part of moderate Liberals may well
surprise Englishmen, but it is easily explained. The Russians have a
strong vein of recklessness in their character, and many of them are at
present imbued with an unquestioning faith in the miracle-working
power of Constitutionalism. These seem to imagine that as soon as
the Autocratic Power is limited by parliamentary institutions the
discontented will cease from troubling and the country will be at rest.

It is hardly necessary to say that such expectations are not likely
to be realised. All sections of the educated classes may be agreed in
desiring "liberty," but the word has many meanings, and nowhere more
than in Russia at the present day. For the Liberals it means simply
democratic parliamentary government; for the Social Democrat it
means the undisputed predominance of the Proletariat; for the
Socialist-Revolutionary it means the opportunity of realising
immediately the Socialist ideal; for the representative of a
subject-nationality it means the abolition of racial and religious
disabilities and the attainment of local autonomy or political
independence. There is no doubt, therefore, that in Russia, as in other
countries, a parliament would develop political parties bitterly hostile
to each other, and its early history might contain some startling
surprises for those who had helped to create it. If the Constitution,
for example, were made as democratic as the Liberals and Socialists
demand, the elections might possibly result in an overwhelming
Conservative majority ready to re-establish the Autocratic Power! This
is not at all so absurd as it sounds, for the peasants, apart from the
land question, are thoroughly Conservative. The ordinary muzhik can
hardly conceive that the Emperor's power can be limited by a law or an
Assembly, and if the idea were suggested to him, he would certainly not
approve. In his opinion the Tsar should be omnipotent. If everything is
not satisfactory in Russia, it is because the Tsar does not know of the
evil, or is prevented from curing it by the tchinovniks and the landed
proprietors. "More power, therefore, to his elbow!" as an Irishman might
say. Such is the simple political creed of the "undeveloped" muzhik, and
all the efforts of the revolutionary groups to develop him have not yet
been attended with much success.

How, then, the reader may ask, is an issue to be found out of the
present imbroglio? I cannot pretend to speak with authority, bu