622 



THE STANDARD DICTIONARY OF FACTS 



of the Duma or the Council of the Empire, as 

 the case may be, except in cases of flagrant 

 offences or offences committed in the "exercise 

 of their duties. The ukases further provide 

 that bills rejected by the Tsar cannot be brought 

 forward again in the course of the same session, 

 while bills rejected by one of the legislative 

 bodies cannot be brought forward again without 

 the imperial consent. The administration of 

 the empire is still entrusted to great boards, or 

 councils, possessing separate functions. One 

 of the great colleges, or boards of government, 

 is the Ruling Senate or " Pravitelstvuyush- 

 chiy Senat," established by Peter I. in the year 

 1711. The functions of the Senate are partly 

 of a deliberative and partly of an executive 

 character To be valid, a law must be promul- 

 gated by the Senate. It is also the hign court 

 of justice for the empire. The Senate is divided 

 into six departments or sections, which all sit 

 at St. Petersburg, two of them being Courts of 

 Cassation. Each department is authorized to 

 decide in the last resort upon certain descrip- 

 tions of cases. The Senators are mostly persons 

 of high rank, or who fill high stations; but a 

 lawyer of eminence presides over each depart- 

 ment, who represents the emperor, and without 

 whose signature its decisions would have no 

 force. In the plenum, or general meeting of 

 several sections, the minister of justice takes 

 the chair. A special department consisting of 

 six members is entrusted with disciplinary judg- 

 ments against officials of the Crown. Another 

 is the college, established by Peter I. in the 

 year 1721, the Holy Synod, and to it is com- 

 mitted the superintendence of the religious 

 affairs of the empire. It is composed of the 

 three metropolitans (St. Petersburg, Moscow, 

 and Kiev), the archbishop of Georgia (Caucasus), 

 and several bishops sitting in turn. All its de- 

 cisions run in the emperor's name, and have no 

 force till approved by him. A third board of 

 government is the committee of ministers, re- 

 organized by a decree of October 19 (November 

 1), 1905. The fourth board of government, 

 the most important since the decree for its 

 reorganization issued October 19 (November 1), 

 1905, is the council of ministers. It consists of 

 all the ministers, and of the general directors of 

 the most important administrations. 



Local Government. The empire is divided 

 into governments or provinces (oblast), and dis- 

 tricts (uyezd or okrug). There are seventy-eight 

 governments (forty-nine in European Russia 

 proper, ten in Poland, eight in Finland, seven 

 in Caucasus, four in Siberia) ; nineteen provinces 

 (one in European Russia, five in Caucasus, nine 

 in Central Asia, four in Siberia, and one section 

 (otdyel) the north part of the island of Sak- 

 halin. Some of the governments or provinces 

 are united into general governments. At the 

 head of each general government is a governor- 

 general, the representative of the emperor, who 

 as such has the supreme control and direction 

 of all affairs, whether civil or military. In Si- 

 beria the governors-general are each assisted 

 by a council, which has a deliberative voice. A 

 civil governor assisted by a council of regency, 

 to which all measures must be submitted, is 

 established in each government, and a military 



! governor in seventeen provinces, one town 

 Kronstadt) and the island of Sakhalin. A vice- 

 governor is appointed to fill the place of the 

 civil governor when the latter is absent or un- 



| well. There is, also, in each government a 

 council of control under the presidency of a 

 special officer, depending directly on the depart- 

 ment of control. Each government is divided 

 into from five to fifteen districts (815 in all Rus- 

 sian Empire), having each several administrative 

 institutions. The townships (gradonachalstvo) 

 of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa, Kerch, 

 Nikolayev, and Rostov-on-Don, are adminis- 

 tered by special governors (gradonachalnik)\ 

 Cronstaat is under a separate military gov- 

 ernor. 



Scotland. By the local government act 

 of Great Britain, in 1894, a local government 

 board for Scotland was constituted. It consists 

 of the secretary for Scotland as president, the 

 solicitor general of Scotland, the under secretary 

 for Scotland, and other three members nomi- 

 nated by the Crown. The local government act 

 which was passed for Scotland in 1889, followed 

 in its main outlines the English Act of the pre- 

 vious year. The powers of local administration 

 in counties formerly exercised by the commis- 

 sioners of supply and road trustees were either 

 wholly or in part transferred to the new councils, 

 which took over their duties and responsibilities 

 in 1890. The act of 1894, provided that a 

 parish council should be established in every 

 parish to take the place of the parochial boards 

 and to exercise powers similar to those of the 

 parish councils in England. Municipal bodies 

 exist in the towns of Scotland, as in those of 

 England, but instead of their magistrates being 

 called aldermen, they are called bailies, and 

 instead of their chief magistrates being called 

 mayors they are called provosts. There are in 

 Scotland five kinds of burghs (1) burghs of 

 barony; (2) burghs of regality (no practical dis- 

 tinction between these two); the councils of 

 these two classes of burghs ceased to exist in 

 1893, by statutory enactment; (3) royal burghs, 

 representatives of which meet together annually 

 in a collective corporate character, as the ''con- 

 vention of royal burghs," for the transaction of 

 business; (4) parliamentary burghs, which pos- 

 sess statutory constitutions almost identical 

 with those of the royal burghs; (5) police burghs, 

 constituted under the burgh police (Scotland) 

 act, 1892, in which the local authority are the 

 police commissioners. These two latter burghs, 

 by acts passed in 1879 and 1895, are enabled to 

 send representatives to the convention. 



Servia. The independence of Servia, which, 

 was formerly an autonomous province of Tur- 

 key, was established by the Treaty of Berlin, 

 1878. The constitution, voted by the national 

 assembly of 1889, was abrogated by the king in 

 May, 1894, and an older constitution of 1869, 

 temporarily revived; but in 1903 the 1889 con- 

 stitution was restored. The executive is vested 

 in the king and his ministers, and the legislative 

 authority in the king in conjunction with the 

 national assembly or narodna-skuptschina and 

 a state council. The former consists of 160 

 deputies elected by universal suffrage for four 

 years ; the latter of sixteen members, eight nom- 



