he took the title of Grand-Duke of Finland (thereby implying that she lay outside the Empire), and he confirmed the ancient liberties of the Finns.  Later on they even secured greater liberty than they had possessed under Sweden by the grant of a Finnish Diet, on the lines of the Swedish Diet in Stockholm, which should have full control of all internal Finnish affairs.  Finland, therefore, gained much from the transfer; she possessed for the first time in her history complete internal autonomy.  This state of things lasted for practically ninety years, during which period Finland made wonderful progress both economic and intellectual, so that by the end of the nineteenth century she was one of the happiest, most enlightened, and most prosperous countries in Northern Europe.  “As regards the condition of Finland,” Alexander I. had declared, “my intention has been to give this people a political existence, so that they may not feel themselves conquered by Russia, but united to her for their own clear advantage; therefore, not only their civil but their political laws have been maintained.”  This liberal policy was continued by the various Tsars throughout the century, the reformer Alexander II. taking particular interest in the development of the Grand-Duchy, which he evidently regarded as a place where experiments in political liberty were being worked out that might later be applied to the rest of Russia.  The weakness of Finland’s position lay in the fact that her liberties really depended upon the personal whim of the Grand-Duke:  in theory her constitutional laws were only alterable by the joint sanction of monarch and people; in practice the small but courageous nation had no means of redress should the Tsar, swayed by bureaucratic reaction, choose to go back upon the policy of his ancestors.  And in 1894 a Tsar mounted the throne, Nicholas II., who did so choose.

The word went forth for the “Russification” of Finland.  After picking a quarrel with the Diet on the military question, the Tsar on February 18, 1899, issued a manifesto suspending the Finnish Constitution and abolishing the Diet.  Finland became with a stroke of the pen a department of the Russian Empire.  A rigorous Press censorship was established, the hated governor-general Bobrikoff filled the country with gendarmes and spies, native officials were dismissed or driven to resign, an attempt was made to introduce the Russian language into the schools, and, though the Finns could only oppose a campaign of passive resistance to these wicked and short-sighted measures, at the end of seven years the nation which had for almost a century been the most contented portion of the Tsar’s dominions was seething with ill-feeling and disloyalty.  The inevitable outcome was the assassination of General Bobrikoff by a young student in June 1904; and when the Russian universal strike took place in October 1905, the entire Finnish nation joined in as one man.  Finland regained her liberties for a time, and immediately