RUSSIA INTERNALLY.

Temuka Leader, Issue 37, 2 March 1880, Page 2

RUSSIA INTERNALLY.

The following appeared as aUetter in the Otago Daily Times :—To get a correct understanding of the now fearful . social condition in Russia it would perhaps be necessary to go back 'as. far as 1855, the year of the commencement of the \ resent Emperor's reign. \ Hej unfortunately, was tne successor of v very tyrannical monarches viz., Catherine 11., Paul 1., Alexander J., and Nichols? 1., under whose depostic reigns every movement of civil or religious liberty met with the severest punishment. When Alexander 11. ascended the throne in 1855 one of his first acts, and which procured for him the siucere sympathy of England and all Europe; was to liberate the serfs. But inctaing so he a.ip.irently made a great [apical blun lor. I quote the opinion/of Processor G. Gervinus, of Heidelberg, acknowledged the greatest German histuriau.He says,-iu his celebrate 1 work, "History of the Nineteenth f Jentury 7 " " Alexandra 11. makes a fearful mistake by liberating the serfs at once : he thus makes the nobility poor, and dees not confer any direct benefit to the serfs. Under the old system the estate owner was bound to house, feed, and protect his serfs f..r return of their labour, l'he common Itussian is by nature lazy;, dirty in the highest degree, and a diunkaru and almost at lowest step of European civilisation. What the Emperor should have done was to let tin* present generation in their former bondage, an i maue their children free, giwhg the children sufficient education to mak* them useful citizens, fit to take their place as such. -By ruining nobility thus suddenly the Emperor will make enemiis, who will sooner or later shake the very foundations of his throne, for the simple reason that these estatoholders,now 'spend their incomes in Paris, or Italy, and the Continent,while very soon they will have to be content by living at St. Petersburg, and the experienc? they have gained m France or England about constitutional go vernment must in the course of time? be very dangerous to the system of aw autocratic monarch, who is at once head of the Church and State, and whose . personal will or caprice is the only law in a vast empire." What professor Gervinuß thus wrote in 1758 seems to come true now. The present commencement of perhaps a future fearful revolution in Russia appears to be carried onbv men of the highest position, intelligence and large private fortunes; for alone the engineering works connected with theblowing up of the Moscow roilway train show, according the Cologne Gazette (a leading German paper) not only an. amount of the greatest skill, but must havj cost a very large sum ot money. Next there is the attempt to Wow.jp , the Imperial Winter Palace. How w it possible that such an attempt .could have been made, unless the conspirator had assistants in the very palace itscir, and assistants who move in the very highest society connected wita w« Imperial household ? , How these terrible affairs will end history in future will show. Iftto present Emperor giv-s a constitution to Russia, he must put an «nd tpD|_ autocratic government, and be sa H|H to be -a constitutional monarch <mm But if he should do so,w juld tl* be satisfied? I don't think%o,ta»/ believe that there would be a Ration, of such a fearful nature that 17£9 to;,. 1791 in France would be nothing compared to it. i When we read that some tunc ago ' only a poor woman was burnt as a witch and an intelligent Russian jury brought in a verdict « Served her right!" against the villains who murdered hor, and tne intelligent judge only sentenced these, murderers to do a abort church penance it can be no doubt easily understood what would be committed in Russia " ™e. ? government gots into the hands ?*&s& dissatisfied nobility and plena oi vei-v lowest hJUfop»an !i |civili|aJi^g.^;ii

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