Again, closely connected with any political system which is backward, you will always find in any country a certain brutality in the matter of punishments. Perhaps the cause of this--which is the reason why torture was employed in the Middle Ages, and why it is employed in China at the present day--is that only a small percentage of the criminal classes are ever arrested; therefore when a criminal is caught, his treatment is often unduly severe. If you read, for instance, the sentences of corporal punishment, etc., which were passed in England in the eighteenth century by county judges, or of the punishments which were the rule in the Duke of Wellington’s army in the Peninsular War, they will make your hair stand on end by their incredible brutality; and England in the eighteenth century was politically more advanced than Russia is at the present day. With regard to the second point, the attitude of Russians towards the question of punishments displays a curious blend of opinion. While they are more indulgent than any other people when certain vices and defects are concerned, they are ruthless in enforcing and accepting the necessity of punishment in the case of certain other criminal offences. For instance, they are completely indulgent with regard to any moral delinquencies, but unswervingly stern in certain other matters; and although they would often be inclined to let off a criminal, saying: “Why should he be punished?” at the same time if he is punished, and severely punished, they will accept the matter as a part of the inevitable system that governs the world. On the other hand, they are indulgent and tolerant where moral delinquencies which affect the man himself and not the community are concerned; that is to say, they will not mind how often or how violently a man gets drunk, because the matter affects only himself; but they will bitterly resent a man stealing horses, because thereby the whole community is affected.