French Revolution of 1789, while yet that
Revolution was noble and good, while yet Lafayette and Bailly held it,
leaders in English thought, who had quickened the opinions which had
caused the Revolution, sent malignant prophecies and prompted foul
blows, so in this battle of Alexander against a foul wrong they seized
this time of all times to show all the wrongs and absurdities of which
Russia ever had been or ever might be guilty--criticised, carped, sent
much haughty advice, depressing sympathy, and malignant prophecy. Review
articles, based on no real knowledge of Russia, announced a desire for
serf-emancipation, and then, in the modern English way, with plentiful
pyrotechnics of antithesis and paradox, threw a gloomy light into the
skilfully pictured depths of imperial despotism, official corruption,
and national bankruptcy.

They revived Old World objections, which, to one acquainted with the
most every-day workings of serfage, were ridiculous. It was said that if
the serfs lost the protection of their owners they might fall a prey to
rapacious officials. As well might it have been argued that a mother
should never loose her son from her apron-strings. It was said that
"Serfism excludes pauperism"--that, if the serf owes work to his owner
in the prime of life, the owner owes support to his serf in the decline
of life. No lie could be more absurd to one who had seen Russian life.
We were first greeted, on entering Russia, by a beggar who knelt in the
mud; at Kovno eighteen beggars besieged the coach, and Kovno was hardly
worse than scores of other towns; within a day's ride from St.
Petersburg a woman begged piteously for means to keep soul and body
together, and finished the refutation of that sonorous English theory,
for she had been discharged from her master's service in the metropolis
as too feeble, and had been sent back to his domain, afar in the
country, on foot and without money.

It was said that freed peasants would not work. But, despite volleys of
predictions that they would not work if freed, despite volleys of
assertions that they could not work if freed, the peasants when set
free, and not crushed by regulations, have sprung to their work with an
earnestness and continued it with a vigor at which the philosophers of
the old system stand aghast. The freed peasants of Wologda compare
favorably with any in Europe. And when the old tirades had grown stale,
English writers drew copiously from a new sou