s an aristocratical body. The
best liberals the world has seen have been of aristocratical origin,
or democracy would have made but little advance; but what is true of
individuals is not true of the mass, which is obstinate and unyielding.
There is nothing that men so reluctantly abandon as direct power over
their fellows. The chief of egotists is the slaveholder, unless he
happen to be the wisest and best of men. Man loves his fellow-man--as
a piece of property, as a chattel, above all things. It is a striking
proof of superiority to be able to command men with the certainty of
being as blindly obeyed as was the Roman centurion. The sense of power
that is created by the possession of slaves is sure to render men
arbitrary of disposition and insolent in their conduct. The troubles of
our own country ought to be sufficient to convince every one that there
must be nobles in Russia who would prefer resistance to the Czar to the
elevation of millions whose depression is evidence of the power of the
privileged classes. But for the conviction that the United States could
no longer be ruled in the interest of the slaveholders, the Secession
movement would have been postponed for another generation, and certain
traitors would have gone to their graves with the reputation of having
been honest men. There are Secessionists in Russia, and for the next two
years they may be able to do much to prevent the completion of the work
so well begun by Alexander II. But he appears to be as resolute as they
can be, and even fanatically determined upon having his way. Supported
by one-half the nobles, and by all the serfs, and confident of the
army's loyalty, he ought to be able to triumph over all internal
opposition. What he has already effected has been extorted from a
powerful foe; and that costly step, the first step, having been taken,
the Russian reformers, headed by the Emperor, ought to prove victorious
in so vitally important a contest as that in which they have voluntarily
engaged.

The greatest danger to the emancipation project proceeds from the side
of foreign countries. As we have seen, both Alexander I. and Nicholas
were led away from the pursuit of a policy that might long since have
converted the Russian serfs into a Russian people, through their desire
to interfere in the affairs of other nations. They could not reform
Russia and crush reformers elsewhere. That they might decide grand
contests in which Russia had no immedia