We have seen that only a minor portion of the quarterly lots have been purchased by merchants. As a rule, the small lots sold by the nobility are acquired by peasants only. (_Cf._, next chapter.) The question at issue is thus one that has been settled as between peasants alone, and that affects neither the interests of the nobility nor those of the capitalistic class. In such cases it may well please the Russian government to throw a sop to the peasantists. This _mésalliance_ of oriental paternalism with some queer sort of state socialistic prohibitionism, however, would be apt to meet with opposition from the very ones who were supposed to be benefited. As the process of dissolution is obviously spreading from within, and not from without the village, inalienability of peasant land would simply mean gratuitous expropriation of the poor for the benefit of the wealthy members of the community. We notice that the percentage of emigrants among the quarterly possessors who have enjoyed the right of alienating their land has been far greater than that among the former state peasants who live in agrarian communism: _Title of possession._ _Ranenburg. _Dankoff. Per cent._ Per cent._ Quarterly possession 17 12 Agrarian communism 9 5 To what is this difference due? A single concrete example will clear up the matter. “In 1881 a small community of 5 households, former serfs of Gregoroff, emigrated from the village of Bigildino, district of Dankoff. Their land, 30 dessiatines, was sold to a rich peasant in consideration of 1500 rubles. The emigrants could not make a living at home, and most of them were yearly laborers.” (_Loc. cit._, part II., pp. 115, 247.) According to Mr. Greegoryeff (_Emigration of the peasants of the gubernia of Ryazañ_), 300 rubles, the price of an average peasant holding of 6 dessiatines, is sufficient to enable a peasant family to start farming in Southern Siberia. A peasant who has been absolutely ruined is thus enabled, through the sale of his lot in the communal land, to rise to the position of a farmer in the new country. Devotion to the sacred customs of forefathers would hardly be able to withstand such a temptation as this, but for the helpful right hand of the most gracious Bureaucracy.