three-fourths of their annual income from that source; but it seems every trade is now overcrowded, and there is some difficulty in obtaining constant employment. Then the burdens of the peasantry are very heavy. In Russia the superior classes enjoy many exemptions from taxation, and the public revenue is taken mainly from the peasant classes. The annual redemption money they have to pay to the State for their land is a most serious obligation, and between one thing and another the burdens on the land in a vast number of cases exceed its net return very considerably. Professor Thun states, that in 2,009 cases of letting holdings which had occurred in the province of Moscow at the time he wrote, the average rent received was only 3 roubles 56 kopecks per "soul" (land-share), while the average taxation was 10 roubles 30 kopecks. Stepniak says that in the thirty-seven provinces of European Russia the class who were formerly State peasants pay in taxes of every description no less than 92.75 per cent. of the average net produce of their land; and that the class who were formerly serfs of private owners pay as much as 192.25 per cent. of the net produce of theirs. Landowning on these terms is manifestly a questionable privilege, and the _moujik_ pays his land taxes as the Scotch crofter has sometimes to pay his rent, not out of the produce of his holding, but out of the wages of his auxiliary labour; but the Scotch crofter, under his system of individual tenure, has one great resource which is wanting to the other: he can always cut the knot of his troubles by throwing up his holding, if he chooses, and emigrating. To the Russian peasant emigration brings no relief. He is born a proprietor, and cannot escape the obligation of his position wherever he may go. He may try to let his ground--and in many cases he does--but, as we see, he cannot often get enough rent to meet the dues. He may leave his village, if he will, but his village liabilities travel with him wherever he may settle. He cannot obtain work anywhere in Russia without showing his pass from his own commune; and since, under the principle of joint liability that rules in the communistic system, the members of the commune who remain at home would have to pay the emigrant's arrears if he failed to pay them himself, they are not likely to renew the pass to a defaulter. The Russian peasants are thus nearly as much _adstricti glebæ_ as they ever were; they are now under the power of the commune as completely as they were before under the power of their masters; and their difficulty is still how they can possibly obtain emancipation. Sometimes they will defy the commune, forego the advantage of a lawful pass, crowd the ranks of that large body in Russia who are known as the "illegal men," and sometimes, we are assured by Professor Thun, a whole village, every man and every family, will secretly disappear in a body and seek refuge from the tax-collector by settling in the steppes. The