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

240SERVILITY OF THE PEASANTS.

was his equal: his industry more or less honest, his flatteries more or less mean, have put it into his power to purchase a certain number of his comrades. To become the beast of burden of an equal is an intolerable evil. It is, however, a result which an impious alliance of arbitrary customs, and liberal, or, to speak more justly, unstable institutions, can bring upon a people. No where else does the man who makes a fortune have his feet kissed by his vanquished rivals. Anomalies the most shocking have become the basis of the Russian constitution.

I may allude, en passant, to a singular confusion of ideas produced in the minds of the people by the system to which they are subjected. Under this system, the individual is intimately connected with the soil, being, indeed, sold with it; but instead of recognising himself as a fixture, and the soil as transferable — in other words, instead of pereeiving that he belongs to this soil, by means of which men dispose of him despotically, he fancies that the soil is his own. In truth, his error of perception is reduced to a mere optical illusion ; for possessor as he imagines himself of the land, yet he does not understand how it can be sold without the sale also of those who inhabit it. Thus, when he changes masters, he does not say that the soil has been sold to a new proprietor ; he considers that it is his own person that has been first sold, and that, over and above the bargain, his land has gone with him — that land which saw him born, and which has supplied him with the means of life. How could liberty be given to men whose acquaintance with social laws is about on a level with that of the trees and plants ?