he Russian peasant like drops
of rain on a granite rock. The fashionable rhetoric of philosophical
liberalism is as incomprehensible to him as the flowery
circumlocutionary style of an Oriental scribe would be to a keen city
merchant. The idea of liberty in the abstract and the mention of rights
which lie beyond the sphere of his ordinary everyday life awaken
no enthusiasm in his breast. And for mere names he has a profound
indifference. What matters it to him that he is officially called, not
a "serf," but a "free village-inhabitant," if the change in official
terminology is not accompanied by some immediate material advantage?
What he wants is a house to live in, food to eat, and raiment
wherewithal to be clothed, and to gain these first necessaries of life
with as little labour as possible. He looked at the question exclusively
from two points of view--that of historical right and that of material
advantage; and from both of these the Emancipation Law seemed to him
very unsatisfactory.

On the subject of historical right the peasantry had their own
traditional conceptions, which were completely at variance with the
written law. According to the positive legislation the Communal land
formed part of the estate, and consequently belonged to the proprietor;
but according to the conceptions of the peasantry it belonged to the
Commune, and the right of the proprietor consisted merely in that
personal authority over the serfs which had been conferred on him by the
Tsar. The peasants could not, of course, put these conceptions into a
strict legal form, but they often expressed them in their own homely
laconic way by saying to their master, "Mui vashi no zemlya nasha"--that
is to say. "We are yours, but the land is ours." And it must be admitted
that this view, though legally untenable, had a certain historical
justification.*

* See preceding chapter.

In olden times the Noblesse had held their land by feudal tenure,
and were liable to be ejected as soon as they did not fulfil their
obligations to the State. These obligations had been long since
abolished, and the feudal tenure transformed into an unconditional
right of property, but the peasants clung to the old ideas in a way that
strikingly illustrates the vitality of deep-rooted popular conceptions.
In their minds the proprietors were merely temporary occupants, who were
allowed by the Tsar to exact labour and dues from the serfs. What, then,
was Emancipation? C