she appeared at the Prefecture, ostensibly for the purpose of presenting a petition, and when she found herself in the presence of the Prefect she fired a revolver at him, wounding him seriously, but not mortally.  At the trial the main facts were not disputed, and yet the jury brought in a verdict of not guilty.  This unexpected result was due, I believe, partly to a desire to make a little political demonstration, and partly to a strong suspicion that the prison authorities, in carrying out the Prefect’s orders, had acted in summary fashion without observing the tedious formalities prescribed by the law.  Certainly one of the prison officials, when under cross-examination, made on me, and on the public generally, the impression that he was prevaricating in order to shield his superiors.

* The reason alleged by General Trepof for giving these orders was that, during a visit of inspection, Bogoliubof had behaved disrespectfully towards him, and had thereby committed an infraction of prison discipline, for which the law prescribes the use of corporal punishment.

At the close of the proceedings, which were dexterously conducted by Counsel in such a way that, as the Emperor is reported to have said, it was not Vera Zasulitch but General Trepof who was being tried, an eminent Russian journalist rushed up to me in a state of intense excitement and said:  “Is not this a great day for the cause of political freedom in Russia?” I could not agree with him and I ventured to predict that neither of us would ever again see a political case tried publicly by jury in an ordinary court.  The prediction has proved true.  Since that time political offenders have been tried by special tribunals without a jury or dealt with “by administrative procedure,” that is to say, inquisitorially, without any regular trial.

The defects, real and supposed, of the present system are commonly attributed to the predominance of the peasant element in the juries; and this opinion, founded on a priori reasoning, seems to many too evident to require verification.  The peasantry are in many respects the most ignorant class, and therefore, it is assumed, they are least capable of weighing conflicting evidence.  Plain and conclusive as this reasoning seems, it is in my opinion erroneous.  The peasants have, indeed, little education, but they have a large fund of plain common-sense; and experience proves—­so at least I have been informed by many judges and Public Prosecutors—­that, as a general rule, a peasant jury is more to be relied on than a jury drawn from the educated classes.  It must be admitted, however, that a peasant jury has certain peculiarities, and it is not a little interesting to observe what those peculiarities are.