would have an immediately salutary effect on the moral character of the serfs confessed themselves disappointed.  Many complained that the peasants showed themselves greedy and obstinate, stole wood from the forest, allowed their cattle to wander on the proprietor’s fields, failed to fulfil their legal obligations, and broke their voluntary engagements.  At the same time the fears of an agrarian rising subsided, so that even the timid were tranquillised.  From these causes the conciliatory spirit of the proprietors decreased.

The work of conciliating and regulating became consequently more difficult, but the great majority of the Arbiters showed themselves equal to the task, and displayed an impartiality, tact and patience beyond all praise.  To them Russia is in great part indebted for the peaceful character of the Emancipation.  Had they sacrificed the general good to the interests of their class, or had they habitually acted in that stern, administrative, military spirit which caused the instances of bloodshed above referred to, the prophecies of the alarmists would, in all probability, have been realised, and the historian of the Emancipation would have had a terrible list of judicial massacres to record.  Fortunately they played the part of mediators, as their name signified, rather than that of administrators in the bureaucratic sense of the term, and they were animated with a just and humane rather than a merely legal spirit.  Instead of simply laying down the law, and ordering their decisions to be immediately executed, they were ever ready to spend hours in trying to conquer, by patient and laborious reasoning, the unjust claims of proprietors or the false conceptions and ignorant obstinacy of the peasants.  It was a new spectacle for Russia to see a public function fulfilled by conscientious men who had their heart in their work, who sought neither promotion nor decorations, and who paid less attention to the punctilious observance of prescribed formalities than to the real objects in view.

There were, it is true, a few men to whom this description does not apply.  Some of these were unduly under the influence of the feelings and conceptions created by serfage.  Some, on the contrary, erred on the other side.  Desirous of securing the future welfare of the peasantry and of gaining for themselves a certain kind of popularity, and at the same time animated with a violent spirit of pseudo-liberalism, these latter occasionally forgot that their duty was to be, not generous, but just, and that they had no right to practise generosity at other people’s expense.  All this I am quite aware of—­I could even name one or two Arbiters who were guilty of positive dishonesty—­but I hold that these were rare exceptions.  The great majority did their duty faithfully and well.