ers ventured to hint in the Press and in loyal addresses to
the Emperor that the Government would do well to consult the country on
important questions, their respectful suggestions were coldly received
or bluntly rejected by the bureaucracy and the Autocratic Power.

The more the revolutionary and constitutional groups sought to
strengthen their position, the more pronounced became the reactionary
tendencies in the official world, and these received in 1863 an immense
impetus from the Polish insurrection, with which the Nihilists and even
some of the Liberals sympathised.* That ill-advised attempt on the
part of the Poles to recover their independence had a curious effect
on Russian public opinion. Alexander II., with the warm approval of
the more Liberal section of the educated classes, was in the course of
creating for Poland almost complete administrative autonomy under
the viceroyalty of a Russian Grand Duke; and the Emperor's brother
Constantine was preparing to carry out the scheme in a generous spirit.
Soon it became evident that what the Poles wanted was not administrative
autonomy, but political independence, with the frontiers which existed
before the first partition! Trusting to the expected assistance of the
Western Powers and the secret connivance of Austria, they raised the
standard of insurrection, and some trifling successes were magnified by
the pro-Polish Press into important victories. As the news of the rising
spread over Russia, there was a moment of hesitation. Those who had been
for some years habitually extolling liberty and self-government as the
normal conditions of progress, who had been sympathising warmly with
every Liberal movement, whether at home or abroad, and who had put
forward a voluntary federation of independent Communes as the ideal
State organism, could not well frown on the political aspirations of
the Polish patriots. The Liberal sentiment of that time was so extremely
philosophical and cosmopolitan that it hardly distinguished between
Poles and Russians, and liberty was supposed to be the birthright of
every man and woman to whatever nationality they might happen to belong.
But underneath these beautiful artificial clouds of cosmopolitan Liberal
sentiment lay the volcano of national patriotism, dormant for the
moment, but by no means extinct. Though the Russians are in some
respects the most cosmopolitan of European nations, they are at the same
time capable of indulging in vio