“As there is not, and cannot be, a hope that the Government will willingly enter upon the path indicated, there is but one course remaining to the people, to oppose by the force of organised public opinion the inertness of the Government and the narrow dynastic interests of the autocracy. The Narodnoe Pravo has in view the creation of this force. In the opinion of the Party popular right includes in itself alike the conception of the right of the people to political freedom, and the conception of its right to secure its material needs upon the basis of national production. The Party considers the guarantees of this right to be:—Representative government on the basis of universal suffrage; freedom of religious belief; independence of the Courts of Justice; freedom of the Press; freedom of meeting and association; inviolability of the individual, and of his rights as a man. “Thus understanding popular right, the Party sets itself the task of uniting all the oppositional elements of the country, and of organising an active force which should, with all the spiritual and material means at its disposal, attain the overthrow of autocracy, and secure to every one the rights of a citizen and a man.” I commenced life under a disadvantage, for I am a Jew. In Russia the law declares all Hebrews to be “aliens whose several rights are regulated by special ordinances,” and my race is regarded as a pariah caste in consequence. The memory of my earlier years it is unnecessary to recall. My father, Isaac Prèhznev, was a well-known operator on the Bourse in Petersburg, and he and my mother moved in good society. Our house in the Isàkievskaya was well known to people with long-sounding titles and long pedigrees, and, as children, my sister Mascha and I had made a practice of standing upon the stairs on Thursday nights, watching the arrival of the uniformed and much-decorated men and handsome ladies who attended the receptions which my parents gave weekly during the season. Mascha, three years my junior, was petted by the guests and servants none the less than I had been, for we were a pair of over-indulged children, and lived a life of uninterrupted happiness.