xaggerated
expectations sank into a state of inordinate despondency, and imagined
things to be much worse than they really were.

* I am not at all sure that the peasants really drank more,
but such was, and still is, a very general conviction.

For different reasons, those who had not indulged in exaggerated
expectations, and had not sympathised with the Emancipation in the form
in which it was effected, were equally inclined to take a pessimistic
view of the situation. In every ugly phenomenon they found a
confirmation of their opinions. The result was precisely what they had
foretold. The peasants had used their liberty and their privileges to
their own detriment and to the detriment of others!

The extreme "Liberals" were also inclined, for reasons of their own,
to join in the doleful chorus. They desired that the condition of the
peasantry should be further improved by legislative enactments, and
accordingly they painted the evils in as dark colours as possible.

Thus, from various reasons, the majority of the educated classes were
unduly disposed to represent to themselves and to others the actual
condition of the peasantry in a very unfavourable light, and I felt
that from them there was no hope of obtaining the lumen siccum which I
desired. I determined, therefore, to try the method of questioning the
peasants themselves. Surely they must know whether their condition was
better or worse than it had been before their Emancipation.

Again I was doomed to disappointment. A few months' experience sufficed
to convince me that my new method was by no means so effectual as I had
imagined. Uneducated people rarely make generalisations which have no
practical utility, and I feel sure that very few Russian peasants ever
put to themselves the question: Am I better off now than I was in the
time of serfage? When such a question is put to them they feel taken
aback. And in truth it is no easy matter to sum up the two sides of the
account and draw an accurate balance, save in those exceptional cases
in which the proprietor flagrantly abused his authority. The present
money-dues and taxes are often more burdensome than the labour-dues in
the old times. If the serfs had a great many ill-defined obligations
to fulfil--such as the carting of the master's grain to market, the
preparing of his firewood, the supplying him with eggs, chickens,
home-made linen, and the like--they had, on the other hand, a good many
ill-