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Show IN DISMAL RUSSIA. J LLure Tntlmuuy lo Prove the Ctmrgea Laid A-aliiBt the Czur' Lund. Everything lias stood still under ths present czar: the bribery and corruption of the orhcial-i. the ignorance of the peasants, the interference with all private liberty continue as under Peter the Great Men are sent off by hundreda to Siberia, while it la never known by whom 1 they were denounced, or what are the crimen imputed to them. The petty interferences in-terferences in common life ure almost incredible, in-credible, no man can even alter the front of his limine in St Petersburg without spei'ial permission from the csuir. Foreign For-eign ni-whpapei-s are received with broad splotches of printing ink over nny passages pas-sages objected to by the censorship. which is stricter than ever and whose follies go on as of old A machine was , described as "moving freely:' the dan- ; gerous word w;ls scratched out the "re- i volutions" of a wheel were considered as suggesting wrong ideas 1 The theory of personal government Is carried out lo lis utmost extent; each minister is supposed to communicate di- ! roctly with the czar, and to take orders from him alone, so that there can lie no concert between them, and nothing like i what we call a cabinet lu practice, ; ; however, this cannot possibly be carried i out. and the majority of the affairs of the enormous empire must necessarily be settled without the eognmince of a chief who cannot be ubiquitous or omniscient, om-niscient, ami by a number of irresponsi- j ble petty otlieiuts with enormous power of doing evil. I The peasants still conceive that the czar can do no wrong, and believe in ; him tus in a god. this forms, indeed, one of ihe chief points in their religion ! which consists in prostration, genuflexions, genuflex-ions, and crossings during a Be r vice eon- , ducted in old Slavonic, which Is a dead i language both to priests and people, in the keeping ol fasts and festivals during l(J." ; days in the year, and iu a fetich wor- : ship or the holy Icons (or images) as degrading de-grading as any to lie found in Central Africa There is an utter divoreeamong the (H-Hsanis between the ideas of mo- , raiitv ami i-cIilHoii In the nonar rhws ; as described by Count Tolstoi, it is the fashion to profess complete unbelief in everything, und Stepniak" glories in the nihilism of the middle classes us includ-j includ-j ing every subject: "We are more ad-i ad-i ranced than other nations, as we have j disposed of religion, the next world, and ' all'siirh rubbish." The small remains of i free institutions still left in the local ; boards of the count 17 havo been lately attacked by the czar; everything, iu fact, instead of advancing, is retrograding retrograd-ing in measures for self government and liberty of any kind. F. P, Veruey in I Nineteenth Century. |