N O one should place complete confidence in the rumours of
vast changes in Russian internal policy, of social disturbances, and of commercial ruin which pour in week by week, and almost day by day, from St. Petersburg, Warsaw, Moscow, and Odessa. So many of them are circulated by Departments which know their own views and their own wishes, but know little of the policy or decisions of the supreme Govern- ment, which still, in the last resort, rules all; so many are altered by passing through the minds of Poles, Jews, and Liberals, who amidst the present confusion are half crazy with hope that if Russia suffers a great shock their special causes of despair will at least be lightened ; and so many are merely mistakes fostered by the exagge- rated views which foreigners are always apt to take of the consequences of war in any country which they either dislike or dread. Nevertheless, it is well to study them as they are affirmed or denied, for most of them have some relation to facts, and a few of them may by and by prove to have been more or less acute anticipations of ciiange. The Czar himself has publicly admitted that Russia is passing through "bad times " ; the stories of angry discontent among Reservists cannot be pure inven- tions; and the industrial troubles would accompany in almost any country an exhausting and protracted war. We think it, for instance, nearly certain that, despite the gigantic military resources of Russia, the strain produced by the incessant losses both in officers and men, by the ravages of disease—always severely felt in a Russian army when once beyond the frontiers—and by the diffi- culty of finding generals with the necessary capacity, and the still more necessary favour at Court, begins to be felt severely at headquarters. The ultimate rulers of the Army are sending to the front forces which it is a tradition to keep in Western stations for protection against Germany or Austria, and around St. Petersburg for the protection of the autocracy. It follows from this that the Government regard immediate prospects in Manchuria as very serious, and that they rely with a new confidence upon the friendship of the German Emperor, who, it should not be forgotten, has almost as much interest in the maintenance of order in Poland as his Russian comrade. The rumours of a secret alliance for joint future action in the Far East may all be false, probably are false; but great Sovereigns have made personal arrange- ments with each other before now, and the evidence that St. Petersburg trusts Berlin seems sufficiently clear. The rumours, again, of dangerous discontent among the Regular troops are in all probability without foundation. It does not matter much to the soldier where he fights ; the Russian soldier greatly desires victory for his country ; and the Russian mutinies on record have almost invariably been produced by quarrels between the privates and their officers entirely disconnected from political feeling. The reluctance of the soldiers, reported from some places, to fire upon Reservists is probably due to orders from headquarters, where they do not want deadly quarrels between one order of soldiers and another, and to the strong desire of Generals commanding districts to get the Reservists away, if possible, without collisions which may be set down to their mismanagement. There is, for the same reason, an obvious tendency to deal more gently than heretofore with mobs in the disaffected towns and districts.
The rumours about the finances are to the last degree vague and untrustworthy. It is true that Russia is a poor country, that she has recently overspent herself in a desperate effort to complete the Eastern railway system too rapidly, and that she is anxious to raise loans of some magnitude. We disbelieve, however, all stories of approaching insolvency. They were just as current during the Crimean War, and even the Turkish War, and they were never justified by events. They are evidently not believed on the great Bourses of Europe, or Russian stocks would be let down to a far lower figure ; and, indeed, it is not sensible to fancy that the Treasury of an Empire like Russia, which has always kept its pecuniary engagements, and which as regards its public faith has been rather cautious than rash, should be exhausted by a war which has not yet lasted a, year. She can raise loans free of interest in the shape of issues of paper roubles without exciting the active discontent so often produced by debased coinage ; and though there is, of course, a limit to that process, still, so long as the rouble is received in payment of taxes, the limit is a very wide one. War in the present day is very rarely arrested by financial difficulties—even Spain could have fought on if she had had a fleet to fight with—and the vastness of Russia, which increases so many of her expenditures, diminishes the possibility of resistance to fresh taxation.
Lastly, there are the rumours, so numerous and so con- tradictory, of constitutional changes. On the one hand, it is alleged that the new Minister of the Interior, Prince Svia,topolk-Mirski, who is for Russia a Liberal, has been defeated by the reactionary party, and is shortly to resign under pretext of care for his failing health. On the other band, it is patent that he has been allowed in his execu- tive capacity to relax the oppressiveness of the Press Laws, and extremely probable that he has been directed to submit a scheme of " constitutional " reform by which it may be possible to unite the maintenance of the autocracy with a greater deference to general opinion. That is certainly the line which any Emperor of Russia desirous at once of maintaining his own power, and at the same time of conciliating the educated classes, would pursue, and it is therefore quite possible that the rumoured plan, though not accepted, or likely to be accepted till the difficulties have thickened a little, has really been dis- cussed. That plan is to strengthen the Zemstvos, or County Councils as we should call them, by the addition of a representative element, and to allow them to appoint a Council of sixteen, which would be the supreme Council of the Empire, tendering its advice to -the Czar upon all questions which his Majesty may desire to lay before it. That is not a bad plan at all if it is sincerely carried out, if the debates are public, and if reasonable freedom of speech is allowed to the Councillors. It is not a scheme of repre- sentative government, or of liberal government, or even of scientific government as it is understood in Prussia ; but it is a scheme which, subject to the conditions we have mentioned, would check the excesses of power, and perhaps furnish a basis for wider improvements. The bureaucracy would feel that it was watched by a body not pledged to its defence, and able to appeal to opinion against many of its misdeeds. Any large scheme of reform for Russia must, of course, go much further than this one, for while it does not touch the two great oppressions—the refusal of free speech, and the liability to transportation by administrative decree without a trial—and does fulfil the longing of educated Russia for careers independent of the Executive, it is still an approach towards the Indian scheme of administration, which is government by a bureaucracy that has all political power in its hands, but can act in daily life only through a well-known Code and publicly debated laws. The rumours may have for their base only a plan which the reactionaries may be able to defeat; but still, they indicate the direction in which the minds of governing men in Russia are travelling while they await the next events of the war raging in Man- churia. If those events are favourable to Russia, reform will be postponed; but if they are adverse, the moderate reformers should, to judge from precedents in Austria, become unexpectedly powerful. It was defeat which gave Austria a working Constitution.
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