"CIVIS" ON RUSSIA.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), 25 March 1881, Page 3

"CIVIS" ON RUSSIA.

"Civis" in the Otago Witness says: — " Now that the Russian revolutionists, after two years of futile plotting, mining, and infernal-machining, have at last really killed their Czar, one would like, if it were possible, to know precisely why they have killed him. As despots go, particularly Russian despots, Alexander 11. was a very good despot indeed. If he despotically crushed his people by taxation, decimated them by conscription and war, chastised their discontent by the knout and Siberia, he also despotically, and against the feeling of the nobles, emancipated 22,000,000 of serfs ; and very few rulers of his class have as good a mark as that against their names. The misery that he wrought he wrought conscientiously, according to tho accepted code of autocratic duty. The good that he did, and he did much, no code constrained him to do. He did it by way of supererogation, propria motu, or on the impulse of mere humanity and goodness of heart. The Russians have never had a better master, and one naturally asks what, then, their behaviour towards him means. Why did they first terrorise their Czar into melancholy madness and then kill him. The answer, I am afraid, must be that assassination —the fear of it or the thing itself —is a necessary part of government in a despotic country. Assassinating their Czar is the Russian equivalent for a " change of Ministry." Not having learned the oil-can theory of Government (which, be it understood, is the only sound theory, and I haven't the least desire to cast ridicule upon it), the Russians, when they desire a change of policy, are reduced to the necessity of blowing up their rulers with dynamite. Their Chief Engineer claims to boss the ship, and won't take orders from anybody. Plainly, if you want to alter the plan of the voyage you must get rid of the Chief Engineer. Assassination is the corollary of autocracy. It is a melancholy doctrine, and one which I shouldn't care to propound in Russia' itself, but all history illustrates its truth. Despotisms are tempered, first by epigrams, and next, when epigrams fail of effect, by palace revolutions and tyrannicide. But why kill the Czar when he was in the very act of retiring voluntarily from the stage ? He had either abdicated or was about to abdicate; why couldn't he be allowed to take his Dolgorouki and depart in peace ? Simply because, in the nature of things, he has a successor, and it is necessary to give to that successor at the outset of his career a somewhat pointed admonition. That is the Russian theory, I don't doubt. " Your respected father governed after such-and-such fashions, and was blown to pieces by a bomb whilst reviewing his household troops. Ponder the hint, and—put the ship's head about." Kings are killed not in revenge for the past but to secure a new policy in the future. In the light of Russian events one sees the beauty of Sir Arthur Cordon's theory of constitutional government. If it had been possible for the unfortunate Czar to reign and not govern, contenting himself with the task of lubricating the governmental machine and keeping the bearings from getting hot; —if that had been possible to him, he might have been going about happily with his imperial oil-can to this hour.