DESTITUTION AND RELIEF 35 



great calamity. When it is remembered that the 

 Russian Empire, with a population of one hundred 

 and eighty millions, embraces more than half of 

 Europe and one-third of Asia, an area of 8,647,- 

 657 square miles, nearly three times greater than 

 the United States of America, exclusive of Alaska, 

 or one-seventh of the land surface of the globe, 

 and that European Russia alone contains a popu- 

 lation in the fifty provinces of one hundred and 

 twenty millions, of whom about half are of the 

 dependent peasant class, one may begin to realize 

 something of the difficulties and the dangers that 

 beset the way of the one man ordained, by the law 

 of an hereditary monarchy, to govern and sustain 

 so vast c. realm. I wonder no longer that, for se- 

 ditious utterances or privy conspiracy, thousands 

 have been banished to Siberia in order that peace 

 may be insured to the millions ; I only wonder that 

 so much sentiment and sympathy have been 

 lavished in our land upon the said political exiles, 

 with none whatever for the true man at the helm, 

 at that time Alexander III., who, I believe, would 

 have sacrificed his life any day for the safety of the 

 great Ship of State and the happiness of his sub- 

 jects. 



