where the upper classes
possessed traditional practical knowledge and abundance of capital, but
in Russia the proprietors had neither the practical knowledge nor the
ready money necessary to make the proposed ameliorations in the system
of agriculture. To all this it was added that a system of emancipation
by which the peasants should receive land and be made completely
independent of the landed proprietors had nowhere been tried on such a
large scale.

There were thus two diametrically opposite opinions regarding the
economic results of the abolition of serfage, and we have now to examine
which of these two opinions has been confirmed by experience.

Let us look at the question first from the point of view of the
land-owners.

The reader who has never attempted to make investigations of this kind
may naturally imagine that the question can be easily decided by simply
consulting a large number of individual proprietors, and drawing a
general conclusion from their evidence. In reality I found the task
much more difficult. After roaming about the country for five years
(1870-75), collecting information from the best available sources, I
hesitated to draw any sweeping conclusions, and my state of mind at that
time was naturally reflected in the early editions of this work. As a
rule the proprietors could not state clearly how much they had lost or
gained, and when definite information was obtained from them it was not
always trustworthy. In the time of serfage very few of them had been
in the habit of keeping accurate accounts, or accounts of any kind, and
when they lived on their estates there were a very large number of
items which could not possibly be reduced to figures. Of course, each
proprietor had a general idea as to whether his position was better or
worse than it had been in the old times, but the vague statements made
by individuals regarding their former and their actual revenues had
little or no scientific value. So many considerations which had nothing
to do with purely agrarian relations entered into the calculations that
the conclusions did not help me much to estimate the economic results
of the Emancipation as a whole. Nor, it must be confessed, was the
testimony by any means always unbiassed. Not a few spoke of the
great reform in an epic or dithyrambic tone, and among these I easily
distinguished two categories: the one desired to prove that the measure
was a complete success in every way, and that