RUSSIA AND THE Nihilists. A Vivid Picture of the Cruellist or Modern Despotisms.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 392, 10 August 1889, Page 3

RUSSIA AND THE Nihilists. A Vivid Picture of the Cruellist or Modern Despotisms.

At tho Metropolitan Temple a few weeks ago, William Jackson Armsfciong delivered a lecture, upon the Nihilists of Russia to a fair audience. The speaker opened , by drawing a vivid picture of the struggle of the American colonists for freedom, their final puccesb and the adoption of, our Constitution, v which has been bho hope and the example ot the whole civilised world, except RuPbia. While the rest of Europe, and even portions of Asia and Africa, had been malting strides towards the personal freedom of the people, the policy or Russia had been to keep its subjects under the iron rule of the most barbaric despotism. Yet even here the desire for knowledge broke out ; schools and., colleges were formed ; bui behind every professors chair, stood «a Russian spy, and for teaching or studying the most moderate ot modern j veientihe works teachers and pupils were sent to the dungeon and to Siberia. Ie was here that the Nihilists were found; not among" the worst piemen Is of the' empire, as has been supposed, .but among the most enlightened. They were not in favour of the destruction of 'government but in favour ot the rights of mankind, which, under the brutal rule of the Cyr.ar, they are deprived of. The speaker read translations of the infamous press laws, the police laws, by which every one is under continuous police sur veillances, spoke ot the manner in which everyone has to keep at his own expense a spy to guard the outside of his house and roporc his every act to the police ; the manner in which men were taken from their beds at night and hurried oil" to prison and lost to the world for ever, without being allowed to bid their wives good-bye. The horrors of Russian prisons were vividly pictured — prisons in which f men and women wore placed for no other crime than that of not loving the Russian Government. He gave an illustration in which fifty persons were arrested on suspicion of some political crime and a thousand more were arrested as witnesses. They . were crowded into gaol and kept without clothes and with insufficient food for 4 years, at the end of which 75 per cent, bad died, of whom tifty'hart been driven to suicide. The fearful sufferings of SiDeria, the most horrible tortures inflicted for no adequate cause simply for political offences, 1 were dwelt upon. The whole lecture was a scathing denunciation of what the speaker denounced as the most cruel despotism the world has known. The lecture was given under the auspices of theO.A.R. The receipts will be turned over to the Johnstown relief -fund.

Thero was a full-flavoured joke perpetrated at a church bazaar not long since. Two young ladies offered to assist the good cause by vending kisses at the rate of sixpence apiece, or go-as-you-please for half-a-crown. 'Unfortunately, before starting, business, they partook of the cold collation purveyed by the local psalmist - cold ham and pickles. When the first purchaser came up fco the scratch, ho quickly collapsed and begged to be excused, alleging "he didn't comedown there to weed onioti- !, beds, 'anyhow." The, simple-minded countryman searching for grace liketh not' the aroma, of the pickled' onion. , Flabto— -I' see that the English are buying up all our lager beer breweries ; I wonder how they will carry the beer across the water? Sharp — Ob, in schooners, I supi'pose. - - ' , \ ; •