The " Secret Executive Committee," as it is styled, of
the Russian Revolutionists, has attempted to assassinate the Czar. It had posted up in St. Petersburg on the night of March 31st, and on several succeeding nights, placards, described at length elsewhere, warning the Czar that he was only " spared " on condition of reforms. The warning was met by fresh arrests, and on April 14th an attempt was made to execute " the judgment of the Tribunal." A tall, thin man, wearing the cap of a functionary in the Ministry of Finance, but since ascer- tained to be Alexander Solovieff, a provincial schoolmaster, approached the Emperor on his walk near the Winter Palace, and fired three shots at him from a revolver. All the shots missing the Emperor, the assassin swallowed a pill of cyanide of potassium, or some other poison, and turned to fly, but was caught and held by a private gentleman. In his flight, he fired ins remaining three shots at his pursuers, wounding a detective policeman in the hand,—a curious waste of his weapons, unless he was, as we suspect, ordered to terrorise, rather than to murder the Emperor. The poison he had swallowed—a fact stated in all private telegrams, though denied in Renter's—produced great sickness, and his examination has as yet drawn from him no ex- planation of his motives or account of his associates. It is not doubted, however, that he was employed by the Secret Society, and as usual, a fever of reaction has set in, the Emperor himself de- claring that in such extreme circumstances he must go beyond the law. The cities are to be watched like camps, the arrests have increased to hundreds, and Russia is to be divided- into
twelve Governor-Generalships, a General in each watching over all political movements. Another attempt is expected, and so profound is the excitement, that it seems as if either the Govern- ment or the Secret Society must be destroyed. As yet, however, the police have discovered nothing.
