Yet while the theories of the party were from the first of a most subversive nature, it is right to emphasise the fact that they did not proceed to violent action till they were goaded into it by the police and the other officials of the central Government. Indeed, the measures of the Government and its representatives have often directly tended to the stirring up of the revolutionary mood. By their irritating measures of repression they provoked, among the students at the universities, disturbances which they quelled by most brutal methods. Young men arrested on suspicion, and kept in vile prisons for years while awaiting investigation, were naturally driven to hostile reflection on the iniquity of a Government from which they received such treatment. In speaking of a country like Russia, we need not say that the most elementary political rights were denied the revolutionists. They had no right of public meeting, no freedom of the press, no freedom of utterance anywhere. They were surrounded with spies ready to give to every word and deed the worst interpretation. The peasants whom they desired to instruct in the new teaching might inform upon them. Their comrades in propaganda might be induced or coerced to betray them. It was often fatal even to be suspected, as the police and the other organs of Government were only too disposed to take the most rigorous measures against all who were charged with revolutionary opinion. Nor could the accused appeal to the law with any confidence, for the ordinary tribunals might be set aside, and his fate be decided by administrative procedure; that is, he could be executed, or condemned to prison or exile in Siberia, without the pretence of a legal trial. In such circumstances it was natural that resolute champions of liberty should be driven to secret conspiracy in its extremest form, and to violent action of the most merciless character. While, therefore, historical accuracy obliges us to emphasise the fact that the aims of the revolutionary party far exceeded all that is included in liberalism and constitutional government, it is only just to explain that they resorted to violent methods only because the most elementary political rights were denied them. In the fiercest mood of their terrible struggle with the autocracy, they were still ready to throw aside their weapons. In the address sent by the Executive Committee to Alexander III., after the death of his father, in March 1881, they offered to give up their violent mode of action, and submit unconditionally to a National Assembly freely elected by the people. They meant under a constitutional government to have recourse only to constitutional methods.