But soon rose again that great problem of old,—­that problem ever rising to meet a new Autocrat, and, at each appearance, more dire than before,—­the serf-question.

The serfs in private hands now numbered more than twenty millions; above them stood more than a hundred thousand owners.

The princely strength of the largest owners was best represented by a few men possessing over a hundred thousand serfs each, and, above all, by Count Scheremetieff, who boasted three hundred thousand.  The luxury of the large owners was best represented by about four thousand men possessing more than a thousand serfs each.  The pinching propensities of the small owners were best represented by nearly fifty thousand men possessing less than twenty serfs each.[K]

[Footnote K:  Gerebtzoff, Histoire de la Civilisation en Russie,—­Wolowski, in Revue des Deux Mondes,—­and Tegoborski, Commentaries on the Productive Forces of Russia, Vol.  I. p. 221.]

The serfs might be divided into two great classes.  The first comprised those working under the old, or corvee, system,—­giving, generally, three days in the week to the tillage of the owner’s domain; the second comprised those working under the new, or obrok, system,—­receiving a payment fixed by the owner and assessed by the community to which the serfs belonged.

The character of the serfs has been moulded by the serf-system.

They have a simple shrewdness, which, under a better system, had made them enterprising; but this quality has degenerated into cunning and cheatery,—­the weapons which the hopelessly oppressed always use.

They have a reverence for things sacred, which, under a better system, might have given the nation a strengthening religion; but they now stand among the most religious peoples on earth, and among the least moral.  To the besmutted picture of Our Lady of Kazan they are ever ready to burn wax and oil; to Truth and Justice they constantly omit the tribute of mere common honesty.  They keep the Church fasts like saints; they keep the Church feasts like satyrs.

They have a curiosity, which, under a better system, had made them inventive; but their plough in common use is behind the plough described by Virgil.

They have a love of gain, which, under a better system, had made them hard-working; but it takes ten serfs to do languidly and poorly what two free men in America do quickly and well.

They are naturally a kind people; but let one example show how serfage can transmute kindness.

It is a rule well known in Russia, that, when an accident occurs, interference is to be left to the police.  Hence you shall see a man lying in a fit, and the bystanders giving no aid, but waiting for the authorities.

Some years since, as all the world remembers, a theatre took fire in St. Petersburg, and crowds of people were burned or stifled.  The whole story is not so well known.  That theatre was but a great temporary wooden shed,—­such as is run up every year at the holidays, in the public squares.  When the fire burst forth, crowds of peasants hurried to the spot; but though they heard the shrieks of the dying,—­separated from them only by a thin planking,—­only one man, in all that multitude, dared cut through and rescue some of the sufferers.