Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

TYRANNY AND DESPOTISM.147

spiritless. Silence presides oyer and paralyses life. Officers, coachmen, Cossacks, serfs, courtiers, all servants under the same master, blindly obey the orders which they do not understand; it is certainly the perfection of discipline; but the sight of such perfection does not gratify me; so much regularity can only be obtained by the entire absence of independence.

Among this people bereft of time and of will, we see only bodies without souls, and tremble to think that, for so vast a multitude of arms and legs, there is only one head. Despotism is a union of impatience and of indolence ; with a little more forbearance on the part of the governing power, and of activity on the part of the people, equal results might be obtained at a far cheaper cost; but what then would become of tyranny ?

If I am reproached for confounding despotism with tyranny, I answer that I do so with design. They are such near relatives, that they never fail to unite in secret to the misfortune of mankind. Under a despotism, tyranny may maintain itself the longer, because it preserves the mask.

`YYlien Peter the Great established what is here called the tchìn, that is to say, when he applied the military system to the general administration of the empire, he changed his nation into a regiment of mutes, of which he declared himself and his successors the hereditary colonels.