The Times correspondent at Moscow sends a translation of a
most striking letter from Count Leo Tolstoy to the Czar urging his Majesty to put an end to religious persecution in Russia, which, he says, not only exists, but is on the increase. No less than ten thousand Doukhobors, several thousand Molokani in the district of Kars, as many in Erivan, the Ifolokani of Tashkent, and some ten thousand persons in the provinces of Kharkoff and Kieff are persecuted for their faith, and only seek permission to abandon their own land. They are "among the best people in Russia." Count Tolstoy beseeches the Emperor no longer to listen to Pobiedonostzeff, "who is a man behind his time, cunning, obstinate, and cruel," but to abolish the persecuting laws, to liberate the prisoners for conscience' sake, and Where the difficulty is refusal to enlist, to substitute compulsory, labour for military service. We fear the Czar -will reply that it is the people, and not he, who demand the punishment of heretics, but certainly the liberty of petition cannot be said not to exist in Russia. It must not be forgotten that we also once- persecuted heretics, and for the same reason, inability to believe that men of a different faith could be loyal subjects.
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