ily cannot begin the autumn ploughing before the
appointed time, because it would thereby interfere with the rights of
the other families, who use the fallow field as pasturage.

It is not a little strange that this primitive system of land tenure
should have succeeded in living into the twentieth century, and still
more remarkable that the institution of which it forms an essential
part should be regarded by many intelligent people as one of the great
institutions of the future, and almost as a panacea for social and
political evils. The explanation of these facts will form the subject of
the next chapter.

CHAPTER IX

HOW THE COMMUNE HAS BEEN PRESERVED, AND WHAT IT IS TO EFFECT IN THE
FUTURE

Sweeping Reforms after the Crimean War--Protest Against the Laissez
Faire Principle--Fear of the Proletariat--English and Russian Methods of
Legislation Contrasted--Sanguine Expectations--Evil Consequences of
the Communal System--The Commune of the Future--Proletariat of the
Towns--The Present State of Things Merely Temporary.

The reader is probably aware that immediately after the Crimean War
Russia was subjected to a series of sweeping reforms, including the
emancipation of the serfs and the creation of a new system of local
self-government, and he may naturally wonder how it came to pass that
a curious, primitive institution like the rural Commune succeeded in
weathering the bureaucratic hurricane. This strange phenomena I now
proceed to explain, partly because the subject is in itself interesting,
and partly because I hope thereby to throw some light on the peculiar
intellectual condition of the Russian educated classes.

When it became evident, in 1857, that the serfs were about to be
emancipated, it was at first pretty generally supposed that the rural
Commune would be entirely abolished, or at least radically modified. At
that time many Russians were enthusiastic, indiscriminate admirers of
English institutions, and believed, in common with the orthodox school
of political economists, that England had acquired her commercial and
industrial superiority by adopting the principle of individual liberty
and unrestricted competition, or, as French writers term it, the
"laissez faire" principle. This principle is plainly inconsistent with
the rural Commune, which compels the peasantry to possess land, prevents
an enterprising peasant from acquiring the land of his less enterprising
neighbours, and places very cons