THE CZAR'S PROBLEM.
THE recent Decree of the Russian Emperor, with its rather vague, though distinctly benevolent, promises, has been variously interpreted, but there is one meaning in it which it is difficult to mistake. The Czar, who prob- ably hears more truth than it is usual to imagine, is dis- tinctly disturbed about the condition of the peasantry. It is a tradition of his house, and probably his own con- viction also, that the Russian autocracy is a tripod resting upon three sturdy legs,—the Army, the Church, and the favour of the " black folk," the huge mass of the common people, who from the days of the princedoms have looked to the Czars as their protectors from unbearable local oppression. Of late years the Church has been strongly in the ascendant, and has persecuted Jews, Stundists, Old Believers, and, indeed, anybody it pleased; and it is there- fore fairly obedient and contented, though it might send out a rousing word through the villages if its coreligionists in Turkey were put down in the Armenian fashion, and thus coerce the Government into unwilling action. Of the condition of the Army it is hard to obtain any trustworthy account ; but though there is certainly some fretfulness under a long peace, which stops promotion, and a powerful military party, which would prefer to run risks rather than be overcrowed by Germany, the Czar's fixed policy of peace with Europe arouses in the barracks no overt discontent. Among the common people, however, who in their awful numbers, and nearly unknown desires, are still something of a mystery to their rulers—a Sphinx, as the great advocate Wolkenstein recently called them at a public dinner in St. Petersburg—there is manifest unrest. Several causes, such as the fall in the price of cereals . visible throughout the world, the cutting of trees which has followed emancipation, and protracted droughts, have lowered the economic condition of the villagers of Russia until even their endurance is over- taxed. The famine provinces are few, but the distressed provinces are many. The spread of manufactures also has made artisans of multitudes ; and the ideas of artisans are never those of peasants, but always and everywhere tend to impair in the latter that habit of submission to evils, as to natural laws, which in all countries marks the cultivators of the soil. It is probable, too, that in spite of the strict obscurantism maintained by the Government, the desire for more comfort and security, for a larger share, that is, of what they produce, which all over the West has generated the Socialist party, has entered Russia also, with its invariable consequent, fretful discontent. At all events there is unrest, shown in petty insurrections, in raids upon the rich and the Government stores, and in incessant quarrels with the Mirs or village Corporations about the right to depart, which hitherto has required consent. The disposition is not to emigrate—the Russian emigration, if Jews are omitted, is imperceptible—but to migrate in very great numbers from the poorer provinces to the richer, and it irritates the Mirs of those poorer provinces to such a degree that the Emperor himself in this very Decree is obliged to interfere. They fear desertion, while the peasantry of the richer lands are worried by a new competition so vexatious that the Government is making determined and very wise efforts to "turn the stream " of migration on to the unsettled, and, it is said, very rich, lands of Southern Siberia. Migra- tion thither, however, though it begins to be percep- tible, is still slow, the people increase rapidly in num- bers, and the economic level of their condition never seriously improves. There are always arrears of taxation to be remitted, or collected by measures which seem, and often are, oppressive. Even if the economic situation im- proved there might be discontent, for the ideas of the Russian people are growing larger ; but it does not, and the total result is a gigantic community displaying over large provinces many of the evils of Ireland before the famine, and the following reduction of population.
It is absolutely necessary, or at all events M. de Witte, the strongest man in Russia, obviously thinks so, to soothe the peasantry ; and the Czar, who is not only a well-mean- ing man, but in a way a public-spirited ruler, is quite willing to do so. But what is his Majesty, with all his prerogatives, actually to • do ? " Grant a Parliament," say most Englishmen ; but that, though very natural advice from Englishmen, is not necessarily wise. The body of the people are not yet up to electing representa- tives, and if a, Supreme Mir were actually organised, the difficulty would only be transferred from a person to a Committee. The Supreme Mir certainly could, and possibly would, make life pleasanter and more vivid for the intellectual classes, and terminate by publicity some gross abuses ; but how could it deal with the economic problem which is the root of discontent among the masses? Revolu- tionary legislation, like that of the French States-General, would not make a Russian peasant happy, and it might break, not only social order, but Russia itself in pieces. The tendency of Russia, if the autocracy were withdrawn or became nominal, would be to dissolve into provinces, each with its separate, and often jealous, administration ; into the ancient principalities, in fact, which the earlier Czars with such labour and expenditure of blood fused together. It would probably be much wiser for the Czar to imitate our own Indian system, — that is, retain the supreme power intact in his own hands, use it steadily and for long periods, under competent advice, for the benefit of his people, and govern them for at least oue educating century through an able and perfectly disinterested bureaucracy ; but how is he to do it? He himself is not a picked man, but an accident of the hereditary system, which it would be most dangerous to alter, even if it were possible ; and the materials for a wise and competent bureaucracy, able to govern in all departments and certain never to take bribes, do not yet exist in Russia. Even the Indian Civil Service could not be trusted if its average pay were £200 a year; and whence is the revenue required to pay adequate salaries and sufficient pensions to a half-million of Russian officials to be derived ? We will not say that the problem is in- soluble, for that is mere pessimism ; but certainly no one has yet succeeded in solving the grand problem of Russia, the co-existence of a supreme Government at the centre with a wise and philanthropic administration in the provinces.
We wonder if it would be possible and beneficial to try in Russia another experiment which has never been tried on the Continent, but which in India has succeeded to a marvellous extent. This is—letting the people alone. A native of India, though he does not make his own laws or settle his own taxes, is in one way the freest of mankind. He can go where he likes, build any house he likes, and, subject to the provisions of the Criminal Code, live pre- cisely as he likes. Nobody interferes with his creed, even if it is an immoral one, unless, indeed, it involves murder; and he takes out no license for any business unconnected with liquor or opium. If he grows rich nobody objects, and if he grows poor he is left, unless actually starving from a general famine, to his kinsfolk and his castemen. He must pay his taxes and he must abstain from crime ; but those postulates granted, he need never from birth to death hold speech with an official. He can write what he likes so that it be not libel, preach what he likes—rank treason included if it is only not in the street—and. be as insolent to all superiors as his hereditary courtesy will permit. He is, in fact, the freest man on earth in every sense but the democratic one, and for that reason, among others, is probably of all men the least disposed to insurrection. One does not see exactly why a Czar who insisted on granting that much liberty would impair his own autocracy, and certainly he would release the villager as well as the citizen from a host of minor oppressions, and within a short time give a marvellous stimulus to associated enterprise. At present the Russian who wishes to do any- thing but plough has to conciliate officials at every step, is spied on if he grows well-to-do by his own doorkeeper, who is really a police agent, cannot travel without a permit, and if he is in business finds that to be out of favour with officials very often spells ruin. Personal liberty is in India found to be perfectly consistent with autocracy, and personal liberty in Russia would produce the extinction of a vast mass of human misery. It would, no doubt, reduce the position of the bureaucracy, each member of which is now a little god within his district or his sphere of action - but how would it injure, or even hamper, the central autocracy P
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