Empire! what insidious wickedness, surpassing the horrors of war, is committed in the name of empire! Surely it is a right as elementary as that of security for life and property to supervise the education of your children. One might sympathise with the Russian Government had they merely required that the standard of instruction should not fall below the standard of schools in Russia. Nor should we be inclined to withhold our sympathy if they had only renewed their insistence upon the necessity of a knowledge of Russian. That was the wise as well as the humane policy. The ukase of 1884 was conceived in a very different spirit, and may be branded as an infamous document. It provided that Church schools with more than two classes should be placed upon the same basis as private schools in Russia, that is to say that the whole of the instruction should be conducted in the Russian language. This was tantamount to closing such schools. The supreme control of the elementary schools was transferred from the Ministry of the Interior to the Department of Education. The seminaries were suffered to exist upon the basis of the decree of 1836, but their object was defined to be the preparation of clergymen to meet the requirements of the Armenian Church. The synod at Edgmiatsin, although already placed in leading strings by Government, did not see their way to accept this decree. They urged that, since it had been issued during a vacancy of the Chair, its consideration should be postponed until the election of a new katholikos. Government retaliated by closing the schools. Nor were they again opened until in 1886 the pontiff Makar signified his consent to the provisions of the ukase, subject to some small concession as to the scope of the curricula in schools of two classes. The higher classes remained closed. Such was the situation at the time of my visit. It had, however, been further enacted that after the lapse of a prescribed period every teacher in an Armenian school should be required to possess a certificate from the Russian Department of Education. In order to obtain this certificate the candidate must pass an examination conducted in the Russian language. The term of grace was coming to an end in a few months, and I gathered that few teachers had acquired the necessary linguistic proficiency. [128]