esto containing the fundamental principles of the law
was at once sent all over the country, and an order was given that it
should be read in all the churches.

* It is sometimes said that forty millions of serfs have
been emancipated. The statement is true, if we regard the
State peasants as serfs. They held, as I have already
explained, an intermediate position between serfage and
freedom. The peculiar administration under which they lived
was partly abolished by Imperial Orders of September 7th,
1859, and October 23d, 1861. In 1866 they were placed, as
regards administration, on a level with the emancipated
serfs of the proprietors. As a general rule, they received
rather more land and had to pay somewhat lighter dues than
the emancipated serfs in the narrower sense of the term.

The three fundamental principles laid down by the law were:--1. That the
serfs should at once receive the civil rights of the free rural classes,
and that the authority of the proprietor should be replaced by Communal
self-government.

2. That the rural Communes should as far as possible retain the land
they actually held, and should in return pay to the proprietor certain
yearly dues in money or labour.

3. That the Government should by means of credit assist the Communes to
redeem these dues, or, in other words, to purchase the lands ceded to
them in usufruct.

With regard to the domestic serfs, it was enacted that they should
continue to serve their masters during two years, and that thereafter
they should be completely free, but they should have no claim to a share
of the land.

It might be reasonably supposed that the serfs received with boundless
gratitude and delight the Manifesto proclaiming these principles. Here
at last was the realisation of their long-cherished hopes. Liberty was
accorded to them; and not only liberty, but a goodly portion of the
soil--about half of all the arable land possessed by the proprietors.

In reality the Manifesto created among the peasantry a feeling of
disappointment rather than delight. To understand this strange fact we
must endeavour to place ourselves at the peasant's point of view.

In the first place it must be remarked that all vague, rhetorical
phrases about free labour, human dignity, national progress, and the
like, which may readily produce among educated men a certain amount of
temporary enthusiasm, fall on the ears of t