trouble up to the last two years has been that all excesses of any kind on the part of officials were unchecked and uncontrolled. Therefore, if any man who had any authority over any other man happened to be brutal, his brutality had a far wider scope and far richer opportunities than that of a corresponding overseer in another country. During the last three years Russia has been undergoing a violent evolutionary process of change, what in other countries has been called a revolution; but compared with similar phases in other countries, and taking into consideration the size of the Russian Empire, and the various nationalities which it contains, I maintain that the proportion of excesses has been comparatively less. There are other factors in the question which should also be borne in mind; firstly, that politically Russia is about a century behind other European countries, and the second is that Russians accept the fact that a man who does wrong deserves punishment, with a kind of Oriental fatality, although the pity which is inherent in them causes them to have a horror of capital punishment. Now, let us take the first question, and just imagine for a moment what the treatment of the poor would be in England were there no such thing as a _habeas corpus_. Imagine what the position of the police would be, if it held a position of arbitrary dominion; if nobody were responsible; if any policeman could do what he chose, with no further responsibility than that towards his superior officers. I do not hesitate to say that were such a state of things to exist in England, the position of the poor would be intolerable. Now, the position of the poor in Russia is not intolerable; it is bad, owing to the evils inseparable from poverty, drink, and the want of control enjoyed by public servants. But it is not intolerable. Were it intolerable, the whole of the Russian poor, who number ninety millions, would have long ago risen to a man. They have not done so because their position is not intolerable; and the reason of this is, that the evils to which I have alluded are to a certain extent mitigated by the good-nature and kindness inherent in the Russian temperament, instead of being aggravated by an innate brutality and cruelty such as we meet with in Latin and other races.