A regular system of convict colonization was commenced in 1754, during the reign of the Empress Elizabeth, who was too tender-hearted to sign the death-warrant even of the most atrocious criminal, though she tolerated and countenanced the most barbarous cruelties; but it was carried on without any attention to the necessities of the various localities, and was found not to work as favorably as might be desired. The existing irregularities having been brought to light, by the census taken in Siberia in 1819, new regulations were issued in 1822; and these were further improved upon in 1840, and brought into harmony with the improved penal code of the country. Notwithstanding the energetic endeavors of Peter the Great to force European civilization upon his people, he took little pains with regard to the necessary preliminary process of humanizing the penal laws of the country, and the most barbarous and degrading punishments continued, during his and several subsequent reigns, to be inflicted on persons of all ranks and both sexes. Torture in its most cruel forms was frequently applied, and the bodies of the criminals mutilated in the most inhuman manner, their noses and ears being cut off, and their tongues torn out by the root. Under the reign of Catharine II., mitigations were, however, introduced: torture was abolished, and the nobles, as also the burghers of the two first guilds, were exempted from corporeal punishment. The cruel and capricious Paul I., however, again gave to the world the sad and degrading spectacle of individuals of high social position and refined education wincing under the lash of the executioner; and to this day the knout and the cat-o'-nine-tails are reckoned among the instruments of correction in Russia. The punishments, as regulated by law at present, consist, according to the nature of the offense committed, in money fines, restitution, church penitence, loss of office, forfeiture of privileges and of honor, and in corporeal punishments of various kinds and degrees--regarding which it is, however, expressly stipulated that the sentence must not contain a recommendation "to flog without mercy," as was formerly the case--and in banishment to Siberia, which, in case of heinous offenses, is further sharpened by forced labor in the mines and manufactories. Capital punishment is reintroduced, but for crimes of high treason only, and is even in such cases but very rarely applied. From the execution of the Cossack rebel Pugatscher, which took place in Moscow, in 1775, fifty years elapsed before sentence of death was again pronounced in Russia, when five of the leaders of the insurrection of 1826, which had nearly deprived the Emperor Nicholas of the throne to which he had just succeeded, were sentenced to lose their lives at the hands of the hangman. The knout, in addition to hard labor for life in the mines of Siberia, is the general substitute for capital punishment;