ermission from the _American Review of
Reviews_.]

In criticizing Russian policy in Finland a distinction should be made
between its fundamental principles--_i.e.,_ the ends which it is meant
to attain, and its outward expression, which depends upon
circumstances.

The former,--_i.e.,_ the aims and principles, remain _unalterable_; the
latter,--_i.e.,_ the way in which this policy finds expression--is of
an incidental and temporary character, and does not always depend on
the Russian authority alone. This is what should be taken into
consideration by Russia's western friends when estimating the value of
the information which reaches them from Finland.

As to the program of the Russian Government in the Finland question, it
is substantially as follows:

The fundamental problem of every supreme authority--the happiness and
prosperity of the governed--can be solved only by the mutual
cooperation of the government and the people. The requirements
presented to the partners in this common task are, on the one hand,
that the people should recognize the unity of state principle and
policy and the binding character of its aims; and, on the other, that
the Government should acknowledge the benefit accruing to the state
from the public activity, along the lines of individual development, of
its component elements.

Such are the grounds on which the government and the people should
unite in the performance of their common task. The combination of
imperial unity with local autonomy, of autocracy with self-government,
forms the principle which must be taken into consideration in judging
the action of the Russian Government in the Grand Duchy of Finland. The
manifesto of February 3-15, 1899, is not a negation of such a peaceful
cooperation, but a confirmation of the aforesaid leading principle of
our Government in its full development. It decides that the issue of
imperial laws, common both to Russia and Finland, must not depend
altogether on the consent of the members of the Finland Diet, but is
the prerogative of the Imperial Council of State, with the
participation on such occasions of members of the Finland Senate. There
is nothing in this manifesto to shake the belief of Russia's friends in
the compatibility of the principles of autocracy with a large measure
of local self-government and civic liberty. The development of the
spiritual and material powers of the population by its gradual
introduction to participation in the