t time, as I am well informed, _more than
600 persons of the privileged classes are under arrest, to be
deported to Siberia without trial_. In one of the temporary
governor-generalships in the south of the Empire (Odessa), sixty
privileged persons have been already sent to Siberia without trial,
and 200 persons of this class are under arrest to be judged. So
great is the number of persons of this category to be escorted that
a practical difficulty is said to have arisen in connection with
their deportation. A noble, or privileged person, who has not been
judicially sentenced, when sent to Siberia by 'administrative
process' (as it is called, _i.e._, by the orders of the Third
Section, or Secret Police), must be escorted by two gensdarmes, it
being against the laws to manacle a privileged person who is
uncondemned. It appears that there are not gensdarmes enough thus
to escort the number of persons to be deported, and the Ministry of
Secret Police has, I understand, proposed to get rid of this
difficulty by sending the privileged persons fettered like ordinary
criminals.... The Third Section, or Secret Police, which is in its
proceedings essentially _extra leges_, claims to act independently
of any other department of the Empire. This institution, which lays
hold of suspected persons, whether justly or unjustly suspected,
and consigns them to Siberia at its pleasure, savours more of
Asiatic lawlessness than of enlightened European rule, such as it
must be the desire of all in authority to see established
throughout the Empire.... I have myself met with respectable,
honourable men, who have been arrested and imprisoned, in some
cases for a few weeks, in other cases during months, _followed by
years of exile in Siberia, without any charge being brought against
them_; and it is the possibility of this recurring to them, or to
others, that constitutes a Reign of Terror."

The above description is from the correspondent of the _Daily News_.
Clearly it is a very pleasant position to be a "privileged person" in
Russia. It marks its occupant, by preference, as a possible candidate
for exile to Siberia; the more cultivated classes being essentially
those which constitute the active element of political dissatisfaction.

Of the treatment of political exiles in Siberia, as it has been carr