A graphic picture has been painted by the famous Vera Zassoulich, in her Memoirs, of the visit of a rural policeman to a peasant's house in company with the tax collector of the district. Vera, a young lady of high birth and much beauty, spent, in pursuit of the Nihilistic propaganda she was preaching, long periods under the roofs of villagers, and she was working as an ordinary seamstress in one house when a descent was made upon it. "I was sitting," she writes, "at the door of the one room of the hut when the policeman appeared, accompanied by an old soldier in a dirty grey greatcoat, and followed by two peasants.... I was called upon to give my name, produce my passport, and state how long I meant to reside in that place.... Then, in reply to my questions, I was told that the police had come to back up the tax gatherer, and I saw what happened if the payments were in default. The stove of the hut was smashed, then smeared with tar, so were the walls, the furniture and wearing apparel; after that every piece of crockery in the place was broken and the pieces thrown out of the window. The horse and cow were taken out of the stalls and carried off to be sold." [Illustration: WHIP AND MANACLES USED IN RUSSIAN CONVICT PRISONS. (_In Possession of H. de Windt, Esq._)] 2. The political or State police was the invention of Nicholas I. Alexander I. had created a Ministry of the Interior, but it was Nicholas who devised the second branch, which he designed for his own protection and the security of the State. After the insurrection of 1865 he created a special bulwark for his defence, and invented that secret police which grew into the notorious "Third Section" of the Emperor's own chancery. It has been said, with reason, that no Russian, in the days of its most dreaded activity, could mention its name without a shudder. It has been likened to that other secret tribunal, that so long oppressed Venice, the Council of Ten. It was the most powerful instrument an absolute Government ever called to its aid. The terrors it inspired were heightened by the mysterious silence that overshadowed its proceedings. It worked secretly, but struck with unerring severity; its methods were dark and devious; it was unjust, unfair, illegal, respecting neither caste nor sex. Women, ladies of rank and beauty and fashion, were said to have been seized ruthlessly by its unscrupulous agents, tried in secret conclave, and punished then and there with the whip. Many people were hurried away to Siberia without any form of trial at all--the first application of the system known as "administrative process," which became very common in after years, when the publicity of the Courts would have been inconvenient, or convictions uncertain in due course of law. The Third Section, while it lasted, was the most dreaded power in the empire. It was practically supreme in the State, a Ministry independent of all other Ministries, placed quite above them, and