this country, and the three last of the Bourbons prior to the Revolution in France, were more absolute than either their successors or their predecessors. M. de Dolgoroukoff, fertile of theory as he is, nowhere suggests any expedient by which the growth of bureaucratic power is to be countervailed when the serfs are free. Thus much being apparently settled on the general method of emancipation, we come next to the question of the indemnity. Here the "serf-proprietor" peeps out again in Prince Dolgorou koff. He argues that the Government should take the indemnity to the proprietors on itself, instead of leaving it to be worked out by the peasants; because the Government was itself the author of serfdom. This is a somewhat indifferent argument; for if the Crown introduced serfdom, the nobility have unquestionably profited by it; and if the author of the evil is to pay one part of the indemnity, it would be only fair that the gainers by the evil should forego the other part. The poverty of the Government has been made the chief argument in Russia itself, against the grant of money from the treasury. M. de Dolgoroukoff, freely acknowledging that the finances of the country are in a deplorable condition, replies that there is, nevertheless, ample wealth at the disposal of the Crown for this purpose. He instances the Crown lands, and proposes that they should be sold by auction, the proceeds being paid in indemnities. And he refers to the compensation voted in this country to slaveowners a quarter of a century ago, a precedent which will hardly be thought apposite in the face of Prince Dolgoroukoff's own admission, that the State had originally created the property of the lord in his serf in Russia. It may, nevertheless, be fair that the State in that country should contribute to the object; but it appears to be resolute in refusing the demand. But it is time that M. de Dolgoroukoff, after being so critical, should himself be constructive in turn. At p. 120 he publishes his own notion of the conditions under which the emancipation of the serf in Russia should be carried out. We shall condense into shorter language than his own the terms which he proposes: 1. He demands that a definite extent of allotment should be fixed on in each province for every male serf, the female serfs being to be emancipated without any grant of land,—the extent of the allotment to vary with the population and the price of land in each province. 2. That the serfs attached to the personal service of the seigneurs should choose between two kinds of emancipation: either to be freed like the rest, or to receive no land, and therefore to pay nothing by way of indemnity. Prince Dolgoroukoff's Scheme. 199 3. That serfdom should terminate at the expiration of one year, this interval being allowed to the landowners to make their arrangements for the new system. 4. That an indemnity of 100 roubles (L.16) should be paid to the owners for each male serf, the number of which was returned, under the census of 1857, at 10,850,000. 5. That each male serf should pay, in redemption of his allotment of ground, five roubles (sixteen shillings) annually for thirty-three years, he being at liberty to compound at any time by payments in advance. ,—he The other conditions in the author's project refer to the manner in which the above five principles should be carried into effect. Prince Dolgoroukoff, it will have been seen, demands two classes of indemnities, an indemnity to the proprietor for the loss of service, and a further indemnity for the loss of land allotted to the emancipated serfs. Now, the former of these indemnities alone will amount, on the author's computation, to more than L.170,000,000 sterling, since he demands, in behalf of his order, L.16 for each emancipated male serf.1 Whence is this immense sum to be obtained? The considerable loan which the Russian Government is at this moment negotiating in London, is but a drop in the ocean in comparison with it. The Russian Government would be compelled to borrow annually for ten years nearly double that amount, in order to meet such a demand. M. de Dolgoroukoff, indeed, has suggested the Crown lands. But even if we may take his computation of the revenue which their abstraction would sacrifice as an index of their saleable value, they would hardly meet one-fourth of the required sum. He fixes the present revenue that they yield at 10,500,000 roubles, or, in round figures, at L.1,600,000 sterling annually. Estimating the revenue at 4 per cent. on the presumptive value, this would fix the value at L.40,000,000. Therefore, after the whole of the Crown lands were sold, and the last resource in the actual property of the State exhausted, there would still remain a deficit of L.130,000,000. Another equally practical consideration seems never to have struck the author. If, as he appears to acknowledge, both Government and people are so poor that neither can materially help the other, who is to be found to purchase the Crown lands? -Not Russians, surely. There can hardly be L.40,000,000 lying idly in the pockets of would-be landowners in Russia. If the money is to be sought from abroad, the foreigner who supplies it must become the landowner, or, at any rate, the hypothé The male serfs are computed to number 10,800,000: the author proposes to emancipate the females gratuitously. caire, which, so far as security is concerned, is the same thing. What would an Englishman living under free institutions, or a Frenchman dabbling in crédit mobilier, give for a Russian title to property, beyond a snap of the fingers? It is quite true that the financial credit of the Russian Government is tolerably good in most of the European money-markets; and the normal price, for example, of Russian Three-per-cents. is 65 to 66, whereas the French Three-per-cents. are rarely in these days above 70; and the Dutch Two and a half-per-cents. (probably the safest of allContinental securities) are commonly quoted at not more than 64 or 65. But French and English bondholders of the Russian Government would be supported by their respective Governments if the Russian exchequer were to break faith with them. Not so French and English landholders in Russia. Their title might escheat, perhaps, through a trivial violation of Russian law. But, apart from this distinction, no one could invest money in Russian soil who did not personally superintend its due cultivation, if he wished his investment to retain its former value. The author, however, has his little plan, which we will quote in his own words : "Dettes hypothécaires aux établissements The author must necessarily know his own country better than we can; and we should hesitate in venturing to consider such a scheme chimerical, had he not himself, in other parts of his volume, furnished us with sufficient evidence for doing so. One indemnity found to be impracticable from its magnitude, we next come upon another. That which we have just discussed, involving simply the demands of the proprietors against the Government for loss of service, there remains the demand of the same body against their serfs for loss of land. For thirty-three years each serf is to pay, on this system, sixteen shillings annually; and M. de Dolgoroukoff says nothing of commutations for immediate payment of the whole, though we may presume that he would admit of ordinary discount. Here, then, is a further demand of L.26, 8s. for each of the nearly eleven million male serfs, to be liquidated before the serf can be emancipated with Objections to the Author's Scheme. 201 property of his own. This is a heavier bill than the last, and would amount to nearly L.280,000,000. M. de Dolgoroukoff accepts the orders of the Emperor to emancipate the serfs with property, and sends in to his Imperial Majesty a little charge of L.450,000,000 as the cost of his philanthropic design. We may be doing our author injustice in supposing that he would not reduce the amount of the indemnity to the serf-owners, did he see a probability of their acceptance of a scheme of emancipation upon terms less favourable to themselves. But we certainly do not find any contrary sentiment expressed in the volume before us. It is one thing to say, that the majority of the owners being opposed to emancipation, they will not assent to it without an equivalent, and that without their assent it cannot be done; but it is quite another thing to demand this indemnity, and to leave us to the conclusion that the serf-owners are to claim it de jure. The author has told us that there can be no dispute of the moral illegality of serfdom, and that the Government instituted it three centuries ago. Thus, during the whole interval the landowners have reaped the benefit of an immoral system. It may be just to indemnify that class for the land which they are to alienate in full possession to the serf; but to indemnify them also for loss of service, especially after what the author has already stated as to the reciprocal nature of that service, would be irrational. If it be replied that, without indemnities, the retrograde party will not concur, let the progress party set the example of gratuitous emancipation, and so put their liberality and patriotism to the test. Self-denying patriots must really not demand their share in L.170,000,000, before they will do that which they acknowledge to be right. The chief remaining question on this subject relates to the communal or private appropriation by the serfs of the property to be attached to their emancipation. The author advocates, as has been already indicated, the eventual separate enjoyment by each serf of his respective allotment; but he advocates the throwing of the whole serf-land, in the first instance, into hotchpot, so far as each commune is concerned, and its partition among the serfs when the debt of emancipation shall be paid. "One must be blind," says M. de Dolgoroukoff, "not to perceive the disadvantage of the perpetual maintenance of a communal. system which belongs to the infancy of civilisation." He goes on to observe that this system "is an obstacle to the progress of agriculture and to the development of industry, and an encouragement to idleness." This may be true; and yet we know of few greater obstacles to progress than the partition of the soil into small and poor proprietorships. Small farmers are bad enough small landowners are incomparably worse. Assuming that petty proprietorships must be called into existence, we think the best guarantee for a certain amount of capital for the improvement of the land being found available, would consist in the division of the emancipation-land into private and communal. The community, with a broader back than the individual owner, would be better able to assist the owner in the improvement of his allotment, than he could assist himself if he were in undivided possession of his whole share. The author again speaks with apprehension for the result of a general emancipation, in increasing the already exorbitant power of the bureaucracy; but only in the event of this aim being accomplished in the manner which he deprecates. We are sorry that he has, nevertheless, passed it over in so few words; for it is one of the most important attributes of the serf question. It is hard to perceive on what pretext the natural rights of the Crown to deal with emancipated serfs, as it deals with the rest of its subjects, is to be rejected. Prince Dolgoroukoff appears to content himself with the stipulation that this class shall not be treated like the peasantry on the Crown domains; and he asserts that the more moderate of the bureaucrats are ready to concur with him in this particular; although we apprehend that if his scheme for the sale of those domains were to be realized, the class of Crown peasants would vanish, and all would be on an equal footing. Let the emancipation, however, take place as it may, it seems certain that the power of the aristocracy of land must be lessened, and the power of the aristocracy of bureaux be increased. Centralization will have made a great advance. This tendency is so obvious, that it is hard to understand how the Russian bureaucracy can entertain the aversion to the proposed measure which the author imputes to them. In contrasting the manner in which the British people, as distinguished from the principal nations of the Continent, struck off the universal curse of feudalism, we shall appreciate our own good fortune in escaping the coarse expedient by which other nations have gained their deliverance. With ourselves-more especially with England-the feudal nobility was broken up by its own intestine divisions nearly a century before serfdom in Russia began. That result once achieved, the interference of the State was hardly required; for the abolition of feudalism became almost a fait accompli, and the statutes which formally terminated it were little more than the public recognition of a long existing fact. Still less was it found necessary with us to create an immense mass of small proprietorships. If there were in Russia an adequate intervening class between the land |