TOPICS OF THE DAY.

THE ATTEMPT ON THE CZAR. THE assassination of monarchs appears to be one of the most difficult as well as most criminal of tasks. In our day, though one President has been successfully assassinated, and many officials, the attempts on monarchs, however audaciously planned, have always failed. The Emperor of Germany, indeed, was seriously hurt ; but even he, though injured and past the great age of eighty, was not so much injured but that he has now completely recovered from the effects of the shots he received. No attempt on the Queen, on the late Emperor of the French, on the King of Italy, or on the Czar, has ever even approached success ; and no failure has been greater than the last, for not only did the Czar escape the attack itself, but it seems probable enough that even if he had been in the train at which the assassin aimed, he would have escaped still. Cer-

tainly none of the fifty attendants who were in that train were injured. And yet the attempt was a bold one. It could hardly have been supposed by any one that the passengers in a train successfully blown up during its journey should come off uninjured. It could hardly have been supposed before-

hand that a man expecting the Emperor's train, and well aware in which part of it the Czar usually was, would mistake the train of the attendants for the train of the Emperor.

Apparently, all the chances were in favour of success, and yet the failure was as complete as a failure could be. The danger incurred has been just great enough to excite and irritate. The escape has been remarkable enough to encourage the belief in the superstition that "there's a divinity doth hedge a king," in a way in which it does not hedge a chief of police. The

truth, no doubt, is that a monarch is a difficult person for strangers to get at. No monarch can well be put in any greater

danger of assassination than the Czar was put in on Monday,

and yet it is very doubtful if he underwent on Monday any danger so great as that to which every commander of an army

is exposed on the field of battle, though it is a very rare thing to hear of any such commander's fall. It is hardly possible to secure an assassin amongst the intimates of a monarch. It is hardly possible that any assassin who is not amongst those

intimates, should have such access to his person as to make the attempt to kill him anything but a very difficult and not very hopeful enterprise. Then, too, very few assassins have the requisite nerve. And what with the deficiency of nerve and the deficiency of opportunity, they make a great mess of their business, and only succeed in irritating the power which they wish to cow.

For that the object of the Nihilists, as they are called, is rather to cow than to destroy the monarchy in Russia, we gather from all the indications afforded by the trial of the

Nihilist conspirators, as well as by those bold articles in the Gobs, for which it has just been suspended. Not, of course, that we identify the Gobs with the Nihilists. It only ex-

presses that same profound discontent which, in the case of the conspirators themselves, rises to the point of desperation. But both in the legitimate exposure of the prevalent misery in Russia,—a misery much enhanced by bad harvests and bad trade,—and in the more violent attempts to terrify the authorities into a new departure, there is the same object visible,—the wish to make the Government acknowledge that a volcano of passion is raging beneath them, the explosion of which can only be averted by a speedy relaxation of the re- straints under which Russian thought and action alike fret. Mirsky, who attempted General Drenteln's life, and whose sen- tence of death has only just been commuted to one of Siberian exile by the Emperor, openly avers that the object of his at- tempt was not to kill General Drenteln, or any one else, but rather to make him and all the other authorities feel that they could not indulge in cruelty and oppression without being per- sonally called to account, and risking punishment by unexpected agencies at unexpectedmoments. And doubtless the new attempt on the Czar's life proceeded from a more bloodthirsty form of the same fixed resolve,—to make the Government aware that it is judged and condemned for its severities by a secret society too audacious, and too full of resource, to be always defeated. Mirsky, who is a noble, and who declares, as we have said, that it was not his object to kill General Drenteln, but only to " punish " him for his misdeeds, thus formulates his defence for the use of violence Ours is the party of the people, but I cannot in my conscience consider it anti-governmental, for this reason,— that not having as yet created or established any other order, we cannot logically wish to overthrow the Monarchical prin- ciple; but we want order, justice, liberty, and equity with it. You say we are criminal. I cannot accept this definition,. —especially on your part. Why are we thus designated ? Be- cause we have committed borne murders ? But these murders are only the reply to yours. I admit that assassination is a very bad weapon, but at present it is unfortunately indispensable to us, for it gives us tho only possibility of struggling with you.. We are only using your own methods ; and on this occasion,. allow me to say to you that we disapprove many of the.

things which you sanction What compels us to- use violent means, is the extreme rigour with which we are treated. We are deprived even of the right of having our opinions." Turn from this to the diaries for which the Gobs has been suspended, and we find portrayed the physi- cal aspect of all this moral misery. The diarist in the Gobs represents everything in Russia as degenerating, while the only idea of the Administration is to withdraw what mere modicum of liberty the Russian people already have.. The cost of bread has risen, he says, in two years 75 per cent., and the cost of salt 50 per cent. Suicides by drown- ing, shooting, or the knife, are the daily items of news.. Yet the only political comfort which the desperate Rus- sian people receive, is to be told that the Universities are to lose some of their privileges, which the Government is going to absorb ; or that projected theoretical reforms have not been carried out, and are not likely to be carried out ; or that in a great iron district, where there is no timber, carpentering has been made compulsory in the schools, while in districts where there is not an acre in tillage or a plough to be seen, the children are carefully taught agriculture ; or that the authori- ties of a hundred communes have embezzled the funds ; or that the authorities of other communes have been flogging for heresy, as well as for offences against the authorities of the com- munes ; or that supposed witches have been burned; or that other acts of gross cruelty and ignorance in the communes have been sustained by the authorities, and ignored by the Press. This is the explanation, in great measure, of the grim desperation which the Nihilists by every means in their power try to express. Evidently all over Russia the rural heads of the communes are grossly ignorant, and possess too much power over the persons of Russian citizens, often driving good and thoughtful men to fury ; while the Central Government, instead of miti- gating this gross tyranny of ignorance, instead of revising and restraining it, sides with the ignorance and the superstition, against the new light. Hence the bitter wrath of new-light Russia against the despotic Administration, and the wish, so often. expressed by the Nihilists, to engage in a sort of deadly duel with the authorities, which may at least drive panic into an Administration they cannot overthrow. The physical misery of Russia makes the enfranchised peasants brutal. The brutality of the peasants drives the educated mad. And the official world, of which the Czar is the head, is disposed to side with the ignorant peasantry against the stirring force of the new aspira- tions. Hence the collisions of feeling, which can find. no vent except in acts of the same sort of brutality against the powerful, of which the Nihilists themselves complain when they are directed by the Communal autho- rities against themselves. And of course these acts result in a still greater alienation of the Government from revolutionary or even innovating agencies, and a renewal of the attempt to suppress light, and extinguish movement, altogether. The assassinations and attempted assassinations increase the pres- sure of the heavy hand from above, and the increase of that pressure stimulates twofold the spirit of desperation.. The prospect could hardly be graver. Such an act as the suspension of the Gobs for its recent account of the sores in the body politic is just of the type which invites terrorism from the Secret Societies. And the ter- rorism of the Secret Societies is precisely the kind of in- fluence which tends to the suppression of journals disposed to tell the world too frankly what it is of which Russians have to complain.

The Nihilists, however, are not only making a terrible mistake by attempting to use brutality in order to put down brutality,. but, as they themselves admit, and even claim, they are putting

themselves on a level with that which they most condemn in so acting. On the other hand, the Government aro not only making a terrible mistake when they suppress evidence of the

misery of Russia,—when they suppress newspapers for pub- lishing that evidence,—but in so doing they are sitting on the safety-valve, at the very moment of expressing their horror of the devastation caused by the explosion of the steam.

The only hope for improvement is that the Nihilists may gradu- ally perceive that they gain nothing by murderous attempts to change the dynasty, except the possibility of a new ruler much more furious against them than the last ; and that the Govern- ment, on its side, may begin to see that it must not sit on the safety-valve, but must, so far as is possible, utilise the surplus steam, if it would ever escape from this lengthening prospect of murder and revolution. If the Czar, ashe says, really commits himself to Providence, he would do well to emulate a little of the calmness of Providence, and not treat plain-speaking as a mime. If the Nihilists, as they say, wish to establish a new order and a more popular justice, they must not begin by anarchy and injustice which are as near to ample justifications of the conduct of their foes, as the case will admit. But, for the present, we fear the vicious circle will go on turning round and round.