As might have been foreseen, the ukaz and the circular had not at all the desired effect of “introducing the necessary tranquillity into public life, which has lately been diverted from its normal course.”  On the contrary, they increased the excitement, and evoked a new series of public demonstrations.  On December 27th, the very day on which the two official documents were published—­the Provincial Zemstvo of Moscow, openly disregarding the ministerial warnings, expressed the conviction that the day was near when the bureaucratic regime, which had so long estranged the Supreme Power from the people, would be changed, and when freely-elected representatives of the people would take part in legislation.  The same evening, at St. Petersburg, a great Liberal banquet was held, at which a resolution was voted condemning the war, and declaring that Russia could be extricated from her difficulties only by the representatives of the nation, freely elected by secret ballot.  As an encouragement to the organs of local administration to persevere in their disregard of ministerial instructions, the St. Petersburg Medical Society, after adopting the programme of the Zemstvo Congress, sent telegrams of congratulation to the Mayor of Moscow and the President of the Tchernigof Zemstvo bureau, both of whom had incurred the displeasure of the Government.  A similar telegram was sent by a Congress of 496 engineers to the Moscow Town Council, in which the burning political questions had been freely discussed.  In other large towns, when the mayor prevented such discussions, a considerable number of the town councillors resigned.

From the Zemstvos and municipalities the spirit of opposition spread to the provincial assemblies of the Noblesse.  The nobles of the province of St. Petersburg, for example, voted by a large majority an address to the Tsar recommending the convocation of a freely-elected National Assembly; and in Moscow, usually regarded as the fortress of Conservatism, eighty members of the Assembly entered a formal protest against a patriotic Conservative address which had been voted two days before.  Even the fair sex considered it necessary to support the opposition movement.  The matrons of Moscow, in a humble petition to the Empress, declared that they could not continue to bring up their children properly in the existing state of unconstitutional lawlessness, and their view was endorsed in several provincial towns by the schoolboys, who marched through the streets in procession, and refused to learn their lessons until popular liberties had been granted!

Again, for more than a month the Government remained silent on the fundamental questions which were exercising the public mind.  At last, on the morning of March 3d, appeared an Imperial manifesto of a very unexpected kind.  In it the Emperor deplored the outbreak of internal disturbances at a moment when the glorious sons of Russia were fighting with self-sacrificing bravery and offering their lives for the Faith, the