The People's Rights party in Russia, a Liberal association said
to include most respectable members, has issued a mani- festo, which, according to the Daily Chronicle, is being cir- culated all over Russia. Its authors complain bitterly of the Czar's speech to the deputations from the national Zemstvos. They say they have no wish to threaten the Autocracy, but to place beside it a representative body which might give the Czar both information and guidance. The Emperor's angry utterance, therefore, defends not his power, but that of the bureaucracy. The remonstrants demand two things, -freedom of speech and a regime of law, and say that these being refused, they must now declare against the Autocracy itself, which the Liberal forces now at work mill in no long time destroy. The manifesto would be con- sidered in Western Europe for the most part temperate in language, but it ends with an unmistakable threat. One section of society, it says, will be strengthened in its " peaceful " struggle for liberty ; but the Emperor's declara- tion will "stimulate the readiness of another section to struggle against the hateful state of things by any means." That is a reference to the Nihilists, who, however, have as yet put out no proclamation. They are not fighting for repre- sentation, and probably care little about the rebuke ad- ministered to the Zemstvos. Their opportunity will be found on the occasion of some arrest.
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