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

80AN INSUERECTION.

you expect a preacher to dispense with the terrors of hell, in his efforts to convert hardened sinners ? Hell is the capital punishment of the theologians *; at first they make use of it with regret, as of a necessary evil, but they soon acquire a taste for dealing out damnation upon the greater part of mankind. It is the same thing with severe measures in politics; they are feared before they are tried, but after their success is witnessed, they are admired; and such, you may depend upon it, is the feeling too general in this country. I often think that they take pleasure in creating circumstances, under which it is necessary to inflict punishment, for fear they should get out of practice. Are you ignorant of what is now passing on the Wolga?"

" I heard of serious troubles there, but they say that they were promptly repressed."

"No doubt: but at what price? And what should you say, were I to tell you that these frightful disorders were the result of a word of the Emperor's?"

" Never will you induce me to believe that he can have approved such horrors."

c¢ Neither do I say he has. Nevertheless, a word pronounced by him — innocently, I believe, has caused the evil. The fact is as follows: notwithstanding the injustice of the overseers of the crown, the lot of the peasants of the Emperor is still preferable to that of other serfs; and whenever the sovereign becomes proprietor of some new domain, its inhabitants are the envy of all their neighbours. The

* I would beg the reader to remember that it is not I who thus speak.