The other side of the ledger is, however, not without weighty items. While no system of government can legislate prosperity, the public welfare is rightfully the first test, as it should be the first consideration, of an administration. Despite her immense territories, her vast mineral deposits, her fertile soils, her navigable rivers, her abundant timber, all the natural sources of national wealth, Russia is very poor. The peasants have more than doubled in number since the allotment of communal fields that followed the emancipation, and they are in general want. Vast stretches, whole provinces, are subject to periodic famine. Millions of the people are constantly on the brink of starvation. Manufacturing is, as a rule, desultory, undeveloped, and, in general, unprofitable. The per-capita wealth of Russia is estimated at but two hundred and seventy-five dollars, as compared to Germany’s seven hundred dollars, France’s eleven hundred and twenty dollars, and England’s twelve hundred and thirty-five dollars. The savings-bank deposits reported for all Russia average but $2.75 per man, while in France they average $20.82, in England $15.00, and in Austria $15.68. The degree of administrative responsibility for this condition is of course not to be definitely laid down. Much manifestly is due to natural conditions, national character, and historic handicaps; and some of the resultants would be the same under any administrative policy. Russia in her great area has had a sparse population. She has not, like her sister nations, and preëminently America, been able to lay the rest of the world under teeming contribution to her citizenship. She has had only her natural increase, and no such record as that of the United States has been possible. The Slav is not commercial, but agricultural. He has remained poor, and has had relatively very small resources to devote to what have proved our two greatest developing forces--internal improvement and education. It is, however, a matter directly involved in government that, with this low standard of national living, there is the correlated fact of extremely high national expenditure. An immense budget of two billion roubles, ordinary expenditure, is annually met, which the war-loans raised to a total, for some years, of over three billions. [Illustration: DRAGOON CONSTABLE RUSSIAN TYPES] It is the general belief that a large part of the public funds is frittered away in needless waste, with multitudes of idling clerks and sinecure officials. Granting the benefit of doubt, assuming that the Administration’s corruption and inefficiency are exaggerated, and supposing that the public money is in the main honestly and productively spent, it is still a very serious question if any public service rendered by the agents of Government can correspond to or justify the immense burden of taxation heaped upon a people whose economic distress is so terrible.