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

HISTORY OF IVAN IV.309

such fanaticism of obedience characteristic ? It may not, however, be denied that this popular mania has here sometimes become the principle of sublime actions. In this inhuman land, if society has depraved the individual, it has not enervated him : he is not good, but he is also not contemptible. The same may be said of the Kremlin : it is not pleasant to behold, but it inspires awe. It is not beautiful, but it is terrible — terrible as the reign of Ivan IV.

Such a reign blinds to the latest generations the minds of a nation which submitted to it patiently : the crime of treason against humanity attaints the blood of a people even in its most distant posterity. This crime consists not only in exercising injustice, but likewise in tolerating it; a nation whieh, under the pretext that obedience is the chief virtue, bequeaths tyranny to its children, both mistakes its interests and neglects its duty. Blind endurance, fidelity to insane masters, are contemptible virtues; submission is only praiseworthy, sovereignty is only venerable, when they become the means of insuring the rights of mankind. When kings forget the conditions on which a man is permitted to reign over his fellow-men, the citizens have to look to God, their eternal o·overnor, who absolves them from their oath of fidelity to their temporal master.

Such restrictions the Russians have neither admitted nor understood ; yet they are essential to the development of true civilisation : without them circumstances will arise under which the social state becomes more injurious than beneficial to mankind, and when the sophists would be right in sending man back again to the woods.