It will be observed that the Czar goes no farther back than the beginning of the reign of his uncle, sixty years since, in speaking of the measures that have been taken for the improvement of the peasants’ condition; and he names only his father and his uncle as reforming Emperors, though his language is such as to warrant the belief that all his ancestors, who had reigned, had been friends of the serf, and anxious to promote their welfare.  But Alexander II. is too well acquainted with the history of his family to venture to speak of the actions of either the Great Peter or the Grand Catharine toward the peasants.  Gurowski tells us of the effect of one of Peter’s acts in very plain language.  “In 1718,” he says, “Peter the Great ordered a general census to be taken all over the empire.  The census officials, most probably through thoughtlessness or caprice, divided the whole rural population into two sections:  First, the free peasants belonging to the crown or its domains; and, secondly, all the rest of the peasantry, the krestianins, or serfs living on private estates, were inscribed khrepostnoie kholopy, that is, as chattels.  The primitive Slavic communal organization thus survived only on the royal domain, and there it exists till the present day.  The census of Peter having thus fairly inaugurated chattelhood, it immediately began to develop itself in all its turpitude.  The masters grew more reckless and cruel; they sold chattels separately from the lands; they brought them singly into market, disregarding all family-ties and social bonds.  Estates were no more valued according to the area of land they contained, but according to the number of their chattels, who were now called souls.  In short, all the worst features of chattelism, as it exists at the present day in the American Slave States, immediately followed the publication of this accursed census."[B] The same authority states that Nicholas in reality was the first Emperor who granted estates excepting therefrom the resident peasantry.

[Footnote B:  Slavery in History, pp. 245, 246.]

Alexander II., in his Manifesto, expresses his confidence in the nobility of Russia, which compliment is pronounced ironical, inasmuch as they did not yield their consent to emancipation until they discovered that the Czar and the serfs had united to extort it.  “It is to the nobles themselves,” says the Czar, “conformably to their own wishes, that we have reserved the task of drawing up the propositions for the new organization of the peasants,—­propositions which make it incumbent upon them to limit their rights over the peasants, and to accept the onus of a reform which could not be accomplished without some material losses.  Our confidence has not been deceived.  We have seen the nobles assembled in committees in the districts, through the medium of their confidential agents, making the voluntary sacrifice of their rights as regards the personal servitude