icial notice should be taken of the incident,
and certainly does not consider that any of the combatants should be
transported to Siberia. Slight wounds heal of their own accord without
any serious loss to the sufferer, and therefore the man who inflicts
them is not to be put on the same level as the criminal who reduces
a family to beggary. This reasoning may, perhaps, shock people of
sensitive nerves, but it undeniably contains a certain amount of plain,
homely wisdom.

Of all kinds of cruelty, that which is perhaps most revolting to
civilised mankind is the cruelty of the husband towards his wife; but
to this crime the Russian peasant shows especial leniency. He is still
influenced by the old conceptions of the husband's rights, and by that
low estimate of the weaker sex which finds expression in many popular
proverbs.

The peculiar moral conceptions reflected in these facts are
evidently the result of external conditions, and not of any recondite
ethnographical peculiarities, for they are not found among the
merchants, who are nearly all of peasant origin. On the contrary, the
merchants are more severe with regard to crimes against the person
than with regard to crimes against property. The explanation of this
is simple. The merchant has means of protecting his property, and if
he should happen to suffer by theft, his fortune is not likely to
be seriously affected by it. On the other hand, he has a certain
sensitiveness with regard to such crimes as assault; for though he has
commonly not much more intellectual and moral culture than the peasant,
he is accustomed to comfort and material well-being, which naturally
develop sensitiveness regarding physical pain.

Towards fraud the merchants are quite as lenient as the peasantry. This
may, perhaps, seem strange, for fraudulent practices are sure in the
long run to undermine trade. The Russian merchants, however, have not
yet arrived at this conception, and can point to many of the richest
members of their class as a proof that fraudulent practices often create
enormous fortunes. Long ago Samuel Butler justly remarked that we damn
the sins we have no mind to.

As the external conditions have little or no influence on the religious
conceptions of the merchants and the peasantry, the two classes are
equally severe with regard to those acts which are regarded as crimes
against the Deity. Hence acquittals in cases of sacrilege, blasphemy,
and the like never occur unles