It is only another instance of the irony of human affairs, however, that the really effective limit to the power of the Tzars is found in the officials, who are intended to carry it into effect. These officials act as the organs of the imperial authority from the centre to the farthest extremities of the empire. Yet they can by delay, by passive resistance, by suggestion, by falsehood, by the arts of etiquette and ceremonial, and all the other methods familiar to the practised servants of autocracy, mislead or thwart the will of their master or render it of no effect. Such is the central power. Let us now consider the body of the people. In Russia, industry and city life have not formed a large part of the national existence. The mass of the people still live directly from the soil, and are organised in the mir. As is now well known, the mir is merely the Russian form of the village community, which at one time prevailed over all the countries of the world, as they attained to the sedentary or agricultural stage of development. It was the natural social form assumed by people settling down into agriculture. It was the social unit as determined by obvious local economic and historic conditions. In most countries the village community has been reduced to a shadow of its former self, partly through the operation of natural economic causes, but largely also because the central power and the classes connected therewith have crushed it out. The local life of England in particular has been repressed and starved through the want of the most elementary resources and opportunities. It has been recognised as a most pressing duty of statesmen to revive and restore it in accordance with the prevalent conditions, but it will be long before the capacity and habit of common action can be again adequately acquired. Owing to a variety of causes, which we cannot explain here, the Russian mir has continued to survive. It gave to the mass of the Russian people their own form of social life and of self-government; and it was economically self-sufficing. The mir drew from the soil, which it held in common occupation, the means for its own support and for the support of the nation as a whole. The relations of the members of the mir to each other were substantially conducted on terms of equality and freedom; but in view of the nobles and the Tzardom they were serfs till their emancipation in 1801. The mir was a social-economic arrangement, convenient both for the noble proprietors and for the Tzardom. It afforded to the central Government the necessary taxes and the necessary recruits; and therefore the Tzars did not disturb it, but rather sought to fix and solidity it, and thereby make it more efficient as a source of supply both of soldiers and material means. Thus for centuries, full of movement in the political history of Russia, the mir has with little change endured as the social and economic basis of the national life.