ns who read about the Proletariat were
very much like the people who remain at home and devour books of travel.
They gained exaggerated notions, and learned to fear the Proletariat
much more than we do, who habitually live in the midst of it. Of course
it is quite possible that their view of the subject is truer than ours,
and that we may some day, like the people who live tranquilly on the
slopes of a volcano, be rudely awakened from our fancied security. But
this is an entirely different question. I am at present not endeavouring
to justify our habitual callousness with regard to social dangers,
but simply seeking to explain why the Russians, who have little or no
practical acquaintance with pauperism, should have taken such elaborate
precautions against it.

But how can the preservation of the Communal institutions lead to this
"consummation devoutly to be wished," and how far are the precautions
likely to be successful?

Those who have studied the mysteries of social science have generally
come to the conclusion that the Proletariat has been formed chiefly by
the expropriation of the peasantry or small land-holders, and that its
formation might be prevented, or at least retarded, by any system of
legislation which would secure the possession of land for the peasants
and prevent them from being uprooted from the soil. Now it must be
admitted that the Russian Communal system is admirably adapted for this
purpose. About one-half of the arable land has been reserved for the
peasantry, and cannot be encroached on by the great landowners or the
capitalists, and every adult peasant, roughly speaking, has a right to
a share of this land. When I have said that the peasantry compose about
five-sixths of the population, and that it is extremely difficult for
a peasant to sever his connection with the rural Commune, it will be at
once evident that, if the theories of social philosophers are correct,
and if the sanguine expectations entertained in many quarters regarding
the permanence of the present Communal institutions are destined to be
realised, there is little or no danger of a numerous Proletariat being
formed, and the Russians are justified in maintaining, as they often do,
that they have successfully solved one of the most important and most
difficult of social problems.

But is there any reasonable chance of these sanguine expectations being
realised?

This is, doubtless, a most complicated and difficult question,