THE CZAR OF RUSSIA.

Thames Star, Volume XI, Issue 3486, 26 February 1880, Page 2

THE CZAR OF RUSSIA.

The Daily News says the Czar was born to a certain position in a nation a large part of which is scarcely intelligent enough to understand either rights or duties. And the way in which the Writers of the Manifesto propose to set all to rights is by the Czar resigning his authority to ( ai Assembly elected out of this nation by universal suffrage. Representative institutions of some sort a Me certainly to be . desired. This rapid and wholesale method does not promise much, even if it were likely to be adopted at the dictation of a Revolutionary Committee, anxious to use universal suffrage for their own anarchic designs. The fanatical belief in mere machinery can hardly go further than when a vast mass of ignorant peasants, whose experience of government is con* fined to dividing plots of land Imd inflict ing corporal punishment, are expected to elect a sovereign Assembly. The Morning Post remark*: — Neither politi* ' cat nor personal liberty can be said to exist in a country governed like Eussia. In fact, notwithstanding her *jfe pretensions as the pioneer of civilization, ™ Eussia as she is has ceased to be a possibility in the present age. Millions of ptople who know that they are entitled to the rights conceded to their fellowcreature* in all civilized States will not be content to hold their very existence at the will of a despotic and irresponsible Government. In other words, Russians have come to realise the fact that their rulers must live for them and not they for their rulers, and the sooner this fact is recognised in Imperialist circles, the less violent will be the convulsion which sooner or later mutt come.