; and sometimes, when he
becomes insolvent, the peasants have to pay their taxes and dues a
second time. The Village Assemblies, too, have become worse than they
were in the days of serfage. At that time the Heads of Households--who,
it must be remembered, have alone a voice in the decisions--were few
in number, laborious, and well-to-do, and they kept the lazy, unruly
members under strict control. Now that the large families have been
broken up and almost every adult peasant is Head of a Household, the
Communal affairs are sometimes decided by a noisy majority; and certain
Communal decisions may be obtained by "treating the Mir"--that is to
say, by supplying a certain amount of vodka. Often I have heard old
peasants speak of these things, and finish their recital by some such
remark as this: "There is no order now; the people have been spoiled; it
was better in the time of the masters."

These evils are very real, and I have no desire to extenuate them, but
I believe they are by no means so great as is commonly supposed. If
the lazy, worthless members of the Commune had really the direction of
Communal affairs we should find that in the Northern Agricultural Zone,
where it is necessary to manure the soil, the periodical redistributions
of the Communal land would be very frequent; for in a new distribution
the lazy peasant has a good chance of getting a well-manured lot in
exchange for the lot which he has exhausted. In reality, so far as my
observations extend, these general distributions of the land are not
more frequent than they were before.

Of the various functions of the peasant self-government the judicial
are perhaps the most frequently and the most severely criticised.
And certainly not without reason, for the Volost Courts are too often
accessible to the influence of alcohol, and in some districts the
peasants say that he who becomes a judge takes a sin on his soul. I am
not at all sure, however, that it would be well to abolish these courts
altogether, as some people propose. In many respects they are better
suited to peasant requirements than the ordinary tribunals. Their
procedure is infinitely simpler, more expeditious, and incomparably
less expensive, and they are guided by traditional custom and plain
common-sense, whereas the ordinary tribunals have to judge according
to the civil law, which is unknown to the peasantry and not always
applicable to their affairs.

Few ordinary judges have a sufficien