onezh followed in this respect the example of the
peasants, and he assured me that he had proved by experience
the advantage of doing so.

It is only in the southern provinces, where no manure is required,
that periodical re-distributions take place frequently. As we travel
northward we find the term lengthens; and in the Northern Agricultural
Zone, where manure is indispensable, general re-distributions are
extremely rare. In the province of Yaroslavl, for example, the Communal
land is generally divided into two parts: the manured land lying near
the village, and the unmanured land lying beyond. The latter alone is
subject to frequent re-distribution. On the former the existing tenures
are rarely disturbed, and when it becomes necessary to give a share to a
new household, the change is effected with the least possible prejudice
to vested rights.

The policy of the Government has always been to admit redistributions
in principle, but to prevent their too frequent recurrence. For this
purpose the Emancipation Law stipulated that they could be decreed
only by a three-fourths majority of the Village Assembly, and in 1893
a further obstacle was created by a law providing that the minimum
term between two re-distributions should be twelve years, and that they
should never be undertaken without the sanction of the Rural Supervisor.

A certain number of Communes have made the experiment of transforming
the Communal tenure into hereditary allotments, and its only visible
effect has been that the allotments accumulate in the hands of the
richer and more enterprising peasants, and the poorer members of the
Commune become landless, while the primitive system of agriculture
remains unimproved.

Up to this point I have dealt with the so-called causes of peasant
impoverishment which are much talked of, but which are, in my opinion,
only of secondary importance. I pass now to those which are more
tangible and which have exerted on the condition of the peasantry a more
palpable influence. And, first, inordinate taxation.

This is a very big subject, on which a bulky volume might be written,
but I shall cut it very short, because I know that the ordinary reader
does not like to be bothered with voluminous financial statistics.
Briefly, then, the peasant has to pay three kinds of direct taxation:
Imperial to the Central Government, local to the Zemstvo, and Commune to
the Mir and the Volost; and besides these he has to pay