It was said that “serfism excludes pauperism,”—­that, if the serf owes work to his owner in the prime of life, the owner owes support to his serf in the decline of life.  No lie could be more absurd to one who had seen Russian life.  We were first greeted, on entering Russia, by a beggar who knelt in the mud; at Kovno eighteen beggars besieged the coach,—­and Kovno was hardly worse than scores of other towns; within a day’s ride of St. Petersburg a woman begged piteously for means to keep soul and body together, and finished the refutation of that sonorous English theory,—­for she had been discharged from her master’s service in the metropolis as too feeble, and had been sent back to his domain, afar in the country, on foot and without money.

It was said that freed peasants would not work.  But, despite volleys of predictions that they would not work if freed, despite volleys of assertions that they could not work if freed, the peasants, when set free, and not crushed by regulations, have sprung to their work with an earnestness, and continued it with a vigor, at which the philosophers of the old system stand aghast.  The freed peasants of Wologda compare favorably with any in Europe.

And when the old tirades had grown stale, English writers drew copiously from a new source,—­from “La Verite sur la Russie,”—­pleasingly indifferent to the fact that the author’s praise in a previous work had notoriously been a thing of bargain and sale, and that there was in full process of development a train of facts which led the Parisian courts to find him guilty of demanding in one case a “blackmail” of fifty thousand roubles.[L]

[Footnote L:  Proces en Diffamation du Prince Simon Worontzoff contre le Prince Pierre Dolgornokow.  Leipzig, 1862]

All this argument outside the Empire helped the foes of emancipation inside the Empire.

But the Emperor met the whole body of his opponents with an argument overwhelming.  On the 5th of March, 1861, he issued his manifesto making the serfs FREE.  He had struggled long to make some satisfactory previous arrangement; his motto now became, Emancipation first, Arrangement afterward.  Thus was the result of the great struggle decided; but, to this day, the after-arrangement remains undecided.  The Tzar offers gradual indemnity; the nobles seem to prefer fire and blood.  Alexander stands firm; the last declaration brought across the water was that he would persist in reforms.

But, whatever the after-process, THE SERFS ARE FREE.

The career before Russia is hopeful indeed; emancipation of her serfs has set her fully in that career.  The vast mass of her inhabitants are of a noble breed, combining the sound mind of the Indo-Germanic races with the tough muscle of the northern plateaus of Asia.  In no other country on earth is there such unity in language, in degree of cultivation, and in basis of ideas.  Absolutely the same dialect is spoken by lord and peasant, in capital and in province.