THE POSITION IN RUSSIA.
THE Czar must be glad to get back. again. His great adventure--for it was a great adventure, in which . he risked not only his life, but much of his political reputation—has been carried through on the whole suc- cessfully. He has made the arrangements he wished to make with the German 'Emperor—that is clear from the Emperor's speech at Dantzig and the unprecedented little incident at Wysztyten -on Monday when the Kaiser rode over the Russian border to act as the Czar's accredited almoner—he has been acclaimed by all France except Paris, and unless all who observe are wrong he has ex- tended as well as ree,einented the French Alliance. He will get his loan from the French cottages ; he has obtained his promise of quiet in Europe for a period; and he has assured himself either of French aid or of benevolent neutrality when he removes any remaining obstacles to the march of Russia to the Pacific. France has no interest in preventing that ; rather -thinks, indeed, that she may thus give a backhander to Great Britain. These are great advantages, and. the Emperor returns to his capital with the halo of success, which politicians value, we fear, more than that of saintliness. He will need it. The foreign policy of Russia has become within the last century of immense importance to the world ; but the future of her Czars depends upon their success in governing Russia herself, a task which as time advances becomes increasin4y difficult. The sceptre has become so heavy that it needs a bearer such as hereditary Monarchy, though it is a strong system or it would not have survived so much and be still so vigorously alive, only produces at long intervals. If we at all understand the accounts which come from many directions, and which are summed up in the illuminating letter from a French correspondent at St. Petersburg published in the Times of Monday, the Russian Monarchy suffers at this moment from that want of force and effec- tiveness at the centre which is so often revealed in the history of despotisms. The difficulties are endless, and though all are perhaps capable of being met, the strength to meet them is insufficient., There is, to speak broadly, no danger from without, for no one not a lunatic "would attack or even threaten Russia unless irresistibly impelled. The Army is as strong and as obedient as ever. The autocracy is not menaced, for the people still look to it as the only power which can realise their wishes and protect them from further wrong, while even reformers doubt whether any control less powerful would. suffice for an Empire which they as well as their opponents intend should remain strong. • The questions of nationality, of long-past history, of the "adjustment of powers" between Prince and people, which vex France and Germany and. Austria, and, with the exception of the third, even Great Britain, are in Russia all minor questions. Yet nothing goes smoothly. The unavoidable expenditure is so great that the Treasury needs, besides loans, the help of new and drawing taxes which cannot be imposed. The bureaucracy is dully dissatisfied, for it distrusts its chiefs, and is aware that the only methods it knows or can use no longer meet the necessities of a growing society. The educated class, which has grown bigger, is in a fever of discontent at its want of freedom, its ill-standing with the bureaucracy, and its open war with the Education Department. The students have struck throughout Russia, which means that the intelligent are against the Government. The men of the creeds outside the Orthodox Church, Catholics, Dissenters, Jews, and heretics, who, though powerless as organisations, collectively number millions, are raging at the orders and. the counsels issued or suggested by M. Pobiedo- nostzeff, the Russian Laud, with Laud's brains and also his incapacities. The workmen produced, as it were, by the new industrial mania feel the effect of the failure of profits, and ferment like our own poor fishermen at Grimsby ; and there is unrest even among the peasantry, who have been pressed by bad harvests, and by those low prices for all they have to sell which seem to be nearly universal throughout the world. According to the French correspondent, who is confirmed by many isolated, and as it were casual, telegrams, they are revealing their temoer in the terrible way so long and so well known in ti.e East. —using the torch instead of the rifle "In the sountry, and even in the towns, another grave symptom ; burning of forests, burning of houses, burning of factor:az, too frequent and too systematically carried out to be mit down to natural causes or to accident. Once more le cog rouge (i.e., fire) has been let loose. Every one says it and every one knows it." And lastly we suspect, though this is not mentioned by the correspondent, on the evidence of many careful narratives from Siberia and China, and the endless Commissions of Investigation noticed in accounts from St. Petersburg, that the great officials are getting a little "out of hand," and not only colliding with each other even more than usual, but evading supreme orders with a view to please immediate superiors or allies in the bureaucracy.
To meet all these difficulties a new supply of force is required, and except in one way it is not procurable. The Czar cannot find it in himself, he has no great adlatus, no Bismarck, Cavour, or even Beaconsfield, and his Staff are ordinary men who collide. M. de Witte is the ablest among them, and it is M. de Witte who is driven by his necessities and his projects to resort to these constant loans. We take it that when we have disbelieved both his enemies and his flatterers there remains in the Czar a man over-instructed for his assimilating powers, thoroughly well intentioned, even anxiously dutiful, with much keen- ness of perception, but -without the tiger will which has belonged to so many Romanoffs, as well as without the deep wiliness of Alexander I. He wishes to put things straight, and probably but for the groups around him would put them straight; but he is not determined enough to beat down the opposition of the great " experienced " officials, who are devoted to the ancient methods of repres- sion. There is therefore perpetual delay for more inquiry, perpetual hesitation in providing or refusing remedies for emergencies, and perpetual reluctance to resolve on any great internal policy. There is no explanation possible of recent events in Manchuria if we do not assume sharp official collisions in St. Petersburg. The huge machine accordingly stops or wobbles, and as always happens in such cases, every one at a distance, conscious that there is friction at the centre, sends up for orders. The Empire is suffering, if this account be true, from lack of steam power in the engine for which no foreign appreciation of its products can compensate ; but whence is steam to come ?
"Through more repression," say some of the Czar's advisers, repression such as Nicholas I. would instantly have put in force. "Terrorise Russia," and everything will be smooth and comfortable. That is a consistent and intelligible policy, which might for a time succeed; but it requires a Nicholas I. to work it, and even with him it so broke down that the autocracy was only saved because his successor had in his hand an irresistible weapon, though it could only be used once,—the emancipation of the serfs. It is a policy which requires a man of high ability, supreme self-confidence, and despotic, if not cruel, temper; and the present Sovereign lacks alike the good. and the bad qualifications foi carrying it out. He pities and dreams, as witness the Conference at the Hague. His instinct is to soothe angry students, not to send them in batches to Siberia. He will not, we may be sure, adopt a policy of terror, which would relieve him, or rather his advisers, at the price of the censure of all Europe, and a sharp revival of Nihilism. It is possible also to grant freedom as in India, freedom to speak and act and write, without surrendering absolute power, and thus to get rid at once of all the abuses which cannot live under publicity, and to secure general assent to new measures by previous explana- tions. The majority want the right to be heard rather than the right to collaborate. That system, however, can only be worked when the whole bureaucracy is as well intentioned as its chief, and is too well paid to seek bribes ; and no such bureaucracy exists or could be rapidly created in Russia, where, again, there is not the free revenue for so highly civilised and pecuniarily unprofitable a method of government. The force, so far as appears, could only come, as Alexander II. at last per- ceived, from some kind of representative, or at all events publicly debating, body ; and if the financial situation grows worse, or if the Czar at last feels the necessity of reducing his direct responsibilities, it is to some device of this kind that he must at last have recourse. It is probably not the plan best suited to Russia, where the people still look to the Sovereign as the rightful ruler, and where freedom is more wanted than political rights, a Habeas Corpus Act rather than the vote, but it is the one which most quickly brings new force to the centre, and a new kind of protection to the Sovereign's authority. The autocracy weighs, it must be remembered, on the Sovereign as well as the people, and often, when the difficulties seem endless and everybody is consciously or unconsciously an opponent, it becomes a. burden too heavy to bear. It will, we think, in the end be too heavy for Nicholas II., a Sovereign who, if we read him ariglit. always desires to do the right thing, usually discerns the right thing to be done, but at the moment of decision finds himself, like Gulliver, with little men pulling at long at the every hair of his head. They would not Pull hair of a States-General.
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