It was not to be expected that a liberal and enlightened government could at once spring from the materials which were accumulated in seasons of anarchy, relieved only by interstitial gleams of peace. The natural issue of a power purchased by enormous sacrifices, and reared up amidst difficulties, was unmitigated despotism. The grand princedom was erected in storms. Its power was built up by constant accessions won at the point of the sword, or procured by profligate bribery. It was not the growth of steady improvement, of public opinion, of the voluntary acquiescence of the people. It began by direct oppression, absolute tyranny, and open injustice. The acts of outrage which the grand princes committed in their efforts to sustain their authority were acts of necessity. They were placed in a situation of peril that exposed them equally to barbarian spoilers without, and insidious enemies within; and they were compelled to vindicate their authority by the force of arms and the arts of perfidy. Their whole career was a fluctuating war against a series of resistances. They conciliated less than they subdued, and the unity which was at last gained by perseverance in a mixed policy of violence and hypocrisy was more the bond of an interest in common, than the reasonable allegiance of a free people to a government of their own choice. Throughout the struggle for the concentration of the supreme control in one head the church, as will already have been perceived, bore a prominent part. The authority of the clergy had gone on gradually assuming a more stern and arbitrary aspect, even while the political affairs of the country were undergoing daily vicissitudes. The evils that afflicted the state passed harmless over the church; and while the one was subjected to disasters that checked its progress towards prosperity, the other was constantly enlarging its powers, profiting by the misfortunes that surrounded it, and gleaning its share of the good fortune that occasionally improved the hopes of the people. In the early periods when Russia was merely the victim of her own dissensions, the church was freely admitted as a mediator, partly in virtue of her office as the dispenser of charity and peace, and partly from the veneration in which religion and its ordinances were held. When the Tatars invaded Russia, they perceived the mighty influence which the priests exercised over the passions of the people, and, fully persuaded of the wisdom of attaching to their cause an order of men who wielded so enormous a power, they increased their privileges, exonerated them from taxes, and placed such premiums of gain and protection upon the monkish habit, that the highest amongst the nobility, and many of the princes, embraced the clerical profession, and added their rich possessions to the revenues of the church. To such an extravagance was this estimation of the benefits of the cowl carried, that the majority of the grand