However people might carp and cavil at a piece of legislation which was distasteful to them, there can be no doubt that there was joy in the poor hovels of Poland. Still there were many shoals ahead needing a skilful pilot. It was easy enough to decree the broad principle of the ukase, but the working out of the details was quite another matter. Neither the Emperor nor his ministers had the power of creating light out of darkness. There were many difficulties to be mastered, many riddles to be solved, taxing the acutest ingenuity of the Russian statesmen. Three of the chief of the puzzles were the right of succession, the power of the peasant to sell his land, and the eternal labour question. As regarded the right of succession, the Government professed to attach great importance to the principle of large peasant holdings, but inasmuch as Poland was under the law of the Code Napoléon, it was obvious that at the death of a man with a family his property must be divided, and by degrees the holdings must become infinitesimally small. Crux No. 2.—If the peasant were allowed to sell or mortgage his land, the Jew usurer would soon be the owner of half Poland. Crux No. 3.—Where was labour to be found for the land left in the hands of the proprietors—as I have said before, the richest portion of the cultivated area? The freed peasant would have his hands full with the management of his own holding, and the class who formerly cultivated no land on their own account, and therefore did not come under the scope of the new law, would not suffice to till the domains of the nobles. Each of these three puzzles itself bristled with minor perplexities and embarrassments enough to break the heads of General Miliutin and his crew of experts. A compensation at the rate of sixteen and two-thirds years’ purchase may seem to us very inadequate. But the conditions of land in Poland were not what they are in France or in England. It is needful to remember the vast tracts of land lying far away from all communication, the scarcity of labour, the difficulty of transport, the expense of exporting produce and importing agricultural implements and other necessaries, and then it will be plain that the value of land in Russia and in Poland did not stand in the same relation to money as it did in England, France or Belgium. I feel sure that, having regard to all the circumstances of the case, the ukase was an honest attempt to benefit the peasant on the one hand, and fairly to recoup the landed proprietor on the other.