CHAP. VI. RUSSIA. ARISTOCRACY RESTRAINS DESPOTISM FROM RAISING A BODY OF SERFS TO THE CONDITION OF FREE CITIZENS. RUSSIA is an empire, that, like a huge Colossus, bestrides Europe and Asia. It consists of a body, of limbs, and a head. Its head is an intellectual personal despotism, controlling a rude aristocracy, that crushes a nation of slaves. Russia is a body of vast magnitude, but it wants a principle of motion and activity; it is inert-but it keeps Europe in dread of its receiving an impulse. Heavy bodies are not easily moved, but motion once given, the effect is tremendous. Agrarian laws, similar to those of Moses, or of Servius Tullius, enacted in favour of the Russian population, would, in all probability, change the destiny of the world. They would, in half a generation, raise a population from the condition of miserable hordes of serfs, dull and passive like the cattle that graze around them, to the rank of freemen, possessed of property in the soil from which they raised their subsistence. The military tenure, which doubtless would be attached to their lands, would convert legions of armed animal machines into bands and armies of militia, ready to defend their acquisitions, or march in search of fresh conquests, at the command of some ambitious leader. To realize this state of things, it only requires a brave, intelligent, and patriotic monarch, to step down from his throne-put himself at the head of his countrymen-call around him a national council-and proceed to assign property, and proclaim liberty, to all. In this enterprise he would probably lose his life, through means familiar to Asiatic revolutions; but this would not give much concern to a brave man-ambitious of historical immortality, as the liberator and benefactor of his oppressed countrymen. The character of the present monarch, and the circumstances in which he has already been placed towards the aristocratic body of his empire, make even the realization of the magnificent conception within the range of possibility.* The very suggestion of a plan which might bring, on western and southern Europe, an armed migration from the northern regions, is startling. But the idea ought to have its weight with nations and their governments, and, in anticipation of any such danger, the government of every country in Europe should see its interests and safety identified with the comfort, prosperity, and wealth of the great body of the people. A people possessed of some property in the country they inhabit, are the fittest to repel an invasion, however formidable, of semibarbarians who rush on with the desire of acquiring possessions. "The interference of the Crown between the lord and the serf, is, however, resented with intense animosity by an Aristocracy, which stands itself in a servile relation to the Crown; and all the excesses of arbitrary power will be more easily forgiven to an Emperor of Russia, than the employment of that power for the relief of the lowest class of his subjects." Leading Article of the Times of 18th May, 1842. G CHAP. VII. ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY COMPARED. PRINCIPLES OF THE PRINCIPLES OF DEMOCRACY ARE PRESERVATIVE-THE THE general history of the Roman people offers to modern nations lessons rather on what is to be shunned and deprecated, than examples to be imitated, in the conduct of public affairs. The wild declamation on Roman transactions, uttered by the French orators, in the first stages of the great French Revolution, and the mummeries which were enacted by the actors in that fearful drama, in imitation of passages in the history of the Roman republic, have inflicted a severe wound on the people of Europe, and have thrown back the cause of rational liberty. Governments, whether under the personal despotism of a monarch, or under the control of an aristocracy, took the alarm, and during these last fifty years have been incessantly active, through means of legislation, and the agency of the press, to establish and diffuse the opinion, that the great mass of the population of every country is actuated by a desire, or rather passion, to change laws, overthrow institutions, and seize on the property of the wealthy classes of society. And so successful have their efforts been to disseminate these opinions, and create alarm in the minds of the timid, that men really now seem to live in terror of their own species. One of the greatest errors which the present generation has committed in considering the events of the Great French Revolution, and one almost universally entertained, is that of charging the French people, or laying on Democracy, the responsibility of the atrocities inflicted on person and property, during the progress of the Revolution, from the execution of Louis XVI., to the establishment of the military power of Napoleon. The massacres by the guillotine, and the confiscations and seizures of property, were the acts of an Aristocracy, of the most exaggerated, and even demoniacal, character; and if the populace of Paris and other cities were roused to action, they were merely the instruments wielded by the hands of the clubs, or the exclusive associations. Danton explained in a brief sentence the whole secret of that terrible power, that for a while held princes, priests, and people under the sword: "We are few in number—we must show no mercy for the sake of liberty, to those who are opposed to us. It is a monstrous untruth, and a libel on human nature, to assert that there is a disposition in the great majority of the people of any country, to destroy or to appropriate the possessions of the minority.* The evidence of history in It would be a happy thing for nations, were a more destructive propensity to prevail in the great mass of mankind. The world would not then behold the plunderings, the seizures, and the spoliations of aristocratic bodies practised on the passive multitude; nor would heaven be outraged by the daring hypocrisy of priesthood standing between man and the Deity; the poor mortal delivering, with a submissive air, his corn and the firstlings of his flocks, to feed the luxury of worldly ecclesiastics. Were such a disposition to exist to a moderate extent, the first approach of a spoliative power would be checked by those intended to be made the victims. every country on the globe, for five thousand years, proves the contrary. Could society exist for a month anywhere with such a disposition in the majority? Impossible—there would ensue a wild uproar, and in a violent but brief struggle mankind would perish from the earth. What protects the large heaps of property of every kind, lying exposed, or but nominally secured by thin partitions, in towns and cities, but the indisposition of men to encroach on their neighbours or their property? The twenty-eight thousand criminals who found their way into the jails of the United Kingdom, in the year 1841, formed an infinitesimal minority of the British people. And so it is with the people of every nation. The vast majority of men are disposed to be honest, peaceable, and orderly, and all that they want is to be left alone and undisturbed in the possession of what God and nature have assigned to them. Men will naturally be satisfied with their lot, as long as anything like fair play be shown to them, and they are always reluctant to rouse themselves to action, in order to redress their grievances.-The events of history are generally grossly misrepresented; and, whereever a people worn out by vexatious proceedings, and starved by a cruel and rapacious governing power, rouse themselves to recover their own, they are cut down like dogs in the streets, or tried as rebels, and branded as traitors. The struggles by the Roman people against the Aristocracy, had not for their object the confiscation and appropriation of the possessions of the patricians; but were truly and simply to recover the lands that really belonged to the people, but which had been seized by the men who held the power of the state. The knowledge of this peaceable disposition, inherent in the great mass of mankind, leads to and encourages the |