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

ABJECT CHARACTER OF RUSSIAN EMPLOYES. 121

in the charge of these people, may arrive safely on the morrow.

The Russian princes were obliged, like myself, to submit to the laws of the custom-house, but on arriving at Petersburg I had the mortification of seeing them released in three minutes, whilst I had to struggle with every species of trickery for the space of three hours.

A multitude of little superfluous precautions engender here a population of deputies and sub-officials, each of whom acquits himself with an air of importance and a rigorous precision, which seemed to say, rhough everything is done with much silence, " Make way, I am one of the members of the grand machine of state."

Such members, acting under an influence which is not in themselves, in a manner resembling the wheel-work of a clock, are called men in Russia! The sight of these voluntary automata inspires me with a kind of fear: there is something supernatural in an individual reduced to the state of a mere machine. If, in lands where the mechanical arts flourish, wood and metal seem endowed with human powers, under despotisms, human beings seem to become as instruments of wood. TVe ask ourselves, what can become of their superfluity of thought ? and we feel ill at ease at the thought of the influence that must have been exerted on intelligent creatures before they could have been reduced to mere tilings. In Russia I pity the human beings, as in England I feared the machines : in the latter country, the creations of man lack nothing but the gift of speech; here, the gift of speech is a thing unnecessary to the creatures of the state.

VOL. I.G