exist among the merchants are fully recognised by the Russians themselves. In all moral affairs the lower classes in Russia are very lenient in their judgments, and are strongly disposed, like the Americans, to admire what is called in Transatlantic phraseology "a smart man," though the smartness is known to contain a large admixture of dishonesty; and yet the vox populi in Russia emphatically declares that the merchants as a class are unscrupulous and dishonest.' (Vol. i. pp. 273-5.)

Our business is not, however, with their honesty, but with the capacity of these representatives of the middle class for self-government; and in this respect, as it seems to us, they totally fail, notwithstanding the laudable attempts of the Crown to extend their municipal powers. It would seem that public duties in Russia, when they are not accompanied by official rank and rewards, are commonly regarded as a burden and a

snare.

Mr. Wallace introduces us to a very interesting experiment of this kind, with which we were not previously acquainted, as it originated with the liberal movement of opinion in 1864, and has only been in operation a few years. This institution is called the Zemstvo,' an elective county or provincial assembly, somewhat resembling the Conseils généraux of France.

'The Zemstvo is a kind of local administration which supplements the action of the rural communes, and takes cognisance of those higher public wants which individual communes cannot possibly satisfy. Its principal duties are to keep the roads and bridges in proper repair, to provide means of conveyance for the rural police and other officials, to elect the justices of peace, to look after primary education and sanitary affairs, to watch the state of the crops and take measures against approaching famine, and in short to undertake, within certain clearlydefined limits, whatever seems likely to increase the material and moral well-being of the population. In form the institution is parliamentary -that is to say, it consists of an assembly of deputies which meets at least once a year, and of a permanent executive bureau elected by the assembly from among its members.' (Vol. i. pp. 326–7.)

'What surprised me most in this assembly was that it was composed partly of nobles and partly of peasants-the latter being decidedly in the majority-and that no trace of antagonism seemed to exist between the two classes. Landed proprietors and their ci-devant serfs evidently met for the moment on a footing of equality. The discussions were always carried on by the nobles, but on more than one occasion peasant members rose to speak, and their remarks, always clear, practical, and to the point, were invariably listened to with respectful attention by all present. Instead of that violent antagonism which might have been expected considering the constitution of the assembly, there was a great deal too much unanimity-a fact indicating plainly that the majority of the members did not take a very deep interest in the matters presented to them.' (Vol. i. pp. 328–9.)

This is an entirely modern institution, created about ten years ago by the Emperor to lighten the duties and correct. the abuses of the Imperial Administration by means of local self-government. At first it was wonderfully well received and great things were expected of it. But those hopes have already been disappointed. These assemblies have been entirely deprived of all political signification-that of Petersburg was closed by Imperial command, and several of the leading members banished the capital. Some local improvements were effected by them, but (as is too often the case with elected Boards) the rates were raised in three years from 5,000,000 roubles to thrice that sum; and very shortly the enthusiasm which greeted the institution wore off. Its members were unpaid. Its duties were uninviting. Mr. Wallace thinks that the Russians have made great progress in their political education. He is inclined to believe the Zemstvo may outlive its present state of lethargy; but he adds, 'it may possibly die of inanition or be swept away by some new explosion of reforming enthusiasm before it has had time to 'strike root'; and he concludes the chapter by a painful allusion to Jonah's gourd.

If Mr. Wallace fails to show that there are elements of freedom and intelligent self-government in the middle-classes and the provincial institutions of Russia, he turns with greater confidence to the peculiar communal organisation of the rural districts called the Mir. To study the effects of the common property in land, and of its periodical re-distribution, which are the striking peculiarities of the Russian village system, and to report upon the results of serf-emancipation, were the two main objects Mr. Wallace proposed to himself in visiting Russia. He seems to have been very slightly acquainted with the enormous amount of literature, German as well as Russian, to which the discussion of these subjects has given birth. A writer might easily, without any personal knowledge of a Russian village or even of the Russian tongue, make himself well acquainted with all the leading facts and points of this great controversy. They may be found in a compendious form in Herr Eckardt's interesting volume, or in J. Keussler's "Geschichte des bauerlichen Grundbesitz in Russland;' or at much greater length in the Reports of the great Commission of Inquiry which sat in 1872 under the presidency of M. Walujew, now Minister of the Imperial domains, which examined no less than 958 witnesses of all ranks. To this Report Mr. Wallace occasionally refers; he tells us that he was favoured with a copy of it, and also of the evidence ou

which the Commission proceeded, and that he himself had some hand in collecting a part of these details. In short, the materials are extremely abundant, and we regret that Mr. Wallace has not made more use of them. He tells us that when he arrived in Russia his knowledge of the subject was elementary and superficial. It is true that a man might very easily be led astray by much that has been written about it, and Mr. Wallace himself does not appear even now to have gone very deeply into the question.

When Baron Haxthausen visited Russia iu 1842, and published his work on that country in the following year, he disclosed to the world, and even to the Russians themselves, the remarkable social phenomena of the communal tenure of land. His ideas were eagerly taken up by a circle of youthful and enthusiastic students and professors at Moscow, whose national ambition conceived for their country the glorious mission of regenerating society and the world. Here, in this fact, of the commor tenure and periodical division of village lands, they conceived that they had found the secret of Russia's greatness-the true grit, the solid gneiss, underlying the artificial creations of Peter and of Catherine. This one

principle was to end the eternal warfare of rich and poor-to extinguish the odious distinctions of classes and ranks-to abolish the selfishness of property-to found on communism the empire of the East, and to prepare men for the exercise and enjoyment of absolute freedom. The abolition of serfage by the great act of February 19, 1861, left the natural forces of Russian society to their full and free expansion; and the dawn of the second millennium of the Russian Empire was to rouse the Sclavonian races into active life, from the Vistula to the farthest East. These were, and are, in part the visionary hopes of the great Slavophil party, whose influence is certainly not unfelt in the political events of the present day. They started from the fundamental principle that society was to be based on the subjection of all personal rights of property and freedom to the common interest; and that the Russian communal village is, and has long been, the type of the very condition to which many of the most advanced thinkers of the present age and of Western Europe would bring mankind. This was to be the new formula of civilisation'-the new light of the world. The communistic institutions of the Russian democracy would eventually prevail over the aristocracies and monarchies of Western Europe-over the ruins of the feudal system--over the claims of private property and personal freedom. No doubt there is a good deal in the

writings of Comte and Mill which tends in the same direction, and the works of Mr. Mill especially enjoy a vast popularity in Russia, where they probably receive an interpretation he himself would not have put upon them. Mr. Wallace does not accept all this extravagance, but he has not entirely escaped the infection, and he is not quite strong enough or sound enough in his own principles of political economy to expose, as he might otherwise have done, the folly and danger of these paradoxes. He seems to think that when the world has out-grown the Whig prejudices and the Liberal opinions of the present day, there is a good time coming when the really advanced thinkers and politicians of a future age will have reduced society to the dead level of a servile democracy, wielding by mere force of numbers an unlimited power over each of its members. That is not a form of freedom and society we desire to live under. But we must leave Mr. Wallace to give us his own account of the Mir itself. He regards the Russian village as a sort of enlarged undivided family, and this may very likely have been its origin.

'In both there is a certain amount of common property in the one case the house and nearly all that it contains, and in the other the arable land and pasturage. In both cases there is a certain amount of common responsibility: in the one case for all the debts, and in the other for all the taxes and Communal obligations. And both are protected to a certain extent against the ordinary legal consequences of insolvency, for the family cannot be deprived of its house or necessary agricultural implements, and the Commune cannot be deprived of its land, by importunate creditors.

On the other hand, there are many important points of contrast. The Commune is, of course, much larger than the family, and the mutual relations of its members are by no means so closely interwoven. The members of a family all farm together, and those of them who earn money from other sources are expected to put their savings into the common purse; whilst the households composing a Commune farm independently, and pay into the common treasury only a certain fixed sum.' (Vol. i. pp. 183-4.)

Amongst the families composing a Russian village, a state of isolation is impossible. The Heads of the Households must often meet together and consult in the Village Assembly, and their daily occupations must be influenced by the Communal decrees. They cannot begin to mow the hay or plough the fallow field until the Village Assembly has passed a resolution on the subject. If a peasant becomes a drunkard, or takes some equally efficient means to become insolvent, every family in the village has a right to complain, not merely in the interests of public morality, but from selfish motives, because all the families are collectively responsible for his taxes. For the same reason no peasant can permanently leave the village without the consent of the

Commune, and this consent will not be granted until the applicant gives satisfactory security for the fulfilment of all his actual and future liabilities. If a peasant wishes to go away for a short time, in order to work elsewhere, he must obtain a written permission, which serves him as a passport during his absence; and he may be recalled at any moment by a Communal decree. In reality he is rarely recalled so long as he sends home regularly the full amount of his taxes-including the dues which he has to pay for the temporary passport-but sometimes the Commune uses the power of recall for the purpose of extorting money from the absent member. If it becomes known, for instance, that an absent member receives a good salary in one of the towns, he may one day receive a formal order to return at once to his native village, and be informed at the same time, unofficially, that his presence will be dispensed with if he will send to the Commune a certain amount of money. The money thus sent is generally used by the Commune for convivial purposes. Whether this method of extortion is frequently used by the Communes, I cannot confidently say, but I suspect that it is by no means rare, for one or two cases have accidentally come under my own observation, and I know that the police of St. Petersburg have been recently ordered not to send back any peasants to their native villages until some proof is given that the ground of recall is not a mere pretext.

In order to understand the Russian village system, the reader must bear in mind these two important facts: the arable land and the pasturage belong not to the individual houses, but to the Commune and all the households are collectively and individually responsible for the entire sum which the Commune has to pay annually into the Imperial Treasury.' (Vol. i. pp. 185-6.)

'Now in Russia, so far at least as the rural population is concerned, the payment of taxes is inseparably connected with the possession of land. Every peasant who pays taxes is supposed to have a share of the arable land and pasturage belonging to the Commune. If the Communal revision lists contain a hundred names, the Communal land ought to be divided into a hundred shares, and each "revision soul should enjoy his share in return for the taxes which he pays.' (Vol. i. pp. 187-8.)

The census list determines how much land each family will hold, and therefore what taxes they will have to pay, at each periodical revision. There have been only ten revisions since 1719. But in Russia the possession of a share of the communal land is often not a privilege but a burden. In some communes the land is so poor and abundant that it cannot be let at any price. The allotment itself is made by the assembly of the village, of which all the heads of households are members, and the decrees of this body are absolute and imperative. Arrived at this point Mr. Wallace makes a grand discovery-' a 'statement to be heralded in by a flourish of trumpets.' He tells us that In the great stronghold of Cæsarian despotism and cen