at
they do not occasionally use it still, though it is no
longer permitted by law.

In Russia, as in other countries, the principle holds true that for
good labour a fair price must be paid. Several large proprietors of my
acquaintance who habitually act on this principle assure me that they
always obtain as much good labour as they require. I must add, however,
that these fortunate proprietors have the advantage of possessing a
comfortable amount of working capital, and are therefore not compelled,
as so many of their less fortunate neighbours are, to manage their
estates on the hand-to-mouth principle.

It is only, I fear, a minority of the landed proprietors that have
grappled successfully with these and other difficulties of their
position. As a class they are impoverished and indebted, but this state
of things is not due entirely to serf-emancipation. The indebtedness
of the Noblesse is a hereditary peculiarity of much older date. By some
authorities it is attributed to the laws of Peter the Great, by which
all nobles were obliged to spend the best part of their lives in the
military or civil service, and to leave the management of their estates
to incompetent stewards. However that may be, it is certain that from
the middle of the eighteenth century downwards the fact has frequently
occupied the attention of the Government, and repeated attempts have
been made to alleviate the evil. The Empress Elizabeth, Catherine II.,
Paul, Alexander I., Nicholas I., Alexander II., and Alexander III. tried
successively, as one of the older ukazes expressed it, "to free the
Noblesse from debt and from greedy money-lenders, and to prevent
hereditary estates from passing into the hands of strangers." The
means commonly adopted was the creation of mortgage banks founded and
controlled by the Government for the purpose of advancing money to
landed proprietors at a comparatively low rate of interest.

These institutions may have been useful to the few who desired to
improve their estates, but they certainly did not cure, and rather
tended to foster, the inveterate improvidence of the many. On the eve of
the Emancipation the proprietors were indebted to the Government for
the sum of 425 millions of roubles, and 69 per cent. of their serfs
were mortgaged. A portion of this debt was gradually extinguished by the
redemption operation, so that in 1880 over 300 millions had been paid
off, but in the meantime new debts were bein