We wish to devote all our ability, knowledge, and experience to strengthening the form of government which was given new life by the Imperial will; to pacify the Fatherland, to assure respect for the laws, to be a buttress for the greatness and power of indivisible Russia. Unexceptionable, this, to the higher powers, save that in the preamble in the original draft, the Czar’s historic title of “Autocrat” had not been given him. A debate followed, and brought about the declarations which defined the parties of the third Duma. Bishop Mitrophane, of the Right, or reactionary party, rose. He said in the name of his group that the Address to the Throne must contain the phrase “Autocrat of all the Russias.” Lawyer Plevako seconded, threatening to secede if the proper title were not incorporated. Paul Milyoukov spoke hotly for the opposing Cadets, asking whether the country was or was not under a constitution. He declared the new election law to be contrary to the original ukase and an act of force. Others of the Left, among them orator Maklakov of the Cadets, declaimed against the election law by which this Duma was constituted. They were not politic, these spokesmen, but harsh and dogmatic, yielding none of the courtier-respect that makes up for so much absence of real yielding. For the Octobrists, Alexander Goutchkov led the debate. His speech revealed that they operated, not with the bludgeon, but with the Damascus blade. They were of flexible obstinacy and opportunism, stirring up no sleeping dogs, bending to rise again. Goutchkov slipped adroitly into his speech the disputed word constitution, thus: “We do not believe that the Czar’s power has been diminished. The Emperor has become free, for the Constitution has delivered him from court camarillas and the hierarchy of chinovniks.” Thanks largely to his tact, the Octo brists won. The Address, without “Autocrat,” was passed by a vote of two to one. But it passed at the cost of self-separation by the right wing of the reactionaries, who withdrew. The answer of the Administration came sharply from Prime Minister Stolypin:-- The manifesto of imperial power has borne witness at all times to the people that the autocratic power, created by history and the free will of the monarch, constitutes the most precious benefit of the political state of Russia; for it is this power and this free will that are alone capable, as the tutelary source of existing constitutions, of saving Russia in times of trouble, of guaranteeing the state from the dangers that threaten it, and of bringing back the country to the way of order and historic truth. He called upon the Chamber to incorporate the recognition of the “Autocracy.”