clergy, and the
peasantry. A noble may become a merchant, or a man may be one year a
burgher, the next year an artisan, and the third year a merchant, if he
changes his occupation and pays the necessary dues. But the categories
form, for the time being, distinct corporations, each possessing a
peculiar organisation and peculiar privileges and obligations.

Of these three groups the first in the scale of dignity is that of the
merchants. It is chiefly recruited from the burghers and the peasantry.
Any one who wishes to engage in commerce inscribes himself in one of the
three guilds, according to the amount of his capital and the nature of
the operations in which he wishes to embark, and as soon as he has paid
the required dues he becomes officially a merchant. As soon as he ceases
to pay these dues he ceases to be a merchant in the legal sense of the
term, and returns to the class to which he formerly belonged. There
are some families whose members have belonged to the merchant class for
several generations, and the law speaks about a certain "velvet-book"
(barkhatnaya kniga) in which their names should be inscribed, but in
reality they do not form a distinct category, and they descend at once
from their privileged position as soon as they cease to pay the annual
guild dues.

The artisans form the connecting link between the town population
and the peasantry, for peasants often enrol themselves in the
trades-corporations, or tsekhi, without severing their connection
with the rural Communes to which they belong. Each trade or handicraft
constitutes a tsekh, at the head of which stands an elder and two
assistants, elected by the members; and all the tsekhi together form
a corporation under an elected head (remeslenny golova) assisted by a
council composed of the elders of the various tsekhi. It is the duty of
this council and its president to regulate all matters connected with
the tsekhi, and to see that the multifarious regulations regarding
masters, journeymen, and apprentices are duly observed.

The nondescript class, composed of those who are inscribed as permanent
inhabitants of the towns, but who do not belong to any guild or tsekh,
constitutes what is called the burghers in the narrower sense of the
term. Like the other two categories, they form a separate corporation,
with an elder and an administrative bureau.

Some idea of the relative numerical strength of these three categories
may be obtained from the fo