The two years that are set apart for the completion of the plan of emancipation will be the trial time of Russia.  They may expire, and nothing have been done, and the condition of the peasants be no more hopeful than it was in those years which followed the “good intentions” of Alexander I. It is not difficult to see that there are numerous and powerful disturbing causes to the success of the project.  These causes are of a twofold character.  They are to be found in the internal state of the empire, and in the relations which it holds to foreign countries.  There is still a powerful party in Russia who are opposed to emancipation, and who, though repulsed for the time, are far from being disheartened.  One-half the nobility are supposed to be enemies of the Imperial plan, and they will continue to throw every possible obstacle in the way of its success.  There is nothing so pertinacious, so unrelenting, and so difficult to change, as an aristocratical body.  The best liberals the world has seen have been of aristocratical origin, or democracy would have made but little advance; but what is true of individuals is not true of the mass, which is obstinate and unyielding.  There is nothing that men so reluctantly abandon as direct power over their fellows.  The chief of egotists is the slaveholder, unless he happen to be the wisest and best of men.  Man loves his fellow-man—­as a piece of property, as a chattel, above all things.  It is a striking proof of superiority to be able to command men with the certainty of being as blindly obeyed as was the Roman centurion.  The sense of power that is created by the possession of slaves is sure to render men arbitrary of disposition and insolent in their conduct.  The troubles of our own country ought to be sufficient to convince every one that there must be nobles in Russia who would prefer resistance to the Czar to the elevation of millions whose depression is evidence of the power of the privileged classes.  But for the conviction that the United States could no longer be ruled in the interest of the slaveholders, the Secession movement would have been postponed for another generation, and certain traitors would have gone to their graves with the reputation of having been honest men.  There are Secessionists in Russia, and for the next two years they may be able to do much to prevent the completion of the work so well begun by Alexander II.  But he appears to be as resolute as they can be, and even fanatically determined upon having his way.  Supported by one-half the nobles, and by all the serfs, and confident of the army’s loyalty, he ought to be able to triumph over all internal opposition.  What he has already effected has been extorted from a powerful foe; and that costly step, the first step, having been taken, the Russian reformers, headed by the Emperor, ought to prove victorious in so vitally important a contest as that in which they have voluntarily engaged.