TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE ATTEMPT TO KIM THE CZAR.
THE Russian Government, after a moment's hesitation, admits that a desperate attempt was made on Sunday last to assassinate the Czar, and there is no sound reason to doubt that the authors of the crime were Nihilists of the old type. The Panslavists may be indignant at the hesitation of the Emperor to occupy Bulgaria, but they are not assassins ; and the Constitutional Party could gain little, and might lose all, by recourse to such evil methods. Its members, moreover, are not, as a rule, men driven to desperation, or utterly without hope that time and events—say an unsuccessful war, or a national bankruptcy—may bring their ideas within the limit of practicable politics. They will never move until sure either of military or popular support. As to a Palace Revolution, of which so many speak, every Czar, like every other despotic ruler, must always live in some peril of such an occurrence, the personal dreads and hatreds excited by an autocrat being always so dangerous ; but the men who organise such crimes do not choose the public streets for their commission, or entrust them to fanatic students. All the details of the attack point to a revival of the old Nihilist, or Terrorist, faction, which in 1881 murdered Alexander IL, and late in 1883 slaughtered Colonel Soudaikin, the head of the Secret Police, for treachery to the Society. The date selected was that of the successful attack on Alexander ; the occasion, a return from church, was the came; and the method, the use of successive bombs thrown under the carriage, was to have been absolutely identical. Whether the would-be murderers of Sunday advanced quite so near to their end, is still doubtful. According to the best non-official accounts, the criminals were two students, the first of whom, carrying a bomb filled with melinite, but shaped like a large missal, threw it down before the Imperial carriage, and was only arrested while pulling the tape which released the hammer intended to ignite the explosives ; while his accomplice, who carried another bomb in a bag, was stopped and thrown down by the surging crowd. The Russian officials allege, however, that the men were arrested while waiting for the carriage at the street-corner, that the Czar was warned in church, and that, placing his wife in a separate carriage for safety, he drove back to the fortress Peter and Paul by a more circuitous route, accompanied only by his eon, and thence proceeded directly to Gatschina. From the extreme agitation caused by the attempt, we should fancy it had been near success, and the anxiety of the Government to minimise the chances enjoyed by the assassins, though it is savagely blamed, is hardly blameworthy. The impact caused by such a crime on the whole of Russian society must be tremendous. We all remember the furious agita- tion produced in London by the murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish; and the assassination of the Czar means in Russia the murder of a Sovereign, the death of a Prime Minister, and a violent dissolution of Parliament, all occurring at once. The policy of the State, the names of its rulers, and the destiny of every highly placed personage, may all be changed in an hour ; while the chance of popular commotion, aimless but murderous, is most terrible. All these consequences would have been enhanced in the present instance by a situation in the Imperial family which hardly allows of a quiet devolution of the Throne. The Heir-Apparent is still a boy, and it is doubtful whether the monstrous prerogatives of the Czar, which raise him above humanity, and impose a task no man can ever fulfil adequately, could be wielded at all by a Regent, still more by a Grand Duke, who would instantly be accused, with reason or without, of intriguing for the Throne. The event, in fact, involved contingencies such as would make any Government quail, and think secrecy not only justifiable, but imperatively politic.
Still, that the event occurred is admitted, and vain as it is to speculate on its results, it is difficult to refrain from doing so. The Czar commands armies, and it is only natural that an event which has for him such far-reaching consequences should profoundly affect his mind. To us it signifies that certain students have given their lives to take his, and have failed ; but to him it signifies that the Terrorist Society which killed his father and his own Chief of Police has not been finally crushed, but is abroad again, is again finding devoted agents, and is directing them not blunderingly, as assassins usually do, but with high scientific skill, and an effort to secure an almost theatrical completeness. Any one, it is said, can kill any one, if he is reckless of being killed ; but the effort of the Society was clearly to kill in a special way, on a fore- ordained date, and at a selected place,—to produce an im- pression, in fact, as of an irresistible Fate. The orders must.
have been to choose such a place, on such a day, and then act ; and the orders were obeyed. Such a Society is formidable ; and the wretched object of its attacks, who knows of its success against his father (success achieved after repeated failures), and knows also of repeated attempts against himself which have not become public, must feel, if only from the ironic contrast between his power and his position, as if he were doomed, as if he were surrounded by assassins, and as if no act which relieved him from his burden could be accounted desperate. That the Czar has self-control, is evident from his appearance at his brother's party in St. Petersburg three days after the attempt ; but the risk of assassination disturbs even the strong, and a moody man with an unhappy history, posssessed of uncontrolled power, and perpetually urged on by irresponsible advisers, may at any moment adopt some final resolution. At Vienna, it appears to be believed that the Czar will seclude himself more than ever, resuming the almost imprisoned life which he led from 1882 to 1886, and devoting himself to the struggle with the Nihilists; while at Berlin they expect that he will be almost irresistibly drawn towards war. In the camp he is safe, while a victorious Sovereign is usually placed by national admiration out of assassins' reach. Such opinions must be, however, even if Prince Bismarck wrote one of them, mere conjectures. The temptation of a man so burdened, one would think, must be towards vehement action of some kind, as at once a relief and a means of escape ; but the problem has to be worked out by the Czar himself, in the recesses of a mind said to be still unfathomed even by his closest advisers, and sure, if only from the loneliness of years passed without ever speaking to an equal, to be somewhat separate. No autocrat who thinks as other men think could have favoured the plots against Prince Alexander, or have allowed his agents to shelter military mutineers. The Czar declares, it is reported, that he will transfer his capital to Moscow, where men are still loyal, and it is possible that he may find in that great flitting a reprieve from trouble ; but he may also seclude himself at Gatschina, or may appear at the head of a great army in motion resolved to try once more if he may not win "the city of the Czars." The Nihilists would not art while that campaign went on. It is a strange fate for Europe, armed to the teeth, and in an era of high civilisation, to be anxionaly discussing such contingencies ; but it is true that the unexploded bomb of an unnamed student may change the history of the world. We are all at the mercy of forces which we cannot control ; but one wonders how Prince Bismarck, with his Army Bill all passed and his armies all ready, feels when he reflects that his country's destiny probably depends upon the decisions of a man so far removed from his influence and so far beneath him in political intelligence. There is nothing to do bat watch ; but watching Russia is like watching the Riviera ; if anything happens there, it is almost certain to be a flood, a storm, or an earthquake shock.
The sudden activity of the Nihilists after a considerable period of quiescence has not been explained, and will not perhaps be explicable until the disappearance of the Society. Nothing has been changed in Russia since the accession of Alexander IIL, nor has any increase of virulence in the system of repression been recently reported. There is no proof discernible that they play into Panslaviat hands, and their own statements are always the same,—that they seek first of all more liberty for Russia. Every Society of the kind, however, needs acolytes, and the Terrorist group, always small in numbers, may have been temporarily reduced by the action of the police and the revelations of Colonel Soudaikin almost to inani- tion, and may now have found more men of the strange type which it knows how to use, men self-devoted and patriotic, but insensible to right and wrong. They must still be few in number, and as they have totally failed to penetrate into Gatschina, the immediate danger of a new attempt is probably but email; but they have obviously regained activity, and the life of the Czar, unless he lives in camp, will henceforward be that of a man under sentence, and awaiting the result of an appeal.
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