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Leader (1850-1860), 5th November 1853, Edition Town of 2, Page 1069

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      Untitled Article

      a statue to Richard Cceur de Lion—not the best , thoug h , not a bad commencement of that long list ; but it will take some time and diligence in statue-making before we come down to Prince Albert . There is one statue , indeed , in this metropolis , in gallant and graceful port , and chivalrous _ aspect a striking contrast to the caricatures that disgrace our streets , which , in all points of view , possesses a singular fascination for the most various beholders . . Charles " the Martyr / ' whose sovereign virtues are constitutionally embalmed in the ritual of a congenial " Establishment , " confronts the

      common gaze , prancing gaily towards that spot on which he laid his sacred head , a monument for all time of the perjury of Kings , and the righteous Nemesis of peoples . Royalistsf and republicans alike may well cherish that statue , and leave thatrojsl effigy in his pride of place . Our vices and our follies may have asked for a king again , as Israel asked . J 3 ut if that statue be a trophy of reactionary Courts , it is also a warning of popular justice . It is a sign to generation after generation of that retribution which the national wrath , of England , strong in her right and inflexible in her might , once flung in the face of continental despotisms , a century and a-half before IVench Revolutions were even

      dreamed of in the contemptuous philosophy of Versailles . . Let crowned accomplices andT diplomatic pacificators , who think to sacrifice the liberties of Europe to the obsolete pretensions of the Almanack de Gotha , remember that monument at Charing-cross , when , in their official parleys and secret conclaves , they babble of England palsied by trade , and gamble away the rights of nations on the tables of oppressors . There is a radical reason opposed to the premature consecration of Prince Albert . He has not

      yet completed his life , and although we have the utmost confidence , as people say , in his principles , yet to err is human , and we can but remember that to forgive may be the province of Queen yictoria , if not of her faithful people . We do not , indeed , anticipate any necessity for the exercise of that divine virtue , but who can predict the other half of a life heretofore shielded against much temptation , guarded by vigilant angels , and happily , perhaps , finding it almost difficult to errP There is no gain savin s the merits of the

      Prince , thus far ; but it would be awkward to raise a statue now , and then find later that we have cause to erase it , or retain it only aa a memorandum of regret . We understand that a rival project has been suggested , which would logically carry out the statue plan . It is , to erect a monument to Prince Albert . The epitaph is already proposed , stating how he had Burvived to the age of seventy years , how lie had watched over the early reign of his son , the king ; how ho had never

      It is not for us , howover , to divulge all the averments of this epitaph . Tho only objection to it is , that it might be liable to correction here - after ; but it is difficult to correct a proof of winch tho letters are inscribed in stone . Tp erect a statue would scarcely be more reasonable than to erect a monument . Indeed , admirers have carried tho suggestion yet farther than the tomb . - Tho Dulco of Wellington had a State funeral after his death ; but how imporfect must have been Ins gratification at that complimentwhen

      , ho had no opportunity of inspecting tho arrangements from the Heralds' Office or tho undcrtalcer ' s department . The idea lias occurred of giving to Prince Albert tho gratification withhold "'om the Duke of Wellington , by rehearsing 1 ) 0-jwo him that State funeral which will ono day »>« provided by a grateful nation . Of courao wo < u > not vouch ibr tho truth of this report ; , but it |« not more unreasonable to mourn in State be-J ° i *« tho time , than to commemorato boforo com- ; Plolion .

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      RUSSIAN S E R V I ) O M . [ btiibt auticlw . ] l"Q emancipation of all tho opprcHiuxl nnil muTorintf lo tho r vocation of tho century . "—Ujiiiviwub . llK timo JiaH comowhen Ruhhian Siciikdom nhould bo ?' ° ** not an European , at least an English quontion . J ^ u < lon , which has become tho permanent oecumonical f . ° f council for all movements of liberty , omancipa-° 'j » progression , can scarcely remain indifForent to Uli " a ( uiestion a » that of White Slavery in itusBia . * jt ~ rr—_— At

      "White Slavery in Russia has been too little attacked : perhaps because it has not been defended with the fierce tenacity of Transatlantic slaveholders . For it is to be remarked , that although many of the rich landholders in Russia passionately desire the maintenance of serfdom , no one is found to justify the institution—no one to undertake its defence : not even the Government . It is nevertheless a question of capital importance . Indeed , the wiole Hessian Question , for the present at least , may be said to be included in that of Serfdom . Russia cannot make a step in advance until she has abolished slavery . The serfdom of the ^ Russian peasant is the servitude of the Russian Empire .

      The political and social existence of Western Europe formerly was concentrated in chdteaux and in cities . It was essentially an aristocratic or municipal existence . The peasant remained outside of the movement . The Revolution took little thought of him . The sale of national property had no effect upon his condition , except to create a limited provincial bourgeoisie . The serf knew well enough that the land did not belong to him : " he only looked for a personal and negative emancipation : an emancipation of the labourer . In Russia the reverse is the case . .

      The original organization of that agricultural and communistic people was essentially democratic . There were no chateaux , very few towns , and those few nothing but large villages . No distinction existed between the peasant and the citizen . The rural commune , as it still exists , is the exact image of the great communes of Novogrod , Pskow , Kioff . " Muscovite centralization , indeed , destroyed the autonomy of the towns : but the humble word commune preserved its eelf-governinent , its trial by jury , its justices of the peace , till after the reign of Ivan the Terrible : that is to say , till the 17 th century .

      The soil was not as yet the subject of individual property : each rural commune held its allotment of land . Each of its members had the right to cultivate a portion of that holding , and each appropriated in effect the fruits of his own labour . Such is still the tenure of thirty million of peasants , de la commune as they are called . Land , water , and woods were equally unrestricted by any feudal rights : fishing , hunting , and the navigation of rivers , were completely free . Moreover , the members of any commune could leave it and be admitted into another , or settle in the towns . The land was the basis of taxation ; but the quality was considered ; thus it was differently taxed on either side of the Oka and the Volga .

      The condition of the peasants of the Crown has little changed . The Government , far from comprehending the wisdom of the old institutions , instituted for the land-tax a uniform capitation tax , in its very essence profoundly unjust . In some localities the peasants inhabited a domain belonging to a private person . The cession of the soil was made not to each peasant individually , but to the body ( I'ensemble ) of the cultivators , to the commune , on the condition of cultivating it at half profits , or of supporting some other charge or service . The non-proprietary communes were besides organized like all the rest , and tho peasant abandoned them at his own discretion . It should not be forgotten that the proprietor of this soil thus farmed ( low ) had absolutely nothing in common with the seigneur of Western nations . In fact he waa nothing but a peasant like the rest , a peasant who had got rich , or who had served the Crown .

      Russia had never preserved an organized aristocracy it was much less an institution than a customary fact , ( fait coutumier ) vaguo and undetermined in character . Tho few Norman families who accompanied Rurick in the 10 th century to Novogrod , were in less than a century after completely absorbed . Tho Boyards who surrounded tho Grand Prince and tho appanaged Princes , wero almost all soldiers of fortune , who had achieved their titles b y personal claims , and did not hand them down to their children .

      There was no conquering race , and therefore thero could bo no real aristocracy . But a purely artificial aristocracy was in courao of formation ; a mongrel , hetorogenoua aristocracy , destitute of any legal basin . The appanaged Princes , mediatized in the 16 th century , and thoir descendants , formed the first nucleus of this fliiast-aristocracy ; then camo the Tartar Mirzas ; then adventurers from all tho countries of Europe , Polos , Servians , Germans , Swedes , Italians , Greeks . Tho Boyards and other dignitaries finally surrendered thoir horoditary titles .

      Skufdom was established , stop by stop , at tho commencoment of * he 17 th century , and attained ita development under tho ' ' philosophical" reign of Catherine II . This Booms inconceivable , and it will take many years to make Europe comprehend tho courao of Russian Horfdom . Its origin and its development form so extravagant and unparalleled a history , that thoy almost defy belief .

      For ourselves , indeed , the monstrous and chaotic disorder of the regime to which we are accustomed from our birth , . alone explains the phenomenon . In this institution , as in inany others in Russia , there is an indefinable , . indeterminate vagueness and looseness , an amalgam of customs not written and not practised ; and this strange incoherence it is , perhaps , which renders them less intolerable and more intelligible . How , indeed , is it possible to believe that one-half of a population of the same race , endowed with rare physical and intellectual faculties , should be reduced to slavery , not by war , not b y conquest , not by revolution , but by a series of special ordonnances , by immoral concessions , by abominable pretensions ? Yet this is the fact ; and a fact accomplished scarcely a century and a-half ago .

      On his very countenance the Russian peasant bears the evidence of this strange anomaly of recent growth . He has nothing ( it is the observation of Custine , Haxthausen , Blazius , and all Russian travellers ) of a slave in his features , but only an expression of profound dejection . He is , in truth , unhappy , and knows not his own identity in the strange position to which he is reduced . He has been caught unawares in the toils of the bureaucracy ; driven by a blind government , at the crack of the knout , into the ambush laid for him by the seigneurs . From time immemorial he has settled without fear

      on the seigneurial lands ; he never drew a contract ; nay , his master was as incapable of drawing a contract as himself . To this day he never draws a contract with his equals . All his agreements are transacted by a shake of the hand and a glass of brandy , and the act is as binding as if it passed under the seal of a notary . Just in this way companies of carriers used to transport merchandise from the frontiers of China to Nuni , without even a way-bill of the goods . Deprived of means , destitute of organization , the old Muscovite administration scarcely ever reached the peasant : all it looked to was , that the taxes were more or less regularly paid , and its power not disputed . The peasant lived peaceably enough under the shelter of that charter given him by Nature in Russia—protected by the impassable morasses , l \ y the impenetrable

      and roadless mud . The State cared nothing for the peasant , or the peasant for the Staje . While he was dragging on this tranquil and reckless existence , an usurping Tzar , Bovis Godounoff , and a few petty seigneura , seduced by the example of the German dtevaliers , who had introduced a cruel serfdom into their Baltic possessions about the end of the sixteenth century , fastened on the commune fetters drawn more tight from day to day . First , the right of passing from one commune to another was limited : it could only be exercised on one day in the year , on St . George ' s day ( Youri ) . Some time after , the privilege of that single day was abolished , without , however , as yet putting the personal rights of those cultivators of the land in question . Finally came a grand master , Peter the Great : he rivelted the chain by a clasp forced a I A Uemande .

      Employe ' s of the State , fresh shaved , bearing tho titles of landrath , lanclfiscal , and I know not what other Swedish or German designations , scoured tho villages , ridiculously costumed , publishing everywhere an edict , written in a balderdash of mangled Russian . These functionaries proceeded to a census ; then they gavo notice " that tho dwellers on the seigneurial domains would bo adscribed to tho land and to the seigneur , if within a given delay they did not protest . " The

      advent of these strangers in bizarre dresses had perhaps thrown the peasants into a state of vaguo apprehension : they wero quite glad to see them go away without having done more harm ! They had no notion of what was being said and done by those harmless visitors . Not only had tho people no notion of what was going on , but the Government itnelf knew nothing ; and to this da y is utterly blind to what it haw dono , and to what it maintains

      Neither Peter the First , nor Iu ' h succoflnor « , nor hia predecessors—in short , no one has wo-r ox plained what theso words mean— "to bo adseribed ( fermes ) to thm land and to the lor < l . " " I am quite siiro , " wrote tho Emperor Alexander with his own hand , " that the sale of Morfe , without that of the land , haw boon long forbidden by tho law . " Ho then asked tho Council of State b y virtue of what regulations peasants wore sold individually ? Tho Council of State , knowing no law which authorized a aale of tho kind , referral to the Senate . In vain woro tho archives of that corps searched for precedents : not a scrap could ho found ' approaching to such an

      authorization ; but ordoniKinoeH and laws m a contrary moiiho abounded . In a uIciiho of Petor tho Fii-Ht , addi-ewed to tho Senate , tho Tzar in indignant " that men should beflold in RuHHia HJco cattlo ; " and ho ordains "tho preparation of a lnw prohibiting huoIi ft traflic , and prohibiting in general the Halo of m « n without the land if possible . " Tho Senate did nothing- A centm-jr later , it did wor « o than nothing . Too duoply interested in the maintenance of this traffic of human flesh , it romiHoitatea a tariff of registration ( tarif de I ' cnregiih trcment ) , dating ho far hack as tho roign of tho . Empress Anno . Thin tariff maintained , among other things , that tjio dutie » woro to bo paid on tho sale of men on the land ( dam la terrc ) . Tho Council of Sfcatq ,

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      t tuo moment when all England was ditiplay infr a I omiutm I and notivo sympathy for tho fllavoa m tho "WMiorn States of North America , incited thoroto by tho fereat work of Mr « . JJooohop Stowo . no ono aooniod to r& .

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      mombor that nearer lo England , aorosn tho Baltic , is an ontiro population tho loyal property of a batch of aoitmoura ; a population not of 2 ) , 0 OO , OO (> but of 20 , 000 , 000 ! A friend ot'mino proposed to publish a pamphlot to remind JEngliflh charity of thin f « u ; t . J 3 ufc his pamphlet was novor . published . I have taken it up and added a fow general considerations , which however lnHutflcicnt in fchomselvea , may , I trust , contribute to throw ooxno light on , tho melancholy oub « jeot . —A . H . .. ' ..,

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      November 5 , 1853 . ] THE LEADER . 1069

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 5, 1853, page 1069, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2011/page/13/