638 



KUSSIA. 



Yet with a vacillation which irritated the 

 people almost as much as its severities, the Gov- 

 ernment seemed to fear that it had been too 

 harsh, and again indicated a desire to intro- 

 duce reforms which should pacify the Poles. 

 Public fetes in honor of the Czar were held, but 

 the Poles discountenanced them ; the journals 

 and the penny post which had been suppressed, 

 were restored ; the Circle of " The Resource " 

 was again opened, and permission granted to 

 make the annual pilgrimage to Czenstochowa, 

 the holy city of Poland, on the 8th of May, but 

 no one went. The taxes were lightened, and 

 other measures which looked towards some re- 

 duction of the burdens of the country were 

 adopted ; but the people were firm in their de- 

 mands for the restoration of the kingdom of 

 Poland with its constitution, its rights, and its 

 immunities, and appeared determined to take 

 nothing less ; and this the Emperor, though un- 

 doubtedly sincerely desirous of the pacification 

 of Poland, that he might give his exclusive 

 attention to the emancipation of the serfs, was 

 unwilling to grant. On the 15th of Oct., 1861, 

 the celebration of the birthday of Kosciusko led 

 to further disturbances, and the imprisonment 

 of a number of Poles, but the massacre of April 

 was fortunately not repeated. 



Russian serfdom dates from 1601, when, by an 

 imperial ukase, the peasants on an estate were 

 forbidden to leave the service of the landholder 

 without his consent. Prior to the accession of 

 Nicholas I. to the throne, in 1825, the serfs were 

 wholly in the power of their masters, and were 

 often treated with great cruelty. The life of the 

 serf was of scarcely so much account as that of 

 a dog or horse, and at the caprice of his master 

 he was sold, given away, drowned, sent to Si- 

 'beria, or otherwise disposed of. The ukase of 

 1827, by which the Emperor declared the serf 

 an integral and inseparable portion of the soil, 

 produced a sensible improvement in the condi- 

 tion of the class. A further amelioration en- 

 sued, from the system adopted by the Govern- 

 ment of loaning money to the landholders on 

 the pledge of their lands and serfs, and the 

 eventual foreclosure of these mortgages, by 

 which the lands became crown lands, and the 

 serfs crown peasants. In this new relation, 

 they were only required to pay to the Govern- 

 ment one dollar a year for each male peasant, 

 and were liable to the military conscription. 

 But only about two-fifths of the serfs were in 

 this way relieved from the oppression of their 

 masters, and in order to remedy this, the Em- 

 peror, in 1845, conferred on them the power, 

 hitherto withheld, of making contracts. Armed 

 with this power, the serfs sought to purchase 

 the lands on which they lived from their land- 

 holders, since by that purchase they themselves 

 became free. They also in many cases loaned 

 to the landholders money on the mortgage of 

 their estates. But they had not, like the Gov- 

 ernment, the means of paying to the landholder 

 the third part of the value of his property, on 

 foreclosing the mortgage, and hence they lost 



their capital, and did not gain their liberty. 

 The Government again interposed, and opened 

 to them the imperial treasury for the loans they 

 needed, in order to complete the purchase of 

 the property, requiring only the payment of 3 

 per cent, interest, and 3 per cent, of the capital 

 annually, secured by the mortgage of the prop- 

 erty. In this way, in many cases, by payments 

 spread over 30 years, they became free, and the 

 proprietors of their lands ; or, if they failed, 

 they were at the worst only crown peasants, 

 a far better position than their previous one. 

 There were still, however, many large proprie- 

 tors who were not in debt either to the Gov- 

 ernment or their serfs, and who refused to sell 

 their lands to their serfs ; and for these serfs 

 there was no redress in the ukases already pro- 

 mulgated. For them the only hope of release 

 from servitude, was by enlistment in the army, or 

 in the case of females, marringe with a free man. 

 At the accession of the present Emperor, in 

 1855, there were in the empire 38,000,000 serfs, 

 of whom 16,000,000 were crown peasants, and 

 22,000,000 belonged to private estates, or to 

 the private lands of the crown. Notwithstand- 

 ing the exhaustion of his finances by the Cri- 

 mean war, Alexander II. was sincerely desirous 

 of promoting the emancipation of the servile 

 class, and to this he was prompted as well by 

 motives of humanity as by the conviction of the 

 material development in the physical condition 

 of his empire which would be the result of the 

 substitution of free for compulsory labor. In 

 1857 he promulgated a ukase, providing that 

 the serfs were to be finally liberated within 

 twelve years after settling the terms to be re- 

 solved on between them and the proprietors. 

 For the purpose of framing the measures of 

 emancipation in such a way as to avoid or 

 overcome the many and serious difficulties 

 which were involved in it, the Emperor ap- 

 pointed on the 15th of July, 1857, a superior 

 committee composed of the most eminent men 

 of the Empire, and of which his brother, Grand 

 Duke Constantine, was president, to digest and 

 mature a plan of emancipation which should 

 harmonize the interests of the landed proprie- 

 tors and the peasants, and should also provide 

 for the release from servitude of the very con- 

 siderable class of domestics, who, while serfs 

 by birth, and servants by occupation, had no 

 connection with the landed estates of the pro- 

 prietors. This committee reported late in 1860 

 to the Grand Council of the Empire, by which 

 their propositions were duly considered and 

 approved, and on the 5th of March, O. S., 

 (March 17, K S.,) 1861, the Emperor issued 

 his manifesto dated February 19, O. S., (March 

 3,) in which, after reciting the past disabilities 

 and injustice which the serfs had endured, and 

 the solicitude which he and his immediate pre- 

 decessors had felt for the improvement of their 

 condition, he proceeded to declare that thence- 

 forth the landed proprietors must allow the 

 serfs to cultivate their land at a fixed rental, and 

 that they should be at liberty to purchase from 





