husiasm, during which great preparations
were made for future activity, and not a little was actually effected.
The institution had all the charm of novelty, and the members felt that
the eyes of the public were upon them. For a time all went well, and
the Zemstvo was so well pleased with its own activity that the satirical
journals compared it to Narcissus admiring his image reflected in the
pool. But when the charm of novelty had passed and the public turned its
attention to other matters, the spasmodic energy evaporated, and many of
the most active members looked about for more lucrative employment.
Such employment was easily found, for at that time there was an unusual
demand for able, energetic, educated men. Several branches of the civil
service were being reorganised, and railways, banks, and joint-stock
companies were being rapidly multiplied. With these the Zemstvo had
great difficulty in competing. It could not, like the Imperial service,
offer pensions, decorations, and prospects of promotion, nor could it
pay such large salaries as the commercial and industrial enterprises.
In consequence of all this, the quality of the executive bureaux
deteriorated at the same time as the public interest in the institution
diminished.

To be just to the Zemstvo, I must add that, with all its defects and
errors, it is infinitely better than the institutions which it replaced.
If we compare it with previous attempts to create local self-government,
we must admit that the Russians have made great progress in their
political education. What its future may be I do not venture to predict.
From its infancy it has had, as we have seen, the ambition to play a
great political part, and at the beginning of the recent stirring times
in St. Petersburg its leading representatives in conclave assembled took
upon themselves to express what they considered the national demand for
liberal representative institutions. The desire, which had previously
from time to time been expressed timidly and vaguely in loyal addresses
to the Tsar, that a central Zemstvo Assembly, bearing the ancient title
of Zemski Sobor, should be convoked in the capital and endowed with
political functions, was now put forward by the representatives in plain
unvarnished form. Whether this desire is destined to be realised time
will show.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE NEW LAW COURTS

Judicial Procedure in the Olden Times--Defects and Abuses--Radical
Reform--The New Sys