look in vain there for any one measure which promises to be fair, square, and thorough. They are nearly all qualified -I might truly say nullified-by ifs and ans. For that reason they tantalize and irritate instead of pacifying.

When the Tsar, yielding to the entreaties of the Dowager Empress, lately put the interests of the HolsteinGotthorp dynasty in the hands of M. Witte political sagacity as well as common sense ought to have prompted him to lay down the condition that no ukase should be issued by way of answer to the demands of the Zemsky Congress. That was a matter of personal dignity and political prudence. An autocrat whose title-deeds were drawn up in heaven cannot afford to allow the mere masses to encroach upon his privileges. Above all things there must be no weakness, no blenching, no signs of fear. That is part of the A B C of autocracy, and nobody ever learned the lesson better than Nicholas I. But his descendant Nicholas II. has committed the unpardonable sin in an absolute monarch; he has allowed himself to be overmastered by the multitude; they piped and he actually danced. An obscure criminal took the life of his Grand Vizier, and the mighty ruler, answerable only to God, at once changed the whole course of his Government in consequence. For a generation our best men had striven to influence the autocracy. Men of letters, journalists, politicians, even courtiers and ministers had tried their hands and failed. Nicholas had but to stamp his foot or hurl his ukase and not a head was seen any longer to tower above the low level of the masses. Silence reigned and resignation. But an obscure mur

At present Russia is governed not by the Romanoff but by the Holstein-Gotthorp dynasty. Elizabeth I. was the last of the Romanoffs and her nephew Peter III, the first of the Holstein-Gotthorps.

derer, eschewing arguments, makes a bomb and takes the life of the Imperial minister and the Tsar is immediately cowed. He heartily disavows the lifework of his counsellor and his own, and promises to do better and differently in future; forgetting that he is also abandoning the principle of autocracy, proclaiming the futility of argument and putting a premium on criminal violence.

Punishment followed the blunder with swift and sure foot. People thirsting for change noted for future use the spring which moves the sovereign. At banquets and assemblies they laid down the dangerous principle that killing is not necessarily murder and warmly eulogized the assassins of Plehve. And that, to my thinking, is a calamity not for the dynasty only but likewise for our much suffering people. Repeal, reform, abolish to your heart's content, but let not your action be or even seem to be the consequence of fear! But the wine is poured out and now we must drink it to the very dregs.

If it was a blunder to promise reforms because bombs can be manufactured and thrown by fellows who fearing nothing can dare everything, it was a crime to bungle the matter so hopelessly as has been done in the ukase of last December. If reform was worth undertaking at all-at such a terrible sacrifice-it was surely worth doing well. But the document penned by an ambitious official in a hurry to snatch the reins of power, and clawed and mutilated by Grand Ducal harpies bent on upholding their prerogative to prey upon the people, ought never to have seen the light of day. Not because of its gaps, which are many, but on account of its sham reforms, which constitute a wanton provocation. I do not complain that there is no mention there of the legislative assembly which was decreed in

clause 3 of the original ukase and struck out at the last moment. At best it inaugurated only a ceremony, and at worst-i.e., when the Grand Dukes Vladimir and Sergius had done with it-its proper place was the opera bouffe. I do not complain that the whole question of education, which our autocracy is more anxious to stifle than to spread, has been burked. That is far better than bungling it. In truth every problem ought to have been thus avoided which the Tsar could not or would not deal with fully and thoroughly.

Liberty of conscience is one of the "liberties" which, like the right of public meeting and of association, his Majesty ought to have fought shy of to the last, for he has manifestly no intention of granting it. The StundistsEnglishmen would perhaps call them Evangelical Christians-are persecuted in the most unchristian and sometimes inhuman way; and in this the ukase has made no change. Since it was issued our ministry of Public Instruction -as appropriately presided over by a general as the land forces in Manchuria were commanded by a "horse marine"-has refused to the children of Stundists admission to any Government or Zemsky schools. They are condemned to live and die in crass ignorance, not by our Orthodox Church, still less by our tolerant people, but by the autocracy. And now men say that if the night of ignorance must be preserved in order that the star of autocracy should continue to twinkle, they will dispense with its light altogether. Eight Evangelical Christians have been ordered to quit the town of Sevastopol, and several more have been expelled from the province of Kieff since the publication of the ukase. Words, then, not deeds, ukases not reforms, are the watchwords. The manifesto of March 1903 dealt with liberty of conscience in terms similar to those

of the ukase of last December. Nobody was a whit the better for it, for persecution went on as before. Would it not have been wiser to continue the old system in silence without intensify. ing its bitterness by arousing hopes and disappointing them? Liberty of conscience, forsooth!

The press is another skeleton in the cupboard of autocracy, and officialdom is resolved to hinder as long as possi ble any political Ezekiel from causing breath to enter into its dry bones. Perchance its revelations would render the existence of the bureaucracy unbearable. That fear is not groundless. But if the press skeleton is not to be removed from the cupboard, and revived, why disturb it with such solemnity? The Tsar promises to repealthe press laws? No, not the press laws; that is impossible. Perhaps the ministerial circulars and the orders daily telephoned to editors which are. so to say, the barbed-wire entanglements around the Statute Law? No, not even these. His Majesty will remove only those restrictions which his bureaucrats may consider "superfluous." Superfluous restrictions! And for this joke a special clause of the Imperial ukase was necessary!

But the Emperor is misinformed if he fancies it is still possible to deal thus with the people's means of enlightenment-education and the press. I who sincerely desire to see the autocracy live, and thrive, believe that it would be inadvisable, if it were feasible, to continue to gag the newspaper and book press. But it is now no longer feasible. Since the Tsar, intimidated by the bomb of Sozonoff appointed Sviatopolk Mirzky to the Ministry of the Interior and allowed the press for a few weeks a greater degree of liberty than it has enjoyed for a whole generation, he dropped the reins and it is

The man who actually threw the bomb which killed Plehve.

very unlikely that he can seize them again. I confess I am not sorry. The muzzling system gave us dead silence for a time, followed by cold-blooded lying for a season, and then disaster after disaster. Our people are nourished on mystery and falsehood which are becoming part of their very soul tissues. On the day that Port Arthur surrendered our official organs assured the people that the Japanese had suffered such tremendous defeats that they had completely lost heart. And then the terrible blow smote our people unparried. In a word, it is certain that no power should, and it seems probable that no power can, muzzle our press in the future as in the past. And it is devoutly to be hoped that officialdom will not put the matter to the test. Time is a swift horse and woe to the autocrat who clings not to the mane.

6

A grain of humor in the Tsar might have saved the Tsardom. But his character lacks that grain. While allowing bureaucrats to hide the truth under a bushel at their discretion, to force our masses to think and pray according to official circulars, to arrest men of every class and rank and punish them without trial or accusation, the ukase naïvely announces his Majesty's intention to set law above administrative caprice. "For law," he seriously adds, "is the most essential mainstay of the throne in an autocratic State." "God forbid!" is the response which the friends of autocracy will fervently utter. If law be in truth the strongest support of the throne, the outlook of absolutism in Russia is bleak indeed. For law has long been no more than a vague tradition among us.

Some months ago I was in hopes that autocracy might acquire a further

That is the signification of the provisional preventive measures adopted after the murder of Alexander III. and down to this day. They abolish all laws and make the governors

lease of existence without ruining Russia or ceasing to be itself. But by autocracy I meant not the oriental despotism of Alexander III. and Nicholas II., in which thousands of officials share, but the one-man rule of the first Romanoffs, which was absolute without being despotic. But the despotism of the Holstein-Gotthorp dynasty is a monster with thousands of hands, all grasping and all throttling. And of this chaotic régime we shall soon see the last.

Some years ago, I remember, M. Pobedonostseff-the last ideologist of autocracy-explained the limitations of that form of government at a sitting of the Committee of Ministers. Sipyaghin, who afterwards became Home Secretary and was murdered, had presented to the Emperor the petition of a private person who desired to have a decision of the Senate summarily quashed. No precedent could be pleaded for interfering in a civil case which had been definitely decided by the highest court, but Sipyaghin held that the Tsar could do everything, and that whatever he does is right and just. Pobedonostseff, however, flatly denied that theory, and in an excellent speech very clearly explained what the limitations of autocracy are. He defined it as a legal form of government not a despotism. The Tsar, he said, is indeed the source of law, but on condition that he be also its guardian and see that it is respected." That, unfortunately, is only the theory.

Still, I hoped that Nicholas II. would see that the Tsardom need not be the embodiment of caprice, that one man may be absolute without all good and gifted men being banished or imprisoned. I thought that with competent advisers-chosen by himself-to

sharers of Imperial power. And the Tsar in his ukase has refused to repeal them.

7 Sipyaghin's proposal was thrown out by the Committee of Ministers.

The

But to-day I am less hopeful. ukase has compromised absolutism, estranged the people, and damaged a cause which had long ceased to arouse enthusiasm. It shows Nicholas II. in the light of a man who has no sense of public duty, no political instincts, no psychological tact. He trifles with words and phrases while his people are writhing and bleeding. He is unable to rid himself of the idea that Russia is his estate, his vochina. Other countries may be governed badly or well, but at least they are ruled for the nation: ours is managed only for the dynasty. For Russia is an estate, not a State. It belongs to the Holstein-Gotthorp family -is in reality their private property. Hence the Tsar refuses to listen to the advice of his "serfs," even when they would have the Augean stables of the Grand Dukery cleansed and disinfected. His Imperial uncles, cousins, and nephews are dearer to him than the Fatherland, their interests touch him more closely than the fate of people. It was Grand Dukes Vladimir and Sergius who gave its final shape to the ukase. It is the Grand Dukes who clog every wheel in the State machinery, taking much and giving little, obtaining honors in exchange for honor. Probably no such greedy and unscrupulous hangers-on of royalty have ever been known to history. They fear no law, they despise every minister, they live on the fat of the land, and are ready to ruin the nation for the pettiest of interests. Before Russia could again reconcile herself to autocracy the claws of those harpies must be cut. That seemed evident to

all, or rather to all but the Emperor. His Majesty ignored it. He recently said to one of his ministers who had spoken to him of a legislative chamber: "I will not entertain the idea. Besides, it is a matter which concerns not myself only, but my family, and they will never consent." Has he no fear that they will hamper or harm him irremediably? If, as the proverb says, "The lesser saints are the ruin of God," what rôle may not human demons play when their superior is only a Tsar?

Nicholas II. may still hope something from fate, but he has much to fear from time and men, to whose warnings he has hitherto been blind and deaf. At the beginning of his reign, if, instead of stamping angrily with his foot and punishing the loyal men of Tver for their frankness, he had hearkened to their voices he would have be come a popular idol at a small cost. He might then have delighted his subjects with toys of mere glittering quartz; to-day they demand costly dia monds, and no longer as a favor but as a right. But he perceives no difference between now and then. And in his own character there is none. For the Nicholas of to-day is the Nicholas of ten years ago; a mild nerve-shattered youth, incapable of clear, hard thinking, or of pitting his will against that of the masses, who walks through life with the settled smile of a somnambulist moving serenely over dizzy cliffs for a while. A few weeks ago he sent for Count Ignatieff and consulted him on the problems which were then uppermost in his mind. The conversation was opened thus: "I want your views, Count, as to the form of Government which I had best give to Manchuria." "It is a difficult problem, your Majesty; but we shall be able to see more clearly by the time the province will have been formally annexed." "Oh, that will be very soon

now. You may assume that it is ours already. Go on." Another question which his Majesty put to the Count was: "What course ought, in your opinion, to be taken respecting our concessions in Corea?" The Count's reply was framed on the same lines as his answer to the first query. The question was not pressing, and the Japanese were still in Corea. But Nicholas insisted that they were going out again very soon. In a word, as he was, he is, and, unhappily for us, will continue to be. Our people have a saying that the tomb alone can straighten a hunchback.

To the acts of such a prince we need not look for signs of those unsuspected gifts which God sometimes bestows on a man in secret, and circumstance brings to light in a day or an hour. As in the past, so in the present, he makes laws which he will not respect; he convokes councils whose advice he declines to follow; he appoints minis

The National Review.

ters whom he forbids to speak or act; substitutes for them favorites to whom in turn he offers a deaf ear, and is now trying almost alone to force our whole nation to bleed to death for himself and a parasitic brood of human bloodsuckers. But hither our people will probably refuse to follow him. They already deny his right to send them thither.

Yet he still insists with the serenity of the somnambulist and the smile of the seer. Whether ruler and ruled will yet try issues is now immaterial, because autocracy, as the Holstein-Gotthorp dynasty understands it, is at its last gasp. Whatever else may survive the coming storm that monstrosity must surely go, and one fervently hopes that the autocrat will not cling more closely to it than he has clung to the mane of fleeting time. volentes ducunt, nolentes trahunt.

Fata

The Author of "The Tsar" in the Quarterly Review.

The time has arrived for a frank consideration of the whole question of the relations of the Churches to education. Living facts only, apart from all past traditions and practices not essential to the real issue, are relevant to the inquiry. I shall deal chiefly with the claims of the Roman Catholic Church; for that Church has taken up the most extreme position in regard to education. Any argument that tells against her position applies with equal, if not greater force, to the other Churches. The Catholic Church has often shown herself capable of adapting her methods to the conditions of the age, when these conditions can be moulded to help her in her spiritual mission. In view of the disturbance in England

over the Education Act, and the present débâcle in France, it may be well, perhaps, for the Church to consider whether she could, without sacrificing any essential principle, adopt an educational policy that would meet the needs of Great Britain, Ireland, and the United States.

Those who have watched the trend of events in these countries must acknowledge a growing dissatisfaction on the part of the people with the present interference of the Churches in secular education. England is in an uproar against the last Education Act, which has already become so unworkable in Wales that the Government which introduced the law is said to be about to amend it. The Liberal Party, when it