The revolutionary party in Russia has no definite aims of either reorganization or improvement. In its sight everything as it now exists is rotten, and before anything new and good can be created all existing institutions must be utterly destroyed. Religion, the state, the family, laws, property, morality, are all equally odious, and must be rooted out and abolished. It is because "nothing," as it exists at present, finds favor in their eyes that they have been called "Nihilists." They maintain that no one should be bound by laws or even moral obligations of any kind, but that every body should be allowed to do exactly as he pleases. They desire to break up the actual social organization into mere individualism, with entire independence for each separate person. Their object is anarchy in the very truest sense of the word. They are only modest enough to decline the attempt to create a new order of things in the place of what they propose to destroy. That they intend to leave for a better and more enlightened generation. The following, from a Nihilist paper, Narodnia Volya (The Will of the People), which is published at St. Petersburg by means of secret presses, will set them forth in their true inwardness: "The Russian press is bent almost double by the imperial government. Notwithstanding its disagreeable position it does its utmost to curry favor of its oppressors. Whenever thefts, murders, or incendiarisms take place in Russia the press invariably attributes them to the Nihilists. There is an old proverb which says, 'Slander, slander; some result will always be obtained.' Judging from the tone of the press some result has been obtained. According to its statements the Nihilists are little better than wild beasts. We do not venture to assert that there are no bad men in our ranks, but are yours entirely free from them? The number of bad persons among the Nihilists is so very small that we need hardly enumerate them. Since 1862 over 17,000 persons have been exiled to Siberia for political offenses. "You accuse us of adopting means of action which are unjustifiable in every way. But what can we do? We are reduced to silence. We only adopt questionable means of action very rarely, and then only in self-defense; whereas you use them daily. "The money obtained from private individuals by means of theft and blackmail has not been levied by order of the 'committee,' but by certain unscrupulous Nihilists acting on their own behalf. However, we are all the more ready to admit that such things have been done when we remember that only five such cases are known to have taken place.