rce--from _La Verite sur la
Russie_--pleasingly indifferent to the fact that the author's praise in
a previous work had notoriously been a thing of bargain and sale, and
that there was in full process of development a train of facts which led
the Parisian courts to find him guilty of demanding in one case a
blackmail of fifty thousand rubles.

All this argument outside the empire helped the foes of emancipation
inside the empire. But the Emperor met the whole body of his opponents
with an argument overwhelming. On March 5, 1861, he issued his manifesto
making the serfs free! He had struggled long to make some satisfactory
previous arrangement; his motto now became: Emancipation first,
arrangement afterward. Thus was the result of the great struggle
decided.

NIKOLAI TURGENIEFF

In 1857 the Emperor Alexander II first raised the question of
emancipation, and declared it was time for it to be accomplished. As
might have been expected, the idea of emancipation met with great
opposition from different sides. Yet the opposition was directed not so
much against the personal emancipation of the serfs as against the
appropriation to them, when liberated, of the land they held. The
proprietors, assembled in different committees which were established
all over the empire to discuss the matter, ended even by giving up their
right of possession in the person of the serf, and, mentioning only
their right to the land occupied by the peasants, claimed pecuniary
indemnities if that land were delivered to them. The honorable gentlemen
whom the Emperor intrusted with this important task, forming a committee
_ad hoc_, declared from the first as a principle that the emancipated
peasants must have land, about in the same quantity as they had hitherto
occupied, on condition of a pecuniary indemnity to be paid to the
proprietors. That principle prevailed, thanks to the Emperor's firmness.

During the discussion of that question in Russia, I published several
writings on the matter. My chief purpose and warmest desire being to
secure to the peasants as soon as possible their personal freedom and
complete liberty of labor, I proposed a method of emancipation, claiming
the entire property of their homes; that is to say, cottages and
orchards and a small quantity of arable land, and that without the
slightest indemnity from them to their masters, which was to be left to
the Government. A sum of about two hundred million dollars, according to