RUSSIAN REFORMS.
THE tardiness and inaccuracy with which almost all intelli- gence is reported from Russia is greatly to be regretted. Great things are transacting themselves in that Empire of which Europe only now and then catches a faint echo, and principles hardly yet recognized in the West are being fought ought on a scale as vast as the results to which they must lead. An old Asiatic monarchy is there trying hard to trans- mute itself into a Csesarism; a race of educated, wealthy, but defeated slaveholders to develop into grand seigneurs of the modern type ; a vast people but just emancipated to realize so much of communism as is consistent with the existence ameng them of an autocratic throne. This was to a large extent the situation of France before the Revolution as De Tocqueville has described it, but with these differences—that the Crown is allied with the peasantry and the bureaucracy, instead of the bureaucracy alone, that the nobles are conscious of the fate which awaits them, and that the masses have as yet found no mouthpieces either among ruined nobles, or the bourgeois families, or the philosophers, as the French people did. The great act of emancipation has been completed, and its results in a political sense are beginning to be under- ' stood. In the first place, the Czar has become Caesar, that is, has accepted the position of representative of the masses as well as autocrat, and is absolute beyond even Russian precedent. There were things which Alexander and Nicholas, autocratic as they were, dare not attempt, lest the coalesced lords of the soil, followed each by his serfs, should resort either to rebellion or assassination. Alexander, as General Wilson reports, was compelled to change his whole policy by a menace from his great officers, and Nicholas twice failed in efforts to modernize the conscription. Now the people have accepted the Czar, and there is nothing he dare not attempt. He has freed them and their homesteads, and a wave of his finger, a rumour that he had been poisoned, would bring the enfranchised population at the throats of their former lords. In the singular debate among the nobles of Moscow—reported to the discredit of the Times in the Morn- ing Advertiser—Count Orloff, leader as we may call him, to spare words, of the Russian Whigs, admitted that the Emperor was irresistible, that the people were with him, that he might if he chose dispense altogether with the support of the landowners. On the other hand, the nobles are not only aware that they cannot arrest the course of the Sovereign, but that they run some risk of being entirely swept away. The little nobility, as all recent travel- lers testify, have been submerged already by the emancipation, and though the greater noblesse see themselves left in posses- sion of great estates, immense mining districts, large fac- tories, and almost all property not included in villages or nullified by village rights of common, still they perceive that their tenure is very precarious. They are in the posi- tion of the talookdars of Oude. Like the civilians of India the Russian bureaucracy detest the great landholders, and use the complaints of the people as a lever to get rid of them, and as in India, the Head of the State in his honest desire to protect the weak against the strong sanctions the policy of the employes. The time may arrive in Oude, as it has in parts of the North- West, when there will be nothing but an official between the throne and the people. The time may arrive in Russia, says Count Orloff, when " the Czar will have no new gifts to confer, neither more liberty nor more lands for the peasants, when the popular masses will demand new favours to be granted to them, when the Emperor of Russia shall be not only the first, but also the only gentleman in Russia." To prevent this consummation the nobles desire to regain some of their political importance, and as a first step to place them- selves between the throne and the civil service. Their device for this end is a deliberative assembly, to be composed of two chambers, the lower one elective, the other, or " High
' Chamber, hereditary. The Radical nobles tried to avoid this last word, and suggested that the High Chamber should be elected by the provincial diets of nobles, apparently for this
reason :—The nobles, though much diminished in number, are still too numerous for a Parliament, and the result of the proposal would be restrictions which would change a caste into a peerage. Count Orloff, however, resisted the change, which, so far as we can gather, was not carried. The address demanding a deliberative assembly, which might advise the throne without the intervention of the service and control the bureaus was agreed to, and—quashed by the Senate, on the ground that the majority had illegally disqualified certain members.
The momentary success of this quaint expedient in no degree lessens the importance of this debate. The Emperor read the address, whether he received it officially or not, and changes such as the nobles propose cannot be carried through at a blow. The nobles of Moscow, however, do very fairly represent those of Russia, and their object is sufficiently clear. They do not as a body desire a constitution ; they are possibly aware that a country like Russia, still Asiatic in temper, and covering such vast spaces not yet linked together by railways, could not be governed except by a strong Executive ; they are certainly willing to accept an absolute Imperial authority, provided that it will act with them and by their advice, instead of with the "Tchin" and by their coun- sel. What they propose is not freedom, but the preference of themelves to the bureaucracy as the administrative agency of Russia. Their lever for securing this change is, as usual every- where, the state of the finances. Unless the despotism can raise more cash the despotism will break up, and the nobles allege that the deliberative council could raise cash, which is probably true. They hope in fact, by using the financial pressure wisely, to re-organize Russia on the older English or Tudor system, under which a Ring politically absolute, but not socially interfering, ruled the kingdom through the proprietors of its soil.
We are by no means quite so certain about the liberality of this proposal as the Continental press appears to be. The innovation has no doubt one recommendation, that it might substitute for a caste of nobles invested with great privileges, —as, for example, nearly exclusive right to commissions—a hereditary peerage. Only a few, say seven or eight hundred, could sit in the High Chamber, and the remainder might try to enter the Lower one, and be interested in its privileges rather than those of their order. The scheme, however, has not worked in this way in Prussia, the older families of Russia retain the traditions of the boyars and of their power to a dangerous degree, and the entire caste is but newly escaped from the habit and the temptation of serfage. - The "Tchin" no doubt is vilely corrupt, but corruption is a vice curable by good pay. The nobles would not be corrupt, but would they not be oppressive ? The temptation of the civilian is to take money, the temptation of the noble to attract labour and retain it by laws of contract which would undo the most substantial and beneficial result of emancipation. The administration of England was not, while the landowners ruled it, exactly a model of perfection; on the contrary, it was they and their nominees who maintained the bloodiest code for the protection of property ever endured by civilized men, they who tried to suppress all combinations by force, and
they who have succeeded after the rest of Europe has given them up, in maintaining the game laws. Upon the whole, remembering that the Peer would be isolated, while behind every member of the services stands the gigantic power of the throne, the policy of tlie nobles may tend to the happiness of the people of Russia, but a free deliberative Chamber with power to refuse new taxes, and no more, would tend much more strongly that way, and in any case, even if the proposal is the best likely to be accepted, it is made at least as much in the interest of a caste as of the nation. If the nobles are honest in their desire to become country gentlemen we may heartily wish them success, but there is in Count Orloff's speech a trace of " junker " feeling which may pro- duce results very injurious to the growing freedom of . Russia.
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