Among other constitutional matters there is one lesson which they have not learnt, and probably never will learn, and that is that if you have a Parliamentary system you must put up with the fact that it will often return a majority which is distasteful to you. If the elections are carried out fairly it can safely be predicted that the majority returned will be ultra-Radical. But I suppose this time those steps will be taken which the present Ministry so bitterly accuse Count Witte of having omitted to take, the steps to “arrange” the elections, which, we are told (several officials told me personally), the Government always take in England. That is to say, Mr. Balfour and Lord Lansdowne, it is thought, take the necessary steps to prevent the election of Mr. Keir Hardie and his supporters. It is strange that so far this plan should have proved unsuccessful. It would be, perhaps, simpler here to pass an electoral law in virtue of which only policemen could be elected members of Parliament. This would prove a constitutional measure which the present Ministry would thoroughly understand. One sometimes hears it said that the Duma was in too great a hurry, and that it should have waited patiently and obtained everything by constitutional means. This was the course the majority were doing their best to pursue. They had to reckon with a Government which was opposing them by unconstitutional means. It is certainly not constitutional for a Government to distribute among the troops proclamations (I have seen them) inciting the Army against the Parliament, and attacking members of Parliament with every kind of gross insult and calumny. Nor is it constitutional for a Minister to request the correspondent of a large foreign newspaper to state that the Parliament is not a thing to be reckoned with, but merely a revolutionary body. The answer people made to these objections is that there is not, and there never has been, a constitution in Russia, and they are perfectly right. But, apart from this, I agree with the Russian landlord I have quoted above, who said that the main question must be decided before one can talk of a Parliament here. The abscess must be pierced to the core, he said. It was a pleasing illusion to think the Cadets would obtain a change of _régime_ by constitutional means. “You must wait, little pigeon, you must wait,” says a character in a novel by a famous Russian satirist. “I have done nothing else during my whole life,” is the reply. And if the Parliament had waited until the Government became constitutional it could have waited until Doomsday, because, as another Russian said to me not long ago, “it has less idea of what _constitutional_ means than the Turks, only the Turks are more competent and are better governed.”