THE RMIGRA TION OF THE GERMAN COLONISTS Or RUSSIA.
TUE exodus which took place from so many districts of North Germany during last year and the year before has been repeated recently in the territories of another vast mili- tary empire, and has been occasioned by a similar cause. The increased burthen of military service, and the endless vista of that "armed peace" which Von Moltke lately described as certain to be the lot of Germany for half a century to come, 13pread among the substantial peasantry and better class of mechanics, throughout the districts of Old Prussia especially, a veritable panic of emigration. Week after week the railway lines from Brandenburg and Pomerania conveyed the multi- tudes of strong, healthy men whom the steamships from Hamburg and Liverpool were to carry far beyond the reach of conscription and war. And though it was doubtless hard to quit the loved Fatherland, still exist- in Ohio or Illinois would not be embittered with the dread of another march to Paris. It was in vain that the Government withdrew the usual privileges which emigrants enjoyed, and caused the Railway. Companies to raise the rate of transport on their lines. The rush of voluntary exiles con- tinued unabated, until other causes? Principally the glut in the American labour-market and the report of their difficulties sent he by the first batches of emigrants, operated to check a movement which is stated to be only depending on favourable advices from the United States in order to commence anew. The Germans, however, are familiar with the idea of emigra- tion, and the fact of l3randenburgers and Pomerania: as nerving themselves to follow in the wake of so many hundreds of thousands of their compatriots, is in no way cal- culated to produce the same sensations of surprise as the news of a similar tendency displaying itself among the inert and not:ravelled populations of the Russian Empire. For several months back, the rumours of preparations for a great flight of the inhabitants have been rife in several governments of Southern Russia, and in all cases the alleged cause was in- variably the introduction of universal military service. Re- cently, these rumours have multiplied, and the actual departure of the leading parties of emigrants, and the hostile action of the authorities, have placed beyond doubt both the inauguration of the movement and the official apprehension of its probable extension.
It is to be observed that, as might have been expected, the purely Muscovite portion of the Russian population shows as yet the fewest symptoms of being affected by the new current of ideas. Two non-Russian races are mentioned, in fact, as up to the present affording the only source from which emi- grants, to any great extent at least, are likely to be drawn. At the same time, there is something curious and perhaps significant in the utter diversity of the nationalities who have given such energetic expression to their desire to be quit of the blessings of the Czar's paternal rule. On the one hard, the Tartar tribes whose home for centuries has been in the valleys of the Crimea, are striking their tents, and as fast as their scanty means will permit are transferring themselves and their property to the protection and the shores of the Ottoman monarchy. On the other hand, the prosperous and peaceful Aleranonites, the very flower of the German colonists, who since the time of Catherine the Great have been settled along the Volga, have been equally in motion, and with the calm reselta tion of their race have set themselves to the herculean task of shifting their abode from the heart of Russia to beyond the Atlantic. Of these two migrations the German is unquestion- ably the more important, and it is not to be wondered at that the Government of St. Petersburg has seen with displeasure and anxiety the approaching departure of such valuable sub- jects. By the flight of the Tartars of the Crimea, the policy of Russia is only deprived of the support of so much ride strength and savage courage. At worst, it only means a few sotaias of half-disciplined troopers the less. The traigration of the German colonists is vastly more serious. Al h, in the lapse of the generations which have paased since .the attractions of lands and privileges induced their ancestors to exchange the banks of the Elbe for the banks of the Volga, many and deep traces of their resi.dence among a backward and superstitious people have become discernible in the ananaers and habits of the German settlers, they continue to farm, nevertheless, a marked and pleasing contrast to the vast majority of the surrounding Muscovites. The higher cnitiara- ton of their holdings, the comparative cleanliness of their dwellings, and their general capacity for iatelligeut laheur, have caused them to be regarded as models which it waa hoped the natives would. gradually come to imitate. Above all, the patriarchal community of the Memoouites—a sect reaetnialing the Quakers in their rooted aversion to war, wain a hardly less degree to the we of oaths, even on the most legitireateoecasiens- have distinguished themselves by an almost uniform pr0§Werith which was the natural consequence of their upright caatoms and industrious disposition. Estimated to n,unaber gnAO MK. hundred thousand souls, they form by far the moat impeatent section of the Russo-German population. Hitherto the reaped or toleration of the Imperial administrators forehore to tronhle with the exigencies of the conscription the thrifty peaeeful- ness of these exemplary citizens, and it is alleged that 11. per- petual freedom from the burdens of military service was omong the incentives which had been held out to the original founders of the Mem,nonite settlement. But this Arcadien care has been rudely disturbed. The strife-abhorring Meran,onites were summoned, in common with the other populations of Russia, to contribute their quota of soldiers to the armies of the Empire ; and as their protests were at first disregarded, they boldly set about emigrating to the United States in mass. They acquired. an Immense tract of land in the West, and tried-e- with success, we believe, but we are not quite sure—to obtain an Act of Congress exempting them for ever from military service. The first parties of the exiles are, indeed, far on the way to their new destination already, and at many a railway-station there can still be seen and recognised the homely luggage and boxes of occasional Mennonites almost uniformly labelled with the quaint Puritanic direction, " Ueber Hamburg.--Amen."
It is estimated that some fifteen thousand Memnonites have up to this taken the irrevocable step, but it seems probable that for a time, at least, the remainder of their brethren will refrain from following their example. Gradu- ally becoming seriously alarmed as the muttered menaces of the settlers began to translate themselves into facts, the Russian Government at first sought to conjure away the danger by means of measures of repression, and an Im- perial decree of the middle of May last, containing a number of special regulations in reference to the conscription of intending emigrants, was chiefly constructed to accumulate hindrances in the way of the departing German colonists. Such of them as were of the military age were bound to give a long notice of their intention to emigrate, and in case of any deviation from the stringent instructions of the authorities, they were to be straightway incorpo- rated in the Army, without even the drawing of lots per- mitted to such Russian subjects as entertained no designs of American emigration. It does not appear, however, that the official severity had any effect, except to make the Mem- nonites more strictly punctual in the fulfilment of the terms of the "notices to quit" which the law required them to serve on their rulers, and at length the actual departure of so many thousands of the most useful colonists seems to have opened the eyes of the Government to the necessity of having re- course to milder expedients. A sort of compromise, in which, in fact, the Government yielded everything, has been offered to the Memnonites, and apparently accepted by them, to the effect that they are to submit themselves to military service, but that they are not to be called on to discharge their obligation. They are to be placed on the Army Lists, bat they 4rte oily to be incorporated in the territorial
Reserves, which, except in case of invasion, will have no enemies to meet. The prospective loss of so many subjects— and in sparsely-populated Russia men are of exceptional value, although they have sometimes been none the less liberally " expended " on that account—has thus conquered both the bellicose policy and the rage for uniformity of the Tzar's advisers. And indeed, notwithstanding the popular jealousy of German superiority, it must seem uncommonly hard to the Court of St. Petersburg, having caught with infinite difficulty some hundreds of thousands of thrifty Germans, to have them slip away after all. The Germanised Roraanoffs do not share the pre- judices of their people, and would probably barter two Orthodox Moujiks any day against a single Teutonic Quaker.
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