ncreasing in
numbers at an alarming rate. Already in some districts one-fifth of the
peasant households had no longer any land of their own, and of those
who still possessed land a large proportion had no longer the cattle and
horses necessary to till and manure their allotments. No doubt M.
Witte was beginning to perceive his mistake, and had done something to
palliate the evils by improving the system of collecting the taxes and
abolishing the duty on passports, but such merely palliative remedies
could have little effect. While a few capitalists were amassing gigantic
fortunes, the masses were slowly and surely advancing to the brink
of starvation. The welfare of the agriculturists, who constitute
nine-tenths of the whole population, was being ruthlessly sacrificed,
and for what? For the creation of a manufacturing industry which rested
on an artificial, precarious basis, and which had already begun to
decline.

So far the Agrarians, who champion the interests of the agricultural
classes. Their views were confirmed and their arguments strengthened by
an influential group of men whom I may call, for want of a better name,
the philosophers or doctrinaire interpreters of history, who have,
strange to say, more influence in Russia than in any other country.

The Russian educated classes desire that the nation should be wealthy
and self-supporting, and they recognise that for this purpose a large
manufacturing industry is required; but they are reluctant to make the
sacrifices necessary to attain the object in view, and they imagine
that, somehow or other, these sacrifices may be avoided. Sympathising
with this frame of mind, the doctrinaires explain that the rich and
prosperous countries of Europe and America obtained their wealth and
prosperity by so-called "Capitalism"--that is to say, by a peculiar
social organisation in which the two main factors are a small body of
rich capitalists and manufacturers and an enormous pauper proletariat
living from hand to mouth, at the mercy of the heartless employers of
labour. Russia has lately followed in the footsteps of those wealthy
countries, and if she continues to do so she will inevitably be saddled
with the same disastrous results--plutocracy, pauperism, unrestrained
competition in all spheres of activity, and a greatly intensified
struggle for life, in which the weaker will necessarily go to the wall.*

* Free competition in all spheres of activity, leading to