THE NEW DEPARTURE IN RUSSIA.
IT is too early yet to be more than hopeful, but there really seems to be a probability that with the new Czar a better, or at least more humane, 6,2i me may com- mence in Russia. Nicholas II. intends to be autocrat, but he also intends, if we may trust rumours that appear to be well founded, to use his autocratic power with sense and moderation. We think little of the amnesty published on his accession, though it is said to cover twenty thou- sand persons, for the local agents are sure to detain any persons they suspect of Liberalism, and are already, we see, recapturing many of the pardoned on the pretext that they have committed fresh offences ; but in one direction the improvement would seem to be not only decided, but intended to be permanent. The Czar has removed General Gourko from the Governor-General- ship of Poland avowedly because he was too apt to punish men for having been born Catholics and Poles ; he has deprived General Ignatieff of his Governorship of Kieff because he was a persecutor ; he has given the great Jew financiers assurances in which they confide ; he has punished the officials who sent Cossacks to massacre Catholics in the church at. Kroze ; he has refused even to consider the question of religion in making appointments; and he has ordered that in Poland, at all events, Russian officials shall not take the religion of accused persons into account. That is only justice, according to Western ideas ; but in Russia such a line of policy is an immense improvement on the recent regime, and will greatly diminish the sum of human misery. Taking Jews, Roman Catholics, and Dissenters altogether, but omitting Mahommedans, Armenians, and Pagans, there are at least twelve millions of persons in Russia whom the policy of persecution for religion's sake placed at the mercy of local officials. They were very differently treated in different localities, and by different district Governors, but they were all liable to injustice, to extortion, and in many cases, to excessively cruel efforts at deportation. They were placed in the position of the Catholics under Queen Elizabeth, or the Malignants under the Protectorate, that is, they had no rights which the powerful were bound to respect, and scarcely any means of resisting violent wrong. The position of the Stundists in particular, who were few, powerless, scattered, and peaceful, was worse than that of any " sectaries" in the worst days of English history; while that of the Jews, being exasperated by the popular hatred, was almost intolerable. Allowing for Jewish vehemence in denunciation, it seems certain that many thousands of Russian Jews perished of exposure, want, and diseases brought on by terror ; and that the whole race, which, remember, has lived in Russia and Poland for many centuries, has been wilfully lowered in civilisation and comfort by an enforced and ruinous packing in limited districts without sufficient house accommodation for the new inhabitants. If the Czar orders, nearly all this will cease—not quite all, for some of the evil is due to popular hatred and suspicion—and if we may believe the informa- tion coming in from every side, the Czar has given the order. Wisely enough, he has issued no proclamation and made no promises, but he has signified his pleasure in a circular to all officials ; and to the Russian bureaucracy, in their daily business, the pleasure of the Czar is law. The pressure is lifted ; and though non-orthodox Russians will still remain frogs in the estimation of the majority, they at least will no longer be in the position of frogs under a flagstone.
It is exceedingly difficult to comprehend the motive of the Russian Government in allowing, even for a time, an active religious persecution. Most oppressors for religion's sake have been exasperated by a belief that the heretics they hated, besides being destined to hell, were anxious to make converts, and in making them also made traitors. That was certainly the belief of most of the per- secuting Roman Emperors, of Philip II., of Catherine de Medicis, and of the Protestant Terroristsin Ireland ; but it cannot have been the governing idea of Alexander III. The Mennonites, Stundists, and Old Believers, were among the most peaceful of mankind, peaceful as Quakers ; the Jews were utterly powerless in the face of the popular hatred, and neither seek nor desire converts, and the Poles, if they were traitors at all, were traitors by reason of their nationality, not their creed. Indeed, the mass of Orthodox Russians is so over- whelmingly great in the Empire that opposition to the Government on the religious ground is as impossible as a Jewish rising in Great Britain, or a Confucian rising in the Australian Colonies. The persecution in Russia was not, and could not be, dictated by secret fear, but was the result, first of a religious dislike which extended even to the Emperor, and resembled the English dislike of a cen- tury ago for Unitarians, and, secondly, of the passion which seizes almost all despots for enforcing external uniformity. They cannot bear the resistance which seems to them inherent in difference of creed, and struggle to be rid of it, as some among them have struggled—Ivan the Terrible, for instance—to be rid of differences of costume. There is no exertion of despotic power which has been so frequent in history, none which has produced such misery, and none which has been usually more futile. Nothing but massacre or expulsion will put down a religion ; and the only result of trying pettier means, is to produce a hereditary hatred, which, as we see in some districts of Ireland, survives the wrongdoing, and seems to enter into the very blood. The persecuting Government gains nothing, not even apparent obedience ; and loses one inestimable advantage, the sense among its subjects that it is permanently serene. Nicholas II. has seen in India what serene impartiality in a Government can effect, im- partiality carried straight out to its last conditions by the recognition of many separate religious laws—for example, the laws of marriage—as part of the laws of the land ; and if his new orders are accurately reported, he has profited by the spectacle. The change is of the happiest augury for his reign, all the more because it has been effected silently, without fuss, and without irritating the masses of ignorant Orthodox by a loud proclamation of the equality of creeds. Russia is not the place for abstract political doctrines ; but if the Czar has really decided to treat all religions and nationalities alike, even in appointments to the Government service, he will have removed one prolific source of the bitternesses from which Nihilism springs. We do not suppose that Gallio was much loved ; but it did not occur to any sectary to assassi- nate either Gallio or his master in Rome.
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