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

ITS NATURE AND ORIGIN.143

of Russia — Peter the Great, troubled by certain national prejudices which had a resemblance to aristocracy, and which incommoded him in the execution of his plans, took it into his head one day to discover that the minds of his people were too independent ; and, in order to remedy the evil, this great workman could devise nothing better in his profoundly deep, yet narrow penetration, than to divide the herd, that is to say, the people, into classes, entirely irrelative of name, birth, and family: so that the son of the highest noble in the empire may belong to an inferior class, whilst the son of one of the peasants may rise to the highest classes, if such be the good will of the emperor. Under this division of the people, every man takes his position according to the favour of the prince. Thus it is that Russia has become a regiment of sixty millions strong; and this is the tchinn — the mightiest achievement of Peter the Great.

By its means, that prince freed himself in one day from the fetters of ages. The tyrant, when he undertook to regenerate his people, held sacred neither nature, history, character, nor life. Such sacrifices render great results easy. Peter knew better than any one that, so long as an order of nobility exists in a community, the despotism of one man can be nothing more than a fiction. He therefore said, " To realise my government I must annihilate the remains of the feudal system ; and the best way of doing this is to make caricatures of gentlemen—to destroy the nobility by rendering it a creation of my own." It has consecpiently been, if not destroyed, at least nullified by an institution that occupies its place, though