_THE EXILES._
Reasons for and history of deportation to Siberia.--Number
of exiles.--Their education.--Crimes.--Sentences.--Loss
of rights.--Privileges.--Proportion of hard-labour
convicts.--Where located.--Release.--Escapes.--Causes and
methods of flight.--Transport.--A convoy of exiles.--Moscow
charity.--Conveyance to Perm and Tiumen.--Their
distribution.--Order of march.--Sea-borne exiles.--Mistakes of
English newspapers.--Conveyance of political exiles.
In dealing with criminals, the Russian Government has to act as best
it can for the good of the community in general. If, in particular
cases, it seems likely that the criminal may be reformed, he is sent
to one of the prisons or houses of correction at home; but if, on the
other hand, the crime of the malefactor demands a severe punishment,
and, after repeated correction, he seems to be incorrigible, then he
is banished to Siberia, the people being thus rid of a corrupting
member of society, whilst another unit is sent to assist in developing
the resources of a large territory of the Russian empire, which has
great need of population. This, I presume, is the theory, or part of
it, of the deportation of prisoners to distant parts of the empire.[1]
The number of ordinary exiles sent to Siberia for several years
past has been from 17,000 to 20,000 per annum; but this includes
wives and children who choose to accompany the prisoners. Of these
nearly 8,000, on their arrival in Siberia, are set free to get their
own living; about 3,000 of them being sent to Eastern and 5,000 to
Western Siberia. The exiles come from all parts of Russia in Europe,
and include about 300 a year from Finland. In 1879 there were 898
sent from Poland. Some idea may be formed of the education of the
exiles from the fact that on the day we visited Tiumen prison there
were, out of 470 prisoners, 42 who could read and write well, 32 who
could do so a little, and 12 who could sign their names. At Tiumen,
however, we heard from one who had to do with a great many exiles,
and who had several statistics about them, that one-third of those
with whom he had been brought into contact could read. Again, in the
district of Kansk, in Eastern Siberia, in 1877, of 226 criminals, only
two were marked as “well-educated,” whilst in 1878, of 182 prisoners,
none stood high enough, intellectually, to be thus designated. The
figures from Kansk are not quite to the point in speaking of European
Russia, but they help, with others, to give an approximate idea, not
only of the education, but also of the social rank of the Siberian
criminals. Again, for statistical purposes, the Russians are sometimes
marked off into five classes, thus: nobles, merchants, ecclesiastics,
citizens, and peasants; and in prison the higher grades receive better
allowance, and are not mixed with the peasant prisoners, but have rooms
apart. In going through the principal prisons of Siberia, however, we
found the number of rooms thus occupied decidedly small; so that this
observation, taken with the educational state of the prisoners, would
seem to confirm what I was told by one prison official, that probably
not more than 3 or 4 per cent. of the exiles are from the upper classes.
As to the crimes of the exiles, they are not all political, nor even
chiefly so. A large proportion--4,000 out of 18,000, or say 20 per
cent.--of them are charged with no one particular offence, except that
they have rendered themselves obnoxious to the community among which
they lived. If a man in Russia be incorrigibly bad, and will not pay
his taxes nor support his wife and family, but leaves these things to
be done by his neighbours, his commune--which may consist of one or
more villages--meet in their _mir_, or village parliament, vote the man
a nuisance, and adjudge that he be sent, at their expense, to Siberia.
This judgment is submitted to higher authorities, and, unless just
cause be shown to the contrary, is confirmed. The man is then taken to
Siberia, not to be imprisoned, but to get his living as a colonist.
Those sent thus by the villages, I was told, are chiefly drunkards. We
saw a whole wardful of them at Tiumen, dressed in private clothes, and
not in prison garb; and a second ward, of a similar mixed multitude,
consisting of men, women, and children. The perpetrators of political
crimes, as those of the “black Nihilists,” are, when caught, usually
accommodated with free lodgings in Siberia; and so with revolutionary
offenders, who make insurrection in Poland, Circassia, or elsewhere.
Of offenders such as these I must speak hereafter. Formerly religious
dissenters were largely deported, but this has not been done since the
proclamation of what may, in a fashion, be called religious liberty,
unless in the case of one or two--more especially one sect--whose
practices no enlightened Government could tolerate, and which are so
extraordinary that, if they obtained universal acceptance, there would
be no further increase of population, and the human race would become
extinct. The fact is that the great mass of exiles are nothing more
nor less than ordinary criminals, such as may be found in any of the
prisons of Europe.[2]
The sentences of the exiles vary widely according as they are condemned
to one or the other of two classes, namely: those who lose all their
rights, and those who lose only partial or political rights, which
deprivations may be thus explained:--
Those who lose all their rights are not in an enviable position. These
are some of the things they lose:--If a man have a title or official
rank, he is degraded. An exile’s marriage rights are broken, so that
his wife is free to marry another. Neither his word nor his bond is of
any value. He cannot sign a legal document or serve any office, either
municipal or imperial. He can hold no property, nor do anything legal
in his own name. In prison he must wear convict’s clothes, and have his
head half shaved; and, in the case of a woman, she cannot marry after
her release from prison till by good conduct she has placed herself
in a certain category; and, whether man or woman, they may, for new
crimes, if the authorities see fit, after they have served their time
in prison, and are living as colonists, be sent back again. They may
be thrashed with rods and with the “_plète_,” and, even should they be
murdered, probably little trouble would be taken to find the murderer.
In fact, as the words imply, they lose all their rights, though I
believe they can appeal to the law in case of being grossly wronged.
I have said that an exile’s marriage rights are broken, and I was
told that it is the same with convicts in America. Were it not so, it
might be very hard upon a young wife whose husband, for instance, had
committed murder, and who, for her husband’s crime and banishment,
should be compelled to remain single for the rest of her life. A
Russian wife with her children, however, may accompany the husband
if she chooses; in which case they go with the exile and receive from
the Government prison food and accommodation. If, on the other hand, a
husband wishes to accompany a convict wife, he travels at his own cost.
To the honour of the Russian women be it said that the proportion of
men accompanied by their wives and families is one in every six. The
proportion of women accompanied by their husbands is, I am told, not
exactly known, though it is very much less.
Those who suffer the loss of particular rights lose certain of their
privileges (but not family or property rights), and are settled in
Siberia, to get their living in any way they are able. They may,
however, in some cases, have first to serve for a period in prison;
or, again, they may be allowed to live in their own houses and give a
portion of their time to Government work.
Commonly, they are condemned first to serve a certain time in
confinement, with or without labour. If they behave well they are,
after a while, and in some cases, allowed to live outside the prison
with their families, if they have any, but still to do their allotted
work, until the period arrives for them to be liberated and located
like colonists. Some of the women who are condemned to the far east
have the good fortune to be taken as domestic servants by officers, and
even favoured civilians, who, in a new country where ordinary servants
are not to be had, are allowed for this purpose to take the prisoners,
subject to inspection, of course. Lastly, some exiles, though
comparatively few, I believe, are condemned to prison, or to prison and
labour, for life.[3]
The localities to which the exiles are sent vary according to their
crimes. Speaking generally, those deprived of partial rights are sent
to Western, and those deprived of all their rights to Eastern, Siberia.
On this point I have no official statistics, but a legal officer gave
me these particulars concerning the location of convicts. Murderers are
sent to Kara. My finding 800 there would seem to confirm this, only
that their presence was manifest in so many of the other prisons also.
Political prisoners go to Kara, to the Trans-Baikal district, and (as
I heard from other sources) to the Yakutsk government; also to this
latter province are sent those who commit fresh crimes in Siberia.
Vagrants or vagabonds are dispatched to the far east, to the government
of the Sea Coast and Sakhalin. On the other hand, Western Siberia
would seem to be reserved for minor offenders, and those deprived
of certain particular rights only. It should be observed, however,
that exiles, wherever they may be, are under police inspection, are
furnished with papers which they have to show at intervals, and which
tie them to a certain place, whence they can move to a distance only
by permission. When at large, and in some cases when in prison, the
exiles may correspond with their friends through the post; but the
letters must of course be read by the authorities. The hardest part of
the lot of those who lose all their rights seems to be that they cannot
look forward to the hope of returning. Not that a release is _never_
granted even to these; for I am told that political offenders are
sometimes seen hurried out of, as fast as they are hurried into, exile.
The late Emperor, too, when he came to the throne, began his reign by
an act of clemency on a larger scale, and allowed certain exiles whom
his father had banished to return. Again, I have heard of a Polish
exile in good circumstances who was fortunate enough to win the love
of an English young lady connected (by name at all events) with one of
the ducal families of Great Britain, through which it is said the ear
was gained of a member first of the English royal family, then of the
imperial family of Russia, and finally of the Emperor himself.[4] I
have met with another case of a released exile who was liberated under
curious circumstances. He gave me his story thus:--When Alexander II.
visited Paris in the time of Napoleon III., the Tsar asked the Emperor
if there were anything he could do for him. Upon which the Emperor
replied: “You have a Frenchman who, in young and silly days, joined
the Polish insurrection. He was made prisoner, and is now in Siberia.
Will you do me the favour to release him?” The request was granted,
a messenger despatched, the happy prisoner in forty-five days and
nights drove back from the mines to Moscow, not with a couple of horses
merely, but troika fashion, between a couple of gendarmes, and received
his pardon. But such cases, of course, are rare.
It is well known that many of the exiles escape--some from the prisons,
and others from the districts where they are living free. A Russian
authoress, “O. K.,” in “Russia and England from 1876 to 1880,” says
that in January 1876, out of 51,122 exiles supposed to be in Tobolsk,
only 34,293 could be found, which figures an Englishman living in
the Tobolsk government (speaking offhand) told me he should doubt,
though he thought “O. K.’s” statement _might_ be right regarding the
government of Tomsk, in which the same authoress states that 5,000
were missing out of 30,000. For my own figures I am indebted to a
prison official very high in position, who told me that nearly 700
get away yearly, and in 1876 as many as 952 escaped the control of
the police. Thus the mere feat of running away does not seem to be
difficult; but this does not imply that it is equally easy to get away
from the country. A few roubles slipped into the hands of a Cossack or
petty officer have a wonderful effect in blinding his eyes. Again, an
escape is sometimes made from the gold-mines thus:--The convicts work
in gangs, and one lies in a ditch for the others to cover him with
branches and rubbish. The numbers are called on leaving off work, and
one is missing. Search proves fruitless, and, after all have left the
mine, the man rises from his temporary grave and makes for the woods.
The great difficulty is not to get away, but to keep away. The country
is so vast that they cannot travel far before the approach of winter,
and then, if they have escaped in company, they have the choice of
returning to prison food or eating one another. They have, moreover,
another difficulty with the natives. In the Trans-Baikal district, the
Buriats are said to hunt down escaped convicts, and shoot them like
vermin; which is probably explained by what was told me of the Gilyaks
on the Lower Amur, that they receive three roubles a-head for every
escaped convict they bring to the police, whether dead or alive. The
natives argue thus: “If you shoot a squirrel, you get only his skin;
whereas, if you shoot a _varnak_” (which is the nickname they give to
convicts), “you get his skin and his clothing too.” Thus it is very
difficult for them to get out of the country.
There are several reasons, however, which conduce to their running
away. A long-term prisoner, for instance, condemned to twenty years’
labour, makes his escape from a penal colony, wanders about the country
during the summer months, and, on the approach of winter, commits a
crime and is caught. He is asked for his name, to which he replies that
it is _Ivan Nepomnoostchi_--that is, “John Know-nothing.” He is asked
where he comes from. He replies that he entirely forgets. What has been
his occupation? His memory fails him. He is asked for his papers. He
says that he has none, or perhaps trumps up a story that he has lost
them--and so on. Accordingly he is tried, and is sentenced, say to
five years’ hard labour, for which he inwardly thanks the Court, and
goes off, it may be, to a new prison, having effected a saving of the
sorrows of eighteen years. Should he not play his game aright, however,
and should he be detected, then his past service goes for nothing; he
is most likely flogged, and sent back to a harder berth than he had
before. Some run away under the influence of drink, and discover their
mistake too late. Again, other reasons which may be supposed to conduce
to flight are--the fear of punishment for new faults committed, the
desire to get back to social and family ties in Europe, or, in the
case of those twice imprisoned, to ties which they have formed whilst
settled in Siberia.
I am disposed to think that the severance of family and social ties is
with many the really hard pinch of Siberian exile. One lady, who had a
convict for her nurse, told me that she gave her her own clothes, paid
her £1 a month, provided her a home in the best house in the province,
to say nothing of sundry perquisites, and yet she sometimes found her,
when alone, in tears; and, on asking what was the matter, the answer
was--“Oh, if I only knew something of my friends in Russia!” She had
not learnt to write, her friends were in the same position, and the
difficulty of procuring an amanuensis, together with uncertainty as
to address, made communication almost impossible; and so she said she
could not tell whether her friends were dead or alive, or what might
be their fate. I recollect, too, in a prison at Uleaborg, in Finland,
finding a woman who had escaped from exile, of whom I asked how she
liked Siberia; to which she replied that as regards the country she
had nothing to complain of; but, she pathetically added, “I did _so_
want to see my mother!” And to do this she had taken flight, during
three years had traversed more than 2,000 miles, had reached her old
home, and was then retaken!
But nothing has yet been said of the transport of the exiles. Of old
they had to walk all the way, and the journey and stoppages occupied a
long time. The woman at Uleaborg said she was eight months going from
Petersburg to Tobolsk. In this matter, however, as in many others, the
lot of the banished was much mitigated during the reign of the late
Emperor, especially after 1867. The introduction of railways and river
steamboats greatly facilitated this. Accordingly, those in Russia who
are condemned to Siberia are now first gathered to a central prison
in Moscow, where they may be seen entering the city in droves. A very
affecting sight was the first of these droves I saw in 1874. The van
consisted of soldiers with fixed bayonets. Behind them marched the
worst of the men prisoners, with chains on their ankles, the clanking
of which as they moved was most unmusical. Then followed men without
fetters, but chained by the hand to what looked like a long iron rod;
and next after them the women convicts; and then the most touching
part of the whole--women, not convicts, but wives who had elected to
be banished with their husbands. Then there were wagons containing
children, the old and infirm, baggage, etc., the rear being brought up
by armed soldiers. As the prisoners moved along the street, passengers
stepped from the pavement to give them presents. To this the guards who
walked at the side made no objection, and in this way, in some of the
towns, the prisoners gather, or used to gather, a considerable sum of
money; for the woman at Uleaborg said that the money given to her drove
of 156 prisoners, during their three days’ stay in Moscow, amounted to
about 30_s._ each.[5] More recently, however, a Pole, who began his
walking in 1871, farther east, at Perm, told me his receipts from the
wayside charity of the people were insignificant.
Being gathered then at Moscow, the prisoners are sent off in droves of
about 700 each by rail to Nijni Novgorod. This commences in spring, as
soon as the river navigation opens, and two or three parties go off
each week. They began, the year of my visit, on May 8th. On reaching
Nijni Novgorod they are placed in a large barge built for the purpose,
which carries from 600 to 800, and is tugged by steamer to Perm.
Hence they are taken twice a week by rail to Ekaterineburg; 350 on
Wednesday, and 500 on Saturday. Their walking, however, does not
yet begin; for the 200 miles remaining to Tiumen is got over by
conveyances, each of which, drawn by three horses, carries about six
prisoners; and thus they arrive at the first prison in Siberia proper.
Now begins their distribution. Those who are condemned to Western
Siberia are assigned to particular towns or villages, whither they
are sent by water, if possible, or, if not, on foot. Those, however,
who are condemned to Eastern Siberia are placed in another barge, and
taken on the Tura, Tobol, Irtish, Obi, and the Tom, to Tomsk, whence
their walking eastward begins. When not hindered by accidental causes,
they usually rest one day and walk two, marching sometimes twenty
miles or more a day. Temporary prisons called _étapes_ are erected
along the road to receive them for the night, and in the towns are
larger buildings called _perisylnie_ prisons, in which they may rest,
if necessary, a longer time, and where there are hospitals, medical
attendants, etc. Thus they go on day after day, week after week,
month after month, to their destined place or prison, to Irkutsk, to
Yakutsk, to Chita, or, if perchance they are destined to Sakhalin, they
continue to Stretinsk on the Shilka, thence by steam on the river Amur
to Nikolaefsk, and so by ship to the island. Two years since, however,
the Russian Government adopted a new and better plan with prisoners
intended for Sakhalin, and, instead of sending them across Asia,
shipped them from Odessa, _viâ_ the Suez Canal, to the Pacific direct.
A large merchant steamer, the _Nijni Novgorod_, was employed for the
purpose, sailing under the Government flag, which made the passage
in about two months, the prisoners arriving in excellent health, and
without one death on the passage.
I mention this fact the more readily as I heard it in the Admiral’s
house at Vladivostock, where the ship arrived a week or two before I
did, and where it was said that one of the Japanese newspapers had
copied from an English paper to the effect that half the prisoners
had died on the passage, and that the rest were in a terribly sick
condition. As an Englishman I was called to account for this, and
I found that the minds of some of my Russian friends were very
sore with the editors of English newspapers, by reason of alleged
misrepresentations received at their hands. They complained, moreover,
that whereas some of the newspapers were ready enough to publish
against the Russians all they knew that was bad, they were slow to
acknowledge the good, and were not always ready to recall what had
been said, even when proved to have been false. Not having the facts
before me, I could only put in a plea regarding the desire of English
journals to be first in the field with news, and the consequent rapid
manner in which editorial work has to be done. Knowing something of an
editor’s difficulties, I felt justified in expressing the hope that
there had been no intentional departure from fairness, uprightness, and
integrity. I am not sure, however, that I should have been ready with
an answer had I known how the case really stood.[6]
I have thus described the transport of ordinary exiles to Siberia.
There is another category of prisoners--arch-heretics in political or
revolutionary affairs, Nihilists, etc., of whom the authorities wish
to take special care, who are not sent with the common herd, but are
individually placed between two gendarmes, and sent off to travel alone
direct to their destination. I am of opinion that the popular notion as
to their numbers is exaggerated, and that they are much fewer than is
commonly supposed. I shall offer my reasons for thinking thus later on.
These persons, while travelling, are never allowed, under any pretence,
to be out of sight of their keepers, who are charged to allow no one to
speak to them. This, however, is not always carried out to the letter;
for a friend of mine, coming one day to a swollen river in Siberia,
near Omsk, where a gendarme was also waiting with a young lady prisoner
of seventeen, was allowed to speak to her, and she told him that since
she left Petersburg, a distance of 1,700 miles, she had not once had
a gendarme out of her presence. When there are several prisoners of
this character travelling in a manner together, they are kept separate,
and are not allowed to speak to each other. But even this cannot
always be enforced; for not long before my arrival at Tiumen a batch
of about ten such persons had passed. On arriving at Ekaterineburg, a
separate carriage was taken for each; but when they came at Tiumen to
the riverside, standing and waiting for the steamer, they were able
to snatch a few moments for conversing together. I know of another
instance, in which a young woman had been suspected of a political
offence, and been warned by the authorities to desist; but, not
profiting by the warning, she was arrested, sent off with a gendarme,
and on her way met a gentleman whom she asked to convey a letter to
her friends. This of course was against the gendarme’s orders, but, on
being assured that the letter should be only of a private nature, and
three roubles being put into his hand, he allowed it to be written and
taken. This was in European Russia. Further east they become still more
lax.
There is yet a third case, in which exiles are permitted to journey
by themselves like ordinary travellers. We met a lady who was forced
to quit Petersburg at twenty-four hours’ notice; but owing to her
position, or through interest, she was allowed to travel alone; and
in this manner, by reason of illness on the way, during which her
money was stolen, she was a twelvemonth reaching her location in
Eastern Siberia. This, however, was the only case we met with of an
exile travelling privately, and I presume similar cases are very
exceptional. Whilst the exiles are on the march, and, in certain
cases, whilst they are living like colonists, they receive clothing and
an allowance for food, either in money or in kind; but this subject
will be best treated under the description of prisons, to which
subsequent chapters will be devoted.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] According to M. Réclus, the first decree of banishment fell
upon the insurrectionists of Uglitch, in 1591; in the days of the
Tsar Boris Godunof, and for a century afterwards Siberia received
scarcely any exiles but State prisoners. At the end of the seventeenth
century, however, some of the vanquished Little Russians of the
Ukraine were deported thither; and they were followed by the religious
dissenters--the first accompanied by their families. The Streltzi
were banished by Peter the Great to garrisons in the most distant
parts of the empire; and after the reign of Peter, the intrigues of
the palace were the cause of exile to some of the Court celebrities,
such as Menchikoff, Dolgoruki, Biron, Munich, Tolstoï, and others,
some of whom, however, were brought back when their friends came into
favour. In 1758 began the deportation of Poles to Siberia, but their
banishment in large numbers dates from the reign of Catherine II., with
the confederates of Bar, and then with the companions of Kosciuzko.
Nine hundred Poles, having served under Napoleon, were exiled to
Siberia, and large numbers of the insurrectionists of 1830 followed.
The exiles whose names awaken perhaps the most sympathy among the
Russians were the Decembrists of 1826, who endeavoured to deprive the
Emperor Nicholas of his throne; but of these, and political prisoners
generally, I shall treat hereafter in a separate chapter.
[2] There are upwards of thirty crimes for the commission of one or
more of which a man may be sent to Siberia. In fact, I have been told
that all the crimes of the country are reduced to these thirty-three
heads, viz.: insubordination to authorities; stealing or losing
official documents; escape, or abetting the escape, of prisoners;
embezzlement of Government property; forgery while in Government
employ; blasphemy; heresy and dissent; sacrilege; sheltering runaways;
forging coin or paper money; without passport, or passport with term
not renewed; vagrancy; bad conduct and petty crimes; murder, and
suspicion thereof; attempted suicide; wounding with intent to do
grievous bodily harm; rape and seduction; insult; attacking with intent
to wound; holding property falsely; practices of the “Scoptsi”; arson;
robbery and burglary; thieving and roguery; horse-stealing; dishonesty
and false actions; debt; dishonouring the name of the Emperor; assuming
false names or titles; bestiality; usury and extortion; eluding
military service; smuggling and illicit distilling.
[3] Some idea may be formed of the proportion of the banished who are
condemned to hard labour by observing that, of 17,867 exiles passing
eastwards through Tiumen prison in 1878 (the year before my visit),
2,252, or one-seventh, were transported for hard labour, and the
remainder for “residence for life, or for certain terms in East and
West Siberia.” I was told likewise by Mr. Ignatoff, at Tiumen, that
about 2,500 hard-labour convicts passed yearly through his hands, and
that they spent the first part of their time at Tobolsk. It may be
further noticed from my statistics, that during the same year which
saw the above number of exiles going eastwards, there passed through
the same prison 2,629 persons returning westwards “to their respective
homes in Russia;” which expression I do not understand, since I am
informed from an official source that the number of persons returning
after temporary exile is very small. The law permits those only to
go back who are banished by the communes (and then not without their
permission), and those who are deprived of _particular_ rights. Four
hundred and sixty-two of those condemned to “hard labour,” and 3,488 of
those going into “residence,” are marked as _minors_,--that is to say,
children of exiles, and _offenders_ under twenty-one years of age; of
which last, I am told, the annual total sent to Siberia does not exceed
300.
[4] I have heard parts of this story in various places--in Hampshire,
in Devon, in Siberia, and on the coast of the Pacific--of the heroic
conduct of a Scotch Professor, who gallantly escorted this young lady
to her lover in Siberia, sat by her side for 3,000 miles, watched over
her, saw her married, and then, returning, gave no rest to friends or
officials till he had obtained the Pole’s release. The incidents would
doubtless suffice for a three-volumed novel, which, however, I will not
begin, as I know only one of the parties concerned, and him only by
correspondence, and I have not had the recital from his own lips.
[5] M. Andreoli, in the story of his exile, remarks that the Moscow
merchants had established a considerable fund for dividing among
prisoners going to Siberia, and that when a party arrived, the director
of the fund was at once informed. He then divided equally among them
the means at his disposal, which was never less than 14_s._ or 16_s._,
and sometimes as much as 30_s._ or 32_s._ to each person. Men, women,
and children shared alike, so that a man with a family got substantial
help; but this fund, I am told, no longer exists. Both M. Andreoli and
Baron Rosen speak of the kindness of the Siberian peasants to exiles on
their journey.
[6] On reaching England I was referred to what had appeared in the
_Daily Telegraph_, first, on June 2nd, under the heading, “Reign of
Terror in Russia,” where it was stated that “a large number of convicts
are about to be despatched to Sakhalin from Odessa, the service which
provides for the ordinary transportation of criminals to Siberia
being already overtaxed.” Again, on July 28th, under the same heading
appeared half a column of large print, speaking of “the appalling
evidence of Russian barbarity” which their “own correspondent” had
obtained. The correspondent informant visited the ship, and observed
to the officer in command that the prisoners so badly provided for
would never survive the passage, to which the Russian officer was
said to have replied, “Well, so much the better for all parties if
they do not,” and so on. On the next day, under the heading “Russian
Barbarities,” it appeared that Mr. Joseph Cowen asked in Parliament
whether the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs had received
information that 700 persons, mostly men and women of education, had
been packed in the hold of a small ship--(the _Daily Telegraph_ had
described it the same day as a man-of-war of 4,000 tons)--that 250
had died on board, and 150 were landed in a dying state, etc. Most of
this appeared in large print, and attention was called thereto. But by
August 5th a change had come over the scene, and all or nearly all the
foregoing was found to be untrue; and then, in their _smallest_ print,
simply headed “Reuter’s Telegram,” the _Daily Telegraph_ informed its
readers in six lines that “the _Novoe Vremya_ of August 4th states that
the steamer _Nijni Novgorod_ arrived at Nagasaki on Friday last, and
that the convicts were well in health.” Now here would appear to have
been ample room for, if not an apology, yet an expression of regret
that the Russians had been so very much misrepresented; but, if such
appeared, it has escaped me. On August 9th, the Russian journals are
alluded to as joining in a chorus of indignation against Messrs. Cowen
and Mundella for their motion in Parliament, but nothing is recalled of
what had been said. I know not how the foregoing extracts may strike
the reader, but the perusal of them did not cause me to plume myself on
the score of English fairness and our supposed love of justice.