NOTES.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1511, 19 March 1887, Page 4

NOTES.

We should think that it would require something exceedingly tempting, m the way of annual premiums, to induce an insurance company to grant a policy upon the life of the Czar, for a more precarious tenure of existence than that which he holds it is impossible to imagine. It would be something quite out of the common indeed for a Romanoff to come to his end by natural means, and die peacefully m his bed, Czar after Czar having come to his end by the hand of the assassin, varied occasionally ..by poison. The present occupier of the throne of Holy Russia has already had several narrow escapes, and doubtless remembering the proverb that the pitchei that goes often to the well gets broken at last, has become wholly unnerved by the perpetual dread of violence m which ihis lives. His life is, indeed, made a burden to him by this constant anxiety, and it is perhaps scarcely wonderful to read that on being informed of the recent attempt to dynamite him he burst into tears. Probably there is no | more miserable man m Europe than His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias, who has realised to the lull the truth of the proverb that " uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." It is impossible not to be sorry for him, for there is reason to believe that he means well, and is not even personally disliked by the very men who seek to compass his death, but he is the victim, as he is tht embodiment, of a vicious system of despotism which grinds the people under its iron heel, and which choker out the very breath of liberty. All society is under a complete system ol police espionage, and the brutality of authority is met by secret organisations, and by plotting even m high places, to overthrow so detestable a state of things. Sooner or later there will be a tremendous outburst, and Russia will be born into liberty amid the throes of a bloody revolution.