29th May.
THERE is almost a fascination about the condition of thi in Russia just now. Andromeda could hardly have watched the conflict between Perseus and the Dragon with greater intensity thin the Russinn people will view the struggle between their elected representatives and the reactionary bureaucracy. For though the Czar's name covers the deeds of his servants, hia people do not hold him responsible for their crimes. It is not the Czar, therefore, that is the despot, but the "camorra" of offi-not Nicholas the Second, but leave the Perennial, who dies indeed now and then at the hands or bythe bombs of an assassin, but is ab once reincarnate in the person of his successor.
would be quite unfair to saddle the Czar with responsibility for all the evils of his reign. His position is umigue, Iheoretically an autocrat, he probably has less power than any constitutional monarch, He certainly with the tr in his dominions. In other monarphical countries there is usuall some sort of feudal loyalty to the reigning house. But we doubt if it could be urged with truth that there isan dynastic sentiment of that kind in Russia. To the peasants, the Czur is the incarnation of temporal and spiritual power; to the Tntellectuals" the embodiment of fate; while to the ruling classes he is the figure head of the vessel which they manage. His is the flag they carry, but their fidelity to it, if Russians themselves are to be believed, is the fidelity of such as have an eye lo the loaves and fishes, divine right." There unholy alliance between sword and censer which shows itself in a hundred different ways, but in none more dangerous than in the desire for the suppression of all enlightenment. res We want no education, it says; we want obedience and nothing more. Intelligence is revolution: down with it.
It is clear from the above that the Duma is right in thinking that before a change of conditions can be brought to pass in Russia there must be a change of system. There is, in a word, but one cure for the evils from which Russia suffers—Freedom. Freedom of speech, of discussion, and of the Press. These have for their corollary free people, and a free people can attend to its ts, ite luries, and its responsibilities in away which no despotism has ever yet been able to approach. Des-porisms have worked admirably in small States with men of more usual strength of character at the helm, but for the huge empires of the present they are out of date. Very little thought is needed to convince any reasoning man that the direction of such a mass of business as is concentrated in the departments of the Russian Government is utterly beyond the capacity even of a Napoleon. It must be divided and subdivided many tines, and it is thus that the bureaucracy warps its tremendous power. There no'Parliament to which officialism is responsible. Its sole head is the Minister of" the Interior, of whom it is said that he is the director of "merely a great detective bureau a monstrous and costly surveillance institution." This State within a Sta'e it is whowe terrible away has driven Rut it ttle nly the pheno-monal patience and gentleness of] the Russian people keeps the tale of official assassinations as small as it is, But it is not merely the Augean stable of the bureaucracy that need: the attention of the Duma. Fi ago the world was at one in at ling Russia the Colossus of the forth. She is still colossal la a sense, notwithstanding the proved clayey nature of her feet. She is a colossal question mark. Most countries have but one or two "questions" to trouble them; in or, Judaslike, to the bag and what Russia there isa question for almost. is put therein, every department, and certainly _In few words the fight now beg one or more for every great terning will bea fight between darkness ritorial division. Finland, Poland, and light, between intelligence and the Caucasus, each have their craft, between men who for ages juestiun of pressing importance. have been victimised and their in-reading on their hee's, jostling human oppressors. Nor is the battle poly secular. As usual, priest sible means of gaining attention are them, and trying every pos-ora is on the side of despotism and the fiosncial question, the religious question, the educational question, the Press question, the peasant question, the police question, and list not least, the question of the Duma, Is that to be an assembly risible to itself, to the Czar, and to the country, or is it to bea mere farce, a parliament such as the Sultan of Turkey once upon a time called together? Time will show and time is in favour of the Duma,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.