omy he learned that the system of communal
property was ruinous to the fertility of the soil, and that free
labour was always more productive than serfage. By the light of these
principles he discovered why the peasantry in Russia were so poor, and
by what means their condition could he ameliorated. The Communal land
should be divided into family lots, and the serfs, instead of being
forced to work for the proprietor, should pay a yearly sum as rent. The
advantages of this change he perceived clearly--as clearly as he
had formerly perceived the advantages of English agricultural
implements--and he determined to make the experiment on his own estate.

His first step was to call together the more intelligent and influential
of his serfs, and to explain to them his project; but his efforts at
explanation were eminently unsuccessful. Even with regard to ordinary
current affairs he could not express himself in that simple, homely
language with which alone the peasants are familiar, and when he spoke
on abstract subjects he naturally became quite unintelligible to his
uneducated audience. The serfs listened attentively, but understood
nothing. He might as well have spoken to them, as he often did in
another kind of society, about the comparative excellence of Italian
and German music. At a second attempt he had rather more success. The
peasants came to understand that what he wished was to break up the Mir,
or rural Commune, and to put them all on obrok--that is to say,
make them pay a yearly sum instead of giving him a certain amount of
agricultural labour. Much to his astonishment, his scheme did not meet
with any sympathy. As to being put on obrok, the serfs did not much
object, though they preferred to remain as they were; but his proposal
to break up the Mir astonished and bewildered them. They regarded it
as a sea-captain might regard the proposal of a scientific wiseacre
to knock a hole in the ship's bottom in order to make her sail faster.
Though they did not say much, he was intelligent enough to see that they
would offer a strenuous passive resistance, and as he did not wish
to act tyrannically, he let the matter drop. Thus a second benevolent
scheme was shipwrecked. Many other schemes had a similar fate, and
Victor Alexandr'itch began to perceive that it was very difficult to
do good in this world, especially when the persons to be benefited were
Russian peasants.

In reality the fault lay less with the serfs than