Sirs, the Duma expects of you full political amnesty, as the first pledge of mutual understanding and mutual agreement between the Czar and his people. It was apparent that if these clauses did not contemplate the confiscation of private property, which was openly advocated by the peasant deputies, and the substitution of a “spiritual union” of Russia’s subsidiary peoples for the real hegemony, there was fair _prima-facie_ evidence for thinking that they did. While a general amnesty would render less than justice to a large number of citizens, it would cover as well the bomb-shell anarchists, whose imprisonment was as necessary to the protection of society as that of any other dangerous criminals. The tenor of these demands, the speeches of the deputies, and the avowed desires of their majority, brought matters to a crisis. Not alone the autocracy, but national unity, and the jurisdiction of the courts, were called openly and violently into question. When such a challenge is offered a government, it must answer or abdicate. Unostentatiously, the Imperial Administration poured troops into St. Petersburg from Kronstadt and the northern garrisons. The governors at Moscow, Odessa, Warsaw, and the big industrial centres were notified to concentrate their loyal regiments. The whole country was mapped out like a checker-board. It was now only a question of when the authorities would act. On the night of July 8, the troops in St. Petersburg were called to arms. They marched with machine-like precision to appointed stations throughout the city. With the dawn every strategic point was held by the soldiery, and a battalion ringed about the deserted Duma hall. In the silence was read the imperial rescript. The first Duma had ceased to exist. The dissolution of this national parliament had come as a stroke of lightning. The venerable representative Petrunkevitch told how he was awakened at five in the morning with the news that the city was under martial law and that soldiers with fixed bayonets were at the Duma doors. Hurried consultations were held with groups of colleagues, and finally the word was passed to meet at Viborg in Finland. At the little inn there, the pressing crowd of one hundred and sixty-nine fugitive deputies signed their manifesto. It called for the cessation of tax-payments, the refusal of conscription, and reclaimed the freedom of Russia. But the insurrection, the uprising in their support! Not a regiment came to assist them, not a city rallied to their call, not a Mir responded. For a few weeks the signers were free. Then the police took them, one by one.