The political necessity of emancipation, as guaranteeing the safety of the state, was brought still farther home to the minds of the ruling classes by the general excitement among the peasantry which followed the Crimean war, and broke out in numberless riots of a most alarming character throughout the country. “We must free the peasants from above, before they begin to free themselves from below,”--these were the historical words addressed by Alexander II to the Assembly of the Nobility in Moscow, August 31st (September 12th), 1858. Yet such political farsightedness could hardly have developed, had not the economic conditions been ripe for the change. Indeed, after the Crimean war it became obvious to the government that Russia, with her old-fashioned methods of transportation, could play no prominent part in the “European concert.” Now it was perfectly evident that an extensive system of railways could not possibly be supported out of the resources of agriculture alone, in a country in which nine-tenths of the people were serfs, either of the state or of the landlords, and had to bear out of their scanty income the expenses of a large military state, and of an aristocracy. Industry and commerce were necessary for the maintenance of the state. The emancipation of the peasants was the scheme to attract domestic and foreign capital to industrial pursuits in Russia. By placing money in the hands of the landlords it was sought to promote the progress of agriculture, and the growth of industries intimately connected therewith. By setting at liberty twenty million serfs, who were the subjects of the landlords, wage-workers were created for industrial enterprises. The economic significance of the reform of February 19th, (March 3d,) 1861, lies in the fact that, on the one hand, it completed the evolution of private property in land, and that, on the other hand, it effected at a single blow the expropriation of the peasantry on a large scale.