On one occasion, when a census was taken of the convicts in Tobolsk, out of some fifty thousand exiles only about thirty-four thousand could be found. At Tomsk, five thousand were missing out of thirty thousand. There is one very serious drawback to our system, that is our method of pitchforking convicts into Siberia without arranging for their occupation, and the result is that a large number of them refuse to take to honest labour, and become good-for-nothings. {219} Siberia is not a holiday resort. No one could possibly regard it as challenging the Riviera, for instance; its primary object is to rid European Russia of her criminal population, and in this it succeeds. The redoubtable Captain Wiggins has described the convicts in Siberia as "a happy, rollicking, joyous community--well clad, well fed, and well cared for." I do not propose to comment on this, but shall leave the matter between the British Public and the shade of Captain Wiggins. Some may be inclined to recall a passage from Sir Thomas Browne which runs (I quote from memory), "There be those who would credit the relations of mariners." In the past there has been a tendency in England to look for archangelic qualities in her neighbours, and she has been a little hurt at not finding them. Once when writing to me in 1876, Mr. Gladstone said: "The history of nations is a melancholy chapter, that is, the history of their Governments. I am sorrowfully of opinion that, though virtue of splendid quality dwells in high regions with individuals, it is chiefly to be found on a large scale with the masses; and the history of nations is one of the most immoral parts of human history." I have heard it stated of Mr. Gladstone that he was too true a gentleman to be a good politician. Upon that I will venture no comment beyond saying that I am convinced that he never did anything in his life actuated by any other idea than that it was right. {220} The same morality that applies in private life never has and probably never will apply to Governments, and to expect perfection in relation to the treatment of prisoners in Siberia, or of Chinese labour in South Africa, is out of the question. I cannot do better than quote here what I said in my introduction to _Siberia As It Is_, by Harry de Windt: "To form a proper opinion of the Russian prisons, it is necessary to possess, what English people certainly do not possess, some knowledge of the ordinary conditions of life in our country. A preface to any book on Russia ought, in fact, to be somewhat of an introduction into the penetralia of our innermost existence. But in giving real facts about our country, I have the feeling of printing advertisements about ourselves--to us Russians a very antipathetic work indeed.