The Daily News MONDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1905. NOTE AND COMMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 7743, 20 February 1905, Page 2

The Daily News MONDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1905. NOTE AND COMMENT.

Thrco years ago Count Leo Tolstoy, being then in the imTHE CZAR minent expectation of AND HIS death, addressed to the PEOPLE. Czar a letter such as autocrats are not often permitted to see. Dropping all forms which regulate a communication from a subject to his Sovereign, he writes to Nicholas 11. as one man to another, as a brother to a brother, and exposes with merciless precision the inherent and essential I weakness of the system of which the I Czar is the head. By a singular coincidence it is published for the first time in the same issue of the I Times which contains the news of | the fall of Port"Arthur, and, in the circumstances, it inevitably assumes i the air of a prophecy rather than of .a mere analysis of political conditions. Tolstoy credits the Czar [with l>oing a just and humane rider, who sincerely desires the good of his i people, but he forces him to note |that, in fact, under his reign, their condition has become more miserable, their devotion to the Little Father obviously less, and the oppression of the bureaucracy far -more severe. lie points out that the Russian people no longer regard the Czar as an infallible earthly deity, while the very efforts of M. l'obicdonostzefl prove of themselves that Orthodoxy is no longer natural to the nation, since so great a struggle is required to maintain even its semblance. He tries—vainly, as events have shown —to make the Czar understand that it is beyond the power of the best and wisest man that ever lived, well and wisely to govern one hundred and thirty-six millions of people under an autocratic system. The ruler is in the hands of his servants, whom chance and opportunity select far more frequently than the ruler himself and who will always have a personal interest in opposing progress, it is not necessary to agree with Tolstoy's expression of the nation's desires in order to feel the force of his attack upon the system, or to realise the truth of his

thesis that if the Czar would help his people he must first give them leave to tell him what they want. I'rince Kropotkin, in his " Nineteenth Century " article, entitled " Constitutional Agitation in Hussia," points out that there is nothing new in the demand of the Zemstvos for the right of self-govern-ment. " Over and over again, for the last forty years, they have ex--' pressed the same desire, and it is | for the third or foy-th time that they now address their demands to the Emperor." i*ut the constitutional movement has failed hitherto, and the Prince is not hopeful now. The bureaucracy are mistaken if they think that they will be able to limit their concessions to the invitation of a few representatives of the provinces to take part in the delibera-' tions of the Council of State.

Such a measure anight have pacified the minds in 1881, if Alexander ' the Third had honestly fulfilled the last will of his father, It might have had, perhaps, some slight effect ten years ago, if Nicholas the Second had listened then to the demand of the Zemstvos. Hut now j this will do no longer. The energy. I of the forces set in motion is too I great to he satisfied with such a trifling result. And if they do not make concessions very soon, the Court party may easily learn the I lesson which Louis Philippe learned in the last days of February, 1848