urch in Russia who
would become a Roman Catholic or a Protestant. M. de Custine relates, in
his well-known work on Russia,(124) that a Russian gentleman, who enjoyed
a high social position at Moscow, published a work, which the censor
allowed in an unaccountable manner to pass, maintaining that the influence
of the Roman Catholic Church is much more favourable to the progress of
civilization than that of the Graeco-Russian one, and that the social
condition of Russia would have been much more advanced by the former than
it has been by the latter. This work produced a great sensation, and the
punishment of the author of such a blasphemy was loudly demanded by the
orthodox Russians. This affair being submitted to the Emperor, he declared
that the author was _insane_, and ordered to treat him accordingly. The
unfortunate individual consequently was put into a madhouse, and though
perfectly sane, was subjected to the most rigorous treatment as a lunatic,
so that he nearly became in reality what he was _officially_ declared to
be, and it was only after several years of this moral and physical torture
that he was permitted to have a little more liberty, though still retained
in confinement.

I do not know what has become of this unfortunate man, but the truth of
this nameless act of tyranny has been fully admitted by Mr Gretsch, who
wrote, by the order of the Russian Government, an answer to the work of
Custine. He says that the individual in question, a Mr Chadayeff, having
committed an action which the laws of Russia punish with great severity,
the Emperor Nicholas, desiring to save the culprit from the penalty which
he had incurred, ordered, by an act of mercy, to treat him simply as a
madman.

Now, I think that the penalty of physical death, inflicted by the Turkish
law on the converts from Mahometanism to Christianity, may be considered
as humane, if compared to the murder of soul and intellect by the slow
process of a moral and physical torture, to which a man has been subjected
in Russia for his religious opinions; and if such an atrocious punishment
was inflicted by an act of _imperial mercy_, as a mitigation of the
severity of the law, what would it have been if the letter of that law had
been fulfilled? "_Ferrea jura, insanumque forum._"

If, according to the opinion of the Russian writer, his countrymen have a
right of interfering in behalf of the followers of their church in Turkey,
on account of the community o