ct of environment." To the proprietors who
habitually reproach him with time-wasting he might reply with a very
strong tu quoque argument, and to all the other classes the argument
might likewise be addressed. The St. Petersburg official, for example,
who writes edifying disquisitions about peasant indolence, considers
that for himself attendance at his office for four hours, a large
portion of which is devoted to the unproductive labour of cigarette
smoking, constitutes a very fair day's work. The truth is that in
Russia the struggle for life is not nearly so intense as in more densely
populated countries, and society is so constituted that all can live
without very strenuous exertion. The Russians seem, therefore, to the
traveller who comes from the West an indolent, apathetic race. If the
traveller happens to come from the East--especially if he has been
living among pastoral races--the Russians will appear to him energetic
and laborious. Their character in this respect corresponds to their
geographical position: they stand midway between the laborious,
painstaking, industrious population of Western Europe and the indolent,
undisciplined, spasmodically energetic populations of Central Asia. They
are capable of effecting much by vigorous, intermittent effort--witness
the peasant at harvest-time, or the St. Petersburg official when some
big legislative project has to be submitted to the Emperor within a
given time--but they have not yet learned regular laborious habits. In
short, the Russians might move the world if it could be done by a
jerk, but they are still deficient in that calm perseverance and dogged
tenacity which characterise the Teutonic race.

Without seeking further to determine how far the moral defects of the
peasantry have a deleterious influence on their material welfare, I
proceed to examine the external causes which are generally supposed to
contribute largely to their impoverishment, and will deal first with the
evils of peasant self-government.

That the peasant self-government is very far from being in a
satisfactory condition must be admitted by any impartial observer. The
more laborious and well-to-do peasants, unless they wish to abuse their
position directly or indirectly for their own advantage, try to escape
election as office-bearers, and leave the administration in the hands
of the less respectable members. Not unfrequently a Volost Elder trades
with the money he collects as dues or taxes