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

82BLOODY SCENES ON THE WOLGA.

with their families. They spitted one and roasted him alive; they boiled another in a cauldron ; they disembowelled and killed in various other ways the stewards and agents of the estates; they murdered all they met, burnt whole towns, and, in short, devastated a province, not in the name of liberty, for they do not know what liberty means, but in the name of deliverance and of the emperor."

í¢ It was perhaps some of these savages whom we saw passing in the prisoner's conveyance. How could such beings be influenced by the gentle means employed by the governments of Western Europe ?"

" It would be necessary gradually to change the ideas of the people; instead of which they find it more convenient to change their location. After every scene of this kind, villages and entire cantons are transported. No population is sure of preserving its territory, the result of which is, that men, attached as they become to the soil, are deprived, in their slavery, of the only compensation which could comport with their condition. By an infernal combination they are made moveable, without being made free. A word from the monarch roots them up as though they were trees, tears them from their native soil, and sends them to perish or to languish at the world's end. The peasant, exposed to these storms of supreme power, loves not his cabin, the only thing in this world that he could love ; he detests his life, and ill-understands its duties, for it is necessary to impart some happiness to a man in order to make him feel his obligations ; misery only instructs him in hypocrisy and revolt. If 8elf interest, when well understood, is not the foundation of morals, it is at least their .support.'1