ed upon. It
would, however, we think, be difficult to show that the condition of
the Russian laboring classes was not made worse by the action of the
usurper.

Peter the Great was so affected by the circumstance that men and women
and children could be sold like cattle, as American slaves now are, that
he sought to put a stop to the infamous traffic, but without success.
Catharine II. was a philosopher, and a patron of that eighteenth-century
philosophy which so largely favored human rights, and she regretted
the existence of serfage; but, in spite of this regret, and of some
sentimental efforts toward emancipation, she strengthened the system of
slavery under which so great a majority of her subjects lived. She gave
peasants to her "favorites," and to others whom she wished to reward
or to bribe. The brothers Orloff are said to have received forty-five
thousand peasants from her, being in part payment for what was done by
their family in setting up the new Russian dynasty founded by the German
princess. Potemkin received myriads of peasants. Some outrageous abuses
were practised by wealthy landholders, in consequence of the Czarina
having proclaimed that the laborers in Little Russia should belong to
the soil on which they were at that date employed. Thousands of persons
were entrapped into serfdom through a measure which the sovereign had
intended should lessen the evils of that institution. Catharine's
authority was never but once seriously disputed at home, and that was
by the rebellion of Pugatscheff, which is sometimes spoken of as an
outbreak against serfdom, which it was not in any proper sense, though
the abuses of the owners of serfs may have contributed to swell the
ranks of the pretender,--Pugatscheff calling himself Peter III. The Czar
Paul would not allow serfs to be sold apart from the soil to which they
belonged. It is a curious incident, that, when Paul restored Kosciusko
to liberty, he offered to give him a number of Russian peasants. The
Polish patriot had no hesitation in refusing to accept the Emperor's
offer, for which, in these times, there are Americans who think he was a
fool; but in 1797 certain lights had not been vouchsafed to the American
mind, that have since led some of our countrymen to become champions of
the cause of darkness.

Alexander, whose reign began in 1801, was moved by a sincere desire to
get rid of serfdom. Schnitzler says that he "solemnly declared that he
would not endure