Such are the grounds on which the government and the people should unite in the performance of their common task.  The combination of imperial unity with local autonomy, of autocracy with self-government, forms the principle which must be taken into consideration in judging the action of the Russian Government in the Grand Duchy of Finland.  The manifesto of February 3-15, 1899, is not a negation of such a peaceful cooperation, but a confirmation of the aforesaid leading principle of our Government in its full development.  It decides that the issue of imperial laws, common both to Russia and Finland, must not depend altogether on the consent of the members of the Finland Diet, but is the prerogative of the Imperial Council of State, with the participation on such occasions of members of the Finland Senate.  There is nothing in this manifesto to shake the belief of Russia’s friends in the compatibility of the principles of autocracy with a large measure of local self-government and civic liberty.  The development of the spiritual and material powers of the population by its gradual introduction to participation in the conscious public life of the state, as a healthy, conservative principle of government, has always entered into the plans of the sovereign leaders of the life of Russia as a state.  These intentions were announced afresh from the throne by the manifesto of February 26, 1903.  In our country this process takes place in accordance with the historical basis of the empire, with the national peculiarities of its population.

The result is that in Russia we have the organization of local institutions which give self-government in the narrow sense of the word—­i.e., the right of the people to see to the satisfaction of their local economic needs.  In Finland the idea of local autonomy was developed far earlier and in a far wider manner.  Its present scope, which has grown and developed under Russian rule, embraces all sides, not only of the economic, but of the civil, life of the land.  Russian autocracy has thus given irrefragable proof of its constructive powers in the sphere of civic development.  The historian of the future will have to note its ethical importance in a far wider sphere as well:  the greatest of social problems have found a peaceable solution in Russia, thanks to the conditions of its political organization.

For a full comprehension, however, of the manifesto of 1899, it must be regarded as one of the phases in the development of Finland’s relations to Russia.  It will then become evident that as a legacy of the past it is the outcome of the natural course of events which sooner or later must have led up to it.  The initiation of Finland into the historical destinies of the Russian Empire was bound to lead to the rise of questions calling for a general solution common both to the empire and to Finland.  Naturally, in view of the subordinate status of the latter, such questions could be solved only in the order appointed