so terrible as is commonly supposed, because political exiles
are not usually confined in prisons or compelled to labour in the
mines, but are obliged merely to reside at a given place under police
supervision. Still, such punishment was severe enough for educated young
men and women, especially when their lot was cast among a population
composed exclusively of peasants and small shop-keepers or of Siberian
aborigines, and when there were no means of satisfying the most
elementary intellectual wants. For those who had no private resources
the punishment was particularly severe, because the Government granted
merely a miserable monthly pittance, hardly sufficient to purchase food
of the coarsest kind, and there was rarely an opportunity of adding to
the meagre official allowance by intellectual or manual labour. In
all cases the treatment accorded to the exiles wounded their sense of
justice and increased the existing discontent among their friends and
acquaintances. Instead of acting as a deterrent, the system produced a
feeling of profound indignation, and ultimately transformed not a few
sentimental dreamers into active conspirators.

At first there was no conspiracy or regularly organised secret society
and nothing of which the criminal law in Western Europe could have taken
cognisance. Students met in each other's rooms to discuss prohibited
books on political and social science, and occasionally short essays on
the subjects discussed were written in a revolutionary spirit by members
of the coterie. This was called mutual instruction. Between the various
coteries or groups there were private personal relations, not only in
the capital, but also in the provinces, so that manuscripts and printed
papers could be transmitted from one group to another. From time to time
the police captured these academic disquisitions, and made raids on the
meetings of students who had come together merely for conversation and
discussion; and the fresh arrests caused by these incidents increased
the hostility to the Government.

In the letter above quoted it is said that the revolutionary ideas had
taken possession of all classes, all ages, and all professions. This may
have been true with regard to St. Petersburg, but it could not have
been said of the provinces. There the landed proprietors were in a very
different frame of mind. They had to struggle with a multitude of urgent
practical affairs which left them little time for idyllic