The influence which the idea of the Proletariat exercised on the public mind and on the legislation at the time of the Emancipation is a very notable fact, and well worthy of attention, because it helps to illustrate a point of difference between Russians and Englishmen.

Englishmen are, as a rule, too much occupied with the multifarious concerns of the present to look much ahead into the distant future.  We profess, indeed, to regard with horror the maxim, Apres nous le deluge! and we should probably annihilate with our virtuous indignation any one who should boldly profess the principle.  And yet we often act almost as if we were really partisans of that heartless creed.  When called upon to consider the interests of the future generations, we declared that “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” and stigmatise as visionaries and dreamers all who seek to withdraw our attention from the present.  A modern Cassandra who confidently predicts the near exhaustion of our coal-fields, or graphically describes a crushing national disaster that must some day overtake us, may attract some public attention; but when we learn that the misfortune is not to take place in our time, we placidly remark that future generations must take care of themselves, and that we cannot reasonably be expected to bear their burdens.  When we are obliged to legislate, we proceed in a cautious, tentative way, and are quite satisfied with any homely, simple remedies that common sense and experience may suggest, without taking the trouble to inquire whether the remedy adopted is in accordance with scientific theories.  In short, there is a certain truth in those “famous prophetick pictures” spoken of by Stillingfleet, which “represent the fate of England by a mole, a creature blind and busy, continually working under ground.”

In Russia we find the opposite extreme.  There reformers have been trained, not in the arena of practical politics, but in the school of political speculation.  As soon, therefore, as they begin to examine any simple matter with a view to legislation, it at once becomes a “question,” and flies up into the region of political and social science.  Whilst we have been groping along an unexplored path, the Russians have—­at least in recent times—­been constantly mapping out, with the help of foreign experience, the country that lay before them, and advancing with gigantic strides according to the newest political theories.  Men trained in this way cannot rest satisfied with homely remedies which merely alleviate the evils of the moment.  They wish to “tear up evil by the roots,” and to legislate for future generations as well as for themselves.

This tendency was peculiarly strong at the time of the Emancipation.  The educated classes were profoundly convinced that the system of Nicholas I. had been a mistake, and that a new and brighter era was about to dawn upon the country.  Everything had to be reformed.  The whole social and political edifice had to be reconstructed on entirely new principles.