The Czar's Government grows fanatical in its policy of "
Russifying Russia." In addition to its deadly quarrel with its Jewish subjects, it is withdrawing privileges from the Finlanders, and sharpening the edicts against refractory Poles ; and it is about, it is said, to transport all Dissenters. It is proposed, says the correspondent of the Times at St. Peters- burg, to sentence to Siberia all Dissenters who convert Orthodox believers, and to debar all connected with the Stundist sect from village office, besides placing them under the special supervision of the police. Their children, moreover, are to be taken away, and brought up under Orthodox teachers in the only true faith. The proposal has not yet received the Czar's sanction, but it is entirely in accordance with his known views, and with the policy of spiritual centralisation favoured by his present advisers. To men of our day, such persecution seems incredible ; but it is not two centuries since our own ruling classes pursued exactly the same policy towards Nonconformists, while they treated Roman Catholics far worse. There seems to be a stage in the human mind when a dissident in religion appears to the majority a perversely anti-social being who should be cut off even from contact with the community. That was undoubtedly the feeling which led Romans, whose first principle was a haughty toleration of all creeds, to persecute the early Christians. Journalists hardly understand how a Czar can sanction such proposals ; but Alexander III. is not wiser, or better, or more of a states- man than Marcus Aurelius.
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