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

POLITICAL REFLECTIONS.21

suspicious in Russia, as does the honesty of the men who in France preach absolute democracy in the name of liberty, — both are murderous sophisms. To destroy liberty in preaching liberality is assassination, for society lives by truth ; to make tyranny patriarchal is assassination also.

I have one fixed political principle ; it is that men can and ought to be governed without being deceived. If in private life falsehood is degrading, in public life it is criminal; every government that lies, is a conspirator more dangerous than the traitor whom it legally condemns to capital punishment; and — notwithstanding the example of certain great minds spoilt by an age of sophists,—where truth is renounced, genius forsakes its seat, and, by a strange reversion of things,'the master humbles himself before the slave; for the man who deceives is below the victim of deception. This is as applicable to politics and to literature as to religion.

My idea of the possibility of making Christian sincerity subservient to politics is not so chimerical as it may appear to men of business ; for it is an idea also of the Russian Emperor's, practical and clear-sighted as he undoubtedly is. 1 do not believe that there is at the present day a prince upon any throne who so detests falsehood and who falsifies so little as this monarch.

He has made himself the champion of monarchical power in Europe, and, it is well known, he boldly and openly maintains this position. He is not seen, as is a certain government, preaching in each different locality a different policy according to varying, and purely commercial local interests ; on the con-