y Alexander II. had no such
intentions. He was resolved to purify the administration and to reform
as far as possible all existing abuses, and he seemed ready at first
to listen to the advice and accept the co-operation of his faithful
subjects; but he had not the slightest intention of limiting his supreme
authority, which he regarded as essential to the existence of the
Empire. As soon as the landed proprietors began to complain that the
great question of serf emancipation was being taken out of their hands
by the bureaucracy, he reminded them that "in Russia laws are made by
the Autocratic Power," and when the more courageous Marshals of Noblesse
ventured to protest against the unceremonious manner in which the nobles
were being treated by the tchinovniks, some of them were officially
reprimanded and others were deposed.

The indignation produced by this procedure, in which the Tsar identified
himself with the bureaucracy, was momentarily appeased by the decision
of the Government to entrust to the landed proprietors the carrying out
of the Emancipation law, and by the confident hope that political rights
would be granted them as compensation for the material sacrifices
they had made for the good of the State; but when they found that
this confident hope was an illusion, the indignation and discontent
reappeared.

There was still, however, a ray of hope. Though the Autocratic Power
was evidently determined not to transform itself at once into a limited
Constitutional Monarchy, it might make concessions in the sphere of
local self-government. At that moment it was creating the Zemstvo,
and the Constitutionalists hoped that these new institutions, though
restricted legally to the sphere of purely economic wants, might
gradually acquire a considerable political influence. Learned Germans
had proved that in England, "the mother of modern Constitutionalism," it
was on local self-government that the political liberties were founded,
and the Slavophils now suggested that by means of an ancient institution
called the Zemski Sobor, the Zemstvo might gradually and naturally
acquire a political character in accordance with Russian historic
development. As this idea has often been referred to in recent
discussions, I may explain briefly what the ancient institution in
question was.

In the Tsardom of Muscovy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
representative assemblies were occasionally called together to deal with