared his road. The lazy Russian, who worked with
an ill-will toward his master, doing as little as he could for the
latter's profit, toiled day and night for his own advantage. Idleness
was replaced by the diligent improvement of his farm, brutal
drunkenness by frugality and sobriety; the earth, previously
neglected, requited the unwonted care with its richest treasures. By
the magic of industry, wretched hovels were transformed into
comfortable dwellings, wildernesses into blooming fields, desolate
steppes and deep morasses into productive land; whole communities,
lately sunk in poverty, exhibited unmistakable signs of competency
and well-doing. The serfs, now allowed to enter into contracts, lent
the lord of the soil the money of which he often stood in need, on
the same conditions as the Crown, receiving in security the land they
occupied, their own bodies, and the bodies of their wives and
children. The nobleman preferred the serfs' loan to the government's
loan, because, when pay-day came for the annual interest and
instalment, the Crown, if he was not prepared to pay, took possession
of his estate, having funds wherewith to pay him the residue of its
value. The parish of serfs, which had lent money to its owner, lacked
these funds. Pay-day came, the debtor did not pay, but neither could
the serfs produce the one-third of the value of the land which they
must disburse to him in order to be free. Thus they lost their
capital and did not gain their liberty. But Nicholas lived! the
father of his subjects.
"Between the anxious debtor and the still more anxious creditor now
interposed an imperial ukase, which in such cases opened to the
parishes of serfs the imperial treasury. Mark this; for it is worthy,
to be noted; the Russian imperial treasury was opened to the serfs,
that they might purchase their freedom!
"The Government might simply have released the creditors from their
embarrassment by paying the debtor the one-third still due to him,
and then land and tenants belonged to the state;--one parish the more
of _Crown peasants_. Nicholas did not adopt that course. He lent the
serfs the money they needed to buy themselves from their master, and
for this loan (a third only of the value) they mortgaged themselves
and their lands to the Crown, paid annually three per cent. interest
and three per cent. of the capital, and would thus in about thirty
years be free, and proprietors of their land! That they would be able
to pay off this third was evident, since, to obtain its amount they
had still the same resources which enabled them to save up the
two-thirds already paid. Supposing, however, the very worst,--that
through inevitable misfortunes, such as pestilence, disease of
cattle, &c., they were prevented satisfying the rightful claims of
the Crown, in that case the Crown paid them back the two-thirds value
which they had previously disbursed to their former owner, and they
became a parish of Crown peasants, whose lot, compared to their
earlier one, was still enviable. But not once in a hundred times do
such cases occur, while, by the above plan, whole parishes gradually
acquire their freedom, not by a sudden and violent change, which
could not fail to have some evil consequences, but in course of time,
after a probation of labour and frugality, and after thus attaining
to the knowledge that without these two great factors of true
freedom, no real liberty can possibly be durable."--_Ibid_.
The free peasants as yet constitute small class, but they live
"As free and happy men, upon their own land; are active, frugal, and,
without exception, well off. This they must be, for considerable
means are necessary for the purchase of their freedom; and, once
free, and in possession of a farm of their own, their energy and
industry, manifested even in a state of slavery, are redoubled by the
enjoyment of personal liberty, and their earnings naturally increase
in a like measure.
"The second class, the crown peasants, are far better off (setting
aside, of course, the consciousness of freedom) than the peasants of
Germany. They must furnish their quota of recruits, but that is their
only material burden. Besides that, they annually pay to the Crown a
sum of five rubles (about four shillings) for each male person of the
household. Supposing the family to include eight working men, which
is no small number for a farm, the yearly tribute paid amounts to
thirty-two shillings. And what a farm that must be which employs
eight men all the year round! In what country of civilized Europe has
the peasant so light a burden to bear? How much heavier those which
press upon the English farmer, the French, the German, and above all
the Austrian, who often gives up three-fourths of his harvest in
taxes. If the Crown peasant be so fortunate as to be settled in the
neighbourhood of a large town, his prosperity soon exceeds that even
of the Altenburg husbandmen, said to be the richest in all Germany.
On the other hand, he can never purchase his freedom; hitherto, at
least, no law of the Crown has granted him this privilege."--_Ibid_,
156.
That this, however, is the tendency of every movement, must be
admitted by all who have studied the facts already given, and who read
the following account of the commencement of local self-government:--
"But what would our ardent anti-Russians say, if I took them into the
interior of the empire, gave them an insight into the organization of
parishes, and showed them, to their infinite astonishment, what they
never yet dreamed of, that the whole of that organization is based
upon republican principles, that there every thing has its origin in
election by the people, and that that was already the case at a
period when the great mass of German democrats did not so much as
know the meaning of popular franchise. Certainly the Russian serfs do
not know at the present day what it means; but without knowing the
name of the thing, without having ever heard a word of Lafayette's
ill-omened '_trône monarchique, environné d'institutions
républicaines_,' they choose their own elders, their administrators,
their dispensers of justice and finance, and never dream that they,
_slaves_, enjoy and benefit by privileges by which some of the most
civilized nations have proved themselves incapable of profiting.
"Space does not here permit a more extensive sketch of what the
Emperor Nicholas has done, and still is daily doing, for the true
freedom of his subjects; but what I have here brought forward must
surely suffice to place him, in the eyes of every unprejudiced
person, in the light of a real lover of his people. That his care has
created a paradise that no highly criminal abuse of power, no
shameful neglect prevails in the departments of justice and
police--it is hoped no reflecting reader will infer from this
exposition of facts. But the still-existing abuses alter nothing in
my view of the emperor's character, of his assiduous efforts to raise
his nation out of the deep slough in which it still is partly sunk,
of his efficacious endeavours to elevate his people to a knowledge
and use of their rights as men--alter nothing in my profound
persuasion that Czar Nicholas I. is the true father of his
country."--_Ibid_, 27.
We are told that the policy, of Russia is adverse to the progress of
civilization, while that of England is favourable to it, and that we
should aid the latter in opposing the former. How is this to be
proved? Shall we look to Ireland for the proof? If we do, we shall
meet there nothing but famine, pestilence, and depopulation. Or to
Scotland, where men, whose ancestors had occupied the same spot for
centuries are being hunted down that they may be transported to the
shores of the St. Lawrence, there to perish, as they so recently have
done, of cold and of hunger? Or to India, whose whole class of small
proprietors and manufacturers has disappeared under the blighting
influence of her system, and whose commerce diminishes, now from year
to year? Or to Portugal, the weakest and most wretched of the
communities of Europe? Or to China, poisoned with _smuggled_ opium,
that costs the nation annually little less than forty millions of
dollars, without which the Indian government could not be maintained?
Look where we may, we see a growing tendency toward slavery wherever
the British system is permitted to obtain; whereas freedom grows in
the ratio in which that system is repudiated.
That such must necessarily be the case will be seen by every reader
who will for a moment reflect on the difference between the effect of
the Russian system on the condition of Russian women, and that of the
British system on the condition of those of India. In the former there
is everywhere arising a demand for women to be employed in the lighter
labour of conversion, and thus do they tend from day to day to become
more self-supporting, and less dependent on the will of husbands,
brothers, or sons. In the other the demand for their labour has passed
away, and their condition declines, and so it must continue to do
while Manchester shall be determined upon closing the domestic demand
for cotton and driving the whole population to the production of
sugar, rice, and cotton, for export to England.
The system of Russia is attractive of population, and French, German,
and American mechanics of every description find demand for their
services. That of England is repulsive, as is seen by the _forced_
export of men from England, Scotland, Ireland, and India, now followed
by whole cargoes of women [181] sent out by aid of public
contributions, presenting a spectacle almost as humiliating to the
pride of the sex as can be found in the slave bazaar of
Constantinople.