uilding ambition remained within very modest bounds.

As for the impoverishment of the peasantry and the necessity of
improving their system of agriculture, that question had hardly appeared
above the horizon. It might have to be dealt with in the future, but
there was no need for hurry. Once the rural population were educated,
the question would solve itself. It was not till about the year 1885
that it was recognised to be more urgent than had been supposed,
and some Zemstvos perceived that the people might starve before its
preparatory education was completed. Repeated famines pushed the lesson
home, and the landed proprietors found their revenues diminished by the
fall in the price of grain on the European markets. Thus was raised the
cry: "Agriculture in Russia is on the decline! The country has entered
on an acute economic crisis! If energetic measures be not taken promptly
the people will soon find themselves confronted by starvation!"

To this cry of alarm the Zemstvo was neither deaf nor indifferent.
Recognising that the danger could be averted only by inducing the
peasantry to adopt a more intensive system of agriculture, it directed
more and more of its attention to agricultural improvements, and tried
to get them adopted.* It did, in short, all it could, according to its
lights and within the limits of its moderate resources. Its available
resources were small, unfortunately, for it was forbidden by the
Government to increase the rates, and it could not well dismiss doctors
and close dispensaries and schools when the people were clamouring for
more. So at least the defenders of the Zemstvo maintain, and they go
so far as to contend that it did well not to grapple with the
impoverishment of the peasantry at an earlier period, when the real
conditions of the problem and the means of solving it were only very
imperfectly known: if it had begun at that time it would have made great
blunders and spent much money to little purpose.

* Vide supra, p. 489.

However this may be, it would certainly be unfair to condemn the Zemstvo
for not being greatly in advance of public opinion. If it endeavours
strenuously to supply all clearly recognised wants, that is all that can
reasonably be expected of it. What it may be more justly reproached with
is, in my opinion, that it is, to a certain extent, imbued with that
unpractical, pedantic spirit which is commonly supposed to reside
exclusively in the Imperial Administr