Nearly every other country in Europe had long since abolished serfdom, and Alexander saw clearly enough how inconsistent the institution was with his “sacred maxims.” He discussed with his friends this “barbarous” traffic in human beings, and we can understand how they assisted him to salve his conscience. Reform must be gradual; an evil which was centuries old, and rooted in the very structure of Russian society, could not be cured in a day. In other words, the great sacrifice, which justice demanded, must be thrown upon a later generation. Alexander expended his zeal upon small alleviations of the sufferings of the serfs. He forbade the masters to break up families, or to enforce marriage upon reluctant serfs. He restricted the right of punishment, opened the courts to the serf, and set aside large sums for the emancipation of batches of serfs. He had a pamphlet published in which owners were urged to treat the serfs humanely and promote emancipation. So much was done under pressure of the humanitarians, but it was only a trifling mitigation of the worst evil of mediæval Russia, and the new regulations were not properly enforced. Russia was the land of the wealthy. The millions of descendants of the original free Slavs must toil on in squalor and ignorance. The day of reckoning was still to come. Arakcheeff tried an experiment in this connection which was bitterly resented. He induced the Tsar to settle regiments of soldiers, with their families, on the crown-lands, in military colonies. They were to be special breeding grounds for recruits, and were to spread amongst the peasants the spirit of military discipline. They were so carefully organised--for Arakcheeff had ability--that even the mother was provided with a set of rules which she must hang beside the holy ikons. The peasants hated the innovation, and on Arakcheeff’s own estate they rebelled and killed his mistress, who ruled them with the brutality that he encouraged. The institution was afterward suffered to decay. In the fiscal world, which was but another section of the Augean stable of the Russian system, Alexander set out to make enlightened reforms, and ended in the usual listlessness. The treasury had long been artificially filled by the excessive creation of paper-money. Alexander recalled a large proportion of it, but the strain of the war put an end to this reform. An Imperial Bank was founded, a sinking fund was started, and it was decided to publish an annual budget. It was proposed, and partly attempted, to relieve the duty on the importation of raw materials and impose heavy duties on luxuries. At the same time the abandonment of Catherine’s extravagance at court relieved the exchequer. These reforms were, like the others, a comparatively slight mitigation of a great evil, and were in Alexander’s later years suffered to droop.