THE RUSSIAN STATES GENERAL.
THE .revolution marches, even in Russia. The Imperial decree issued this week, which transforms the Ministry into a Cabinet, with joint responsibility, has been ex- pected for some months, and must be followed immediately by changes which will affect the entire course of Russian politics, perhaps allow her to develop a new form of internal life. The nature of the forces at work in Russia, and the hopes and chances of the constitutional party, are so little comprehended in England, that a reliable account of their views and prospects may be not unwelcome. Indeed, the mere allusion to such a party will seem to many, penetrated as most Englishmen are with the notion that the Czars are irresistible, the pleaai g illusion of constitutional doctrinaires. Yet it is more than possible that the experiment of mixed government may be tried in Russia sooner than in the countries which look so much better prepared for freedom.
The Imperial system of. Russia, which for nearly a century has kept Europe in a state of permanent alarm, is rapidly breaking down. The present Emperor, an excellent but very irresolute man, has inherited two difficulties, each of them sufficient to overturn a throne—the deficit, and the serfs ; and the magnificent act by which he has endeavoured to solve the second has greatly intensified the first. The serfs, as we explained .a month since, will, no doubt, on March 3rd, 1863, become absolutely free. The ukase has gone forth through the length and breadth of Russia, and no power on earth could, after the date fixed, persuade the serfs to labour for their lords, or to pay them rent for the home- stead lands. Happily, the nobles, though a large section of them are opposed to the movement, are aware of the hopeless, ness of resistance, and retain none of that hate towards their enfraachized servants which most slaveholders would display. Russia, even after this great change, is still a homogeneous society, and the nobles, instead of wailing over the inevitable, or incurring proscription like the old noblesse of France, are eagerly casting about for new means of activity and influence. They have lost their semi-Asiatic power in the provinces, where every noble reigned on his own estate, in a semi-savage but not undignified isolation ; and their natural course, accord- ing to all continental analogies, would be to crowd into the capital, and hang about the court, seeking in official status the recompense of their sacrifices. Fortunately, however, for Russia, an hereditary dislike to the autocracy, and the world of functionaries through which it acts, has suggested to them other ideas, and they aspire to independent political position, to an authority which may make them individually of some weight and status in Europe The example of England, in which every peer is a person- age, has taken hold of their imaginations, and it is the English constitution, with modifications which we shall de- scribe, to which they look for guidance. Their power as a class is still immense. They comprise the whole of the edu- cated class of Russia, the men amongst whom the royal family must live, and from whom they must draw their officers, and the higher grades of their executive func- tionaries. They control the army, guide the youth of the schools, and will be followed in any such career as this by the vast bulk of the middle classes. They support the native literature, which is now rapidly growing in Russia, and keep up that incessant agitation of thought which is the most prominent feature of the hour, and which has already pro- duced one phenomenon not seen in Europe since 1789. Opinion has so completely beaten down force that under the shadow of this tremendous throne, in a country where men have to plot in order to present a petition to the sovereign, the officers of the Government still talk Liberalism, and men like Ignatieff, while dooming boy students to Siberia, speak still of the good time coming. The praise an Englishman recently bestowed on Admiral Putiatine was not so unde- served as it seemed. That officer, despite the Russian traditions which compelled him to act as if his subordinates were his serfs, is still a thoughtful and kindly man, and the cool magnanimity which exempted a sharp account of his own doings from the Censor's ink was a truthful index at once to his mind and that of his class. And it must not be forgotten that, although during the strife between nobles, and peasants the nobles are physically powerless, though to give an extreme example, the Court could sweep them away with a decree of three lines, that strife ends in March, 1863, and from the day that the land question is settled the nobles resume their true position as the local leaders of the people. They, except as owners, are not hated ; they have still vast wealth ; they will retain large sections of the land, and they have a complete monopoly of political knowledge, education, and military experience. They must, it is true, henceforward govern by influence instead of power, but So must the Duke of Northumberland ; yet in his own county it is the peer who leads or restrains any movement short of a national impulse. The character of the noblesse gives this influence its full power. They have to a man shaken off the Greek Church, which offends them not by its dogmas, but by the besotted ignorance of its priesthood, and they have the curious Asiatic courage on which only some forms of danger seem to make an impression. A sentence to Siberia, for example, is faced every day by every Liberal, and falls by turns upon the most prominent, but frightens the rest as little as the death of one of them from cholera would. A fatalism which does not injure energy, that feeling so often seen in individuals in all countries, is the permanent characteristic of the Russian noblesse.
But Englishmen will ask what is their modus operandi. Utterly powerless as they are in the presence of the Czar and the army, what is the use of their ideas? The Constitu- tionalists are not so powerless as they are thought, though it may not be wise to explain openly why, and we must con- tent ourselves with remarking that an appeal to the wen of a regiment,Isuch as was made recently by General Biistrom, is a new thing in the Russian as well as in any i other well- ordered service. But they have a force wholly independent of any direct authority. In the first place, they believe that the dynasty may go with them. The reigning House of Russia is guided by ideas widely different from those which prevail in the police-governed Courts of Germany. There probably never was a member of the family who had not a strong underlying notion of duty, and they have never been ulcerated by the sense of permanent conflict with the people. If Russia were polled to-morrow, the Czar would be where the Czar is, and the abiding assurance of that fact relieves the Emperor of that delusion of terror, that insane fear of all in- novation, which works so strongly in Germany and, indeed, in France. The Emperor lives amidst the influences which mould the aspirants, and they can offer one temptation to which even a Sovereign may, be inclined to listen. Setting that aside for the moment, however, there are direct forces at work as powerful as those which, in 1789, changed the career of France. The " system" is at its wit's end for money. The Crimean war brought to a head difficulties accumulating for half a century, and which nothing but the anxious good faith iof the Government to its foreign creditors—always a most creditable feature in Russian politics—has hitherto concealed. The debts of the Government are great ; the 1 deficit rmanent at the rate, we believe, of about four mil- lions a\ year, and a redemption of paper money urgently needed. Then this serf question, however it ends, will demand \an expenditure like that of a great campaign, and the who e military system must be reorganized—at what cost 3.1 we in Ei. gland know. Moreover, there is a strong desire on the part of the throne, as well as the politicians, to redress the civil administration, to pay functionaries properly, to organize the new police—which the abolition of serfdom in- volves—on an efficient footing, and generally to advance on that road to high civilization, which can only be made solid, as English financiers so groaningly allow, by a foundation of gold. Now despotism, however scientific, has one limit in Russia as well as in France—it cannot levy war taxes. It must call in assistance from without, and this is at last ac- knowledged in Russia. The Emperor accordingly takes the only steps open to him. He changes the Ministers, who are simply his secretaries, into a Cabinet, responsible, of course in theory only to him, but still standing before the world in the attitude of a Government, and responsible to opinion as a body. This single change, this introduction of a principle other than the will of the Sovereign, of itself involves much ; for the better officials, once responsible for each other, will hot consent to serve with violent men, and the whole tone of official character will be elevated; but this is only the first step. The Council of the Empire is to become a Council of Notables, outsiders are to be appointed to share its delibera- tions, their discussions will be partially public, and they will possess a legislative authority. The Emperor does not, of course, give up any portion of his prerogative. It is not expedient in the present state of affairs that he should, for nothing but an unlimited power, strong and wide-reaching as that of the British Parliament, can hold Russia together. But it is not the Emperor whom Russian Liberalafear. He is responsible, if not to them, at least to his rank and to Europe, and he has no temptation to class injustice. It is the Government they wish to restrain, that delegated omnipotence without responsibility which is the first curse of despotisms. In the Council of Notables their views will be strong ; the Press, for a despotism, is singularly free, and being like our own honestly desirous not to criticize the ruling family, it is not viewed with the secret hate which influences Kings on the Continent ; the influential class will respond to the debates, and as the Council must reorganize finance, the Liberals hate a lever as strong as they possess in any country without a regular Parliamentary Government. How they will use this lever is still doubtful, but the ideas circulating in Russia may, we believe, be expressed thus : The ultimate thought is an English constitution, but with the Emperor much less fettered, particularly in external politics. There is a very strong, almost a dominant, wish to work with the dynasty, to be led by it, and sustain it in its European position. So strong is this, that if the reigning House will take the lead, agree to establish some fundamental laws, modify the bureaucracy by admitting local self-govern- ment—in the English not in the American sense—and leave the nobles internal influence, the Constitutionalists will in return support, with all the new strength such new institu- tions may yield, the foreign policy of the House, by far its strongest desire. That means, in the first place, that they will hold Poland whether Poland likes it or no, and gaze as fixedly as ever on Constantinople. If not, they will fall back on Russian ideas, which are shortly these : Good and above all tranquil government in the interior, through locally- elected officials, gradual extension in Asia, and an entire abstinence from European affairs unconnected with commerce. These, we say, are the fixed ideas of educated Russians, but we despair of impressing our readers with the true sense of the firmness with which they are maintained. Suffice it to say that they are held as Orientals only hold their one or two central .ideas—concealing them, varnishing them, doing anything with them to avoid momentary danger, but never modifying them by one hair's-breadth. And if they do not promise results so 'broad and magnificent as we believe them to involve, they are at least fatal to that internal slumber which for ages has kept Russia almost as apart as Japan.
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