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

provide him with it, in order to be sure of belonging only to him. The benevolent lord, therefore, buys his new serfs with their own money; after which he exempts them from taxes for a certain number of years; thus indemnifying them for the price of their bodies, which they have paid to him in advance, by furnishing the sum that represents the value of the domain to which they belong, and of which they have, as it were, obliged him to become the proprietor.

The greatest misfortune which can happen to these vegetating; men is to see their native fields sold. They are always sold with the glebe, and the only advantage they have hitherto derived from the modern ameliorations of the law, is, that they cannot now be sold without it. This provision is, however, notoriously evaded. Instead, for instance, of selling an entire estate, a few acres are often sold with one or two hundred men per acre. If the government becomes aware of such collusion it punishes the guilty parties, but it has seldom an opportunity of interfering; for between the crime and the supreme authority, that is, the Emperor, are a whole multitude of people interested in concealing and perpetuating abuses. The proprietors surfer as much as the serfs from this state of tilings, especially those whose affairs are deranged. Estates are difficult to sell; so difficult, that a man who owes debts and is willing to pay them, is finally obliged to have recourse to the Imperial Bank, where he borrows the sum which he requires, the Bank taking his property in mortgage. By this means the Emperor becomes treasurer and creditor of all the Russian nobility; and the latter, thus curbed by supreme power, are placed in a