ncipation was doubtless a great work. Twenty million serfs
belonging to private owners, and 30,000,000 more, the serfs of
the Crown were set free. They had always, however, considered the
communal land as in one sense their own. "We are yours but the
land is ours," was the phrase. The Act was received with mistrust
and suspicion, and the owners were supposed to have tampered with
the good intentions of the Tsar. Land had been allotted to each
peasant family sufficient, as supposed, for its support, besides
paying a fixed yearly sum to Government. Much of it, however, is
so bad that it cannot be made to afford a living and pay the tax,
in fact a poll tax, not dependent on the size of the strip, but on
the number of the souls. The population in Russia has always had a
great tendency to migrate, and serfdom in past ages is said to have
been instituted to enable the lord of the soil to be responsible for
the taxes. "It would have been impossible to collect these from
peasants free to roam from Archangel to the Caucasus, from St.
Petersburg to Siberia." It was therefore necessary to enforce the
payments from the village community, the Mir, which is a much less
merciful landlord than the nobles of former days, and constantly
sells up the defaulting peasant.

The rule of the Mir is strangely democratic in so despotic an empire.
The Government never interferes with the communes if they pay their
taxes, and the ignorant peasants of the rural courts may pass sentences
of imprisonment for seven days, inflict twenty strokes with a rod,
impose fines, and cause a man who is pronounced "vicious or pernicious"
to be banished to Siberia. The authority of the Mir, of the Starosta,
the Whiteheads, the chief elders, seems never to be resisted, and
there are a number of proverbs declaring "what the Mir decides
must come to pass"; "The neck and shoulders of the Mir are broad";
"The tear of the Mir is cold but sharp." Each peasant is bound
hand and foot by minute regulations; he must plough, sow and reap
only when his neighbours do, and the interference with his liberty
of action is most vexatious and very injurious.

The agriculture enforced is of the most barbarous kind. Jensen,
Professor of Political Economy at Moscow, says: "The three-field
system--corn, green crops and fallow--which was abandoned in Europe
two centuries ago, has most disastrous consequences here. The lots
are changed every year, and no man has any interest in improving