Last Saturday the fiftieth anniversary of the emancipation of the
Serfs was celebrated at St. Petersburg. The Tsar attended the thanksgiving service at the Kazan Cathedral, and there was a very interesting ceremony in the Tauride Palace, where the bust of Alexander II., the Liberator, erected by peasant Deputies, was unveiled. At this ceremony M. Guchkoff, the President of the Duma, as we learn from the correspondent of the Times, said that there was a close con- nection between the two famous dates, February 19th, 1861, and October 17th, 1905. In 1861 the solitary autocrat and a handful of warm-hearted patriots overcame " the alarmed interests " and gave freedom to his people ; in 1905 the manifesto of con- stitutionalism showed that the Tsar Nicholas II. also had faith in his people. 1861-1905 was an epoch of progress ; "slaves then—law-givers now." The correspondent says that the Tsar received the peasant members most warmly when they went in a deputation to the Winter Palace. He spent an hour " inquiring into their village affairs and winning all their hearts."
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