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

AUTOCRACIES AXD DEMOCRACIES. 285

remarks: they do not dare to ruin him, but they do all that is possible to make him a cipher. Before this journey, my ideas of despotism were suggested by my study of society in Austria and Prussia. I had forgotten that those states are despotic only in name, and that manners and customs there serve to correct institutions. In Germany, the people despotically governed appeared to me the happiest upon earth : a despotism thus mitigated by the mildness of its customs caused me to think that despotism was not after all so detestable a thing as our philosophers had pretended. I did not then know what absolute government was among a nation of slaves.

It is to Russia that we must go in order to see the results of this terriljle combination of the mind and science of Europe with the genius of Asia — a combination which is so much the more formidable as it is likely to last; for ambition and fear, passions which elsewhere ruin men by causing them to speak too much, here engender silence. This forced silence produces a forced calm, an apparent order, more strong and more frightful than anarchy itself. I admit but few fundamental rules in politics, because in the art of government I believe more in the efficacy of circumstances than of principles, but my indifference does not go so far as to tolerate institutions which necessarily exclude all dignity of human character in their objects.

Perhaps an independent judiciary and a powerful aristocracy would instil a calm and an elevation into the Russian character, and render the land happy ; but I do not believe the emperor dreams of such modes