Her earliest cares and her zealous attention were directed to the fostering of commerce, and the encouragement of national industry in all its important branches: and it ought not to detract from her credit, that some of her measures, in accordance with the system of the age, were not such as modern economical science approves. But we may mention with unmixed praise, as indicative of a far-sighted and disinterested policy, the abolition of numerous monopolies, as well belonging to the crown, as granted to trading companies and private persons. Among these were the caravan-trade between Russia and China, several branches of fisheries, the manufacture of chintzes, the preparation of sugar, the tobacco-trade, and other things which were freely thrown open to individual competition. In promoting agriculture she was no less zealous. She established an experimental school of farming at her country-palace of Tzarsko-Tzelo, at which the most improved system of English agriculture was introduced, and gratuitous instruction was given to persons from all parts of the empire. One of her schemes was the establishment of numerous colonies over the uncultivated steppes of her vast empire: and thousands of families were allured from Poland, Germany, and even France, by the advantages which she held out, not merely to agricultural settlers, but to artificers, merchants, and all who were willing to aid in developing by their industry the unknown resources of the Russian empire. She sought to amend the administration of justice, and, to her high honour, put an end to the use of torture for extracting the truth in criminal proceedings. She abolished an odious tribunal, established by Peter I., called the Secret Inquisition Chancery, a kind of Star-Chamber, which gave facility to the most frivolous and malicious investigations, and had recourse to the most intolerable severities in conducting its inquiries. Aspiring to the glory of reforming the government, and giving a new code of laws to the empire, she summoned, in 1767, deputies to Moscow from every part and nation of her dominions, for whose consideration she had previously drawn up a body of instructions, of which the original manuscript, written in her own hand, is preserved in the library of the Academy of Petersburg. The work was greatly needed; for not merely were the general laws of the empire voluminous, insufficient, perplexed, and contradictory, but the particular laws of different provinces were confused and conflicting, and the difficulties arising out of this state of things were increased in a tenfold degree by the venality of the judges. But Catherine wanted perseverance and vigour to work out her scheme through the vexations of conflicting interests and tedious details. The history of this meeting of legislators illustrates the fate of most of her mighty undertakings. In their early sittings anger rose so high on the question of emancipating the serfs, that Catherine