in the one case the house and nearly all that it contains, and in the other the arable land and possibly a little pasturage.  In both cases there is a certain amount of common responsibility:  in the one case for all the debts, and in the other for all the taxes and Communal obligations.  And both are protected to a certain extent against the ordinary legal consequences of insolvency, for the family cannot be deprived of its house or necessary agricultural implements, and the Commune cannot be deprived of its land, by importunate creditors.

On the other hand, there are many important points of contrast.  The Commune is, of course, much larger than the family, and the mutual relations of its members are by no means so closely interwoven.  The members of a family all farm together, and those of them who earn money from other sources are expected to put their savings into the common purse; whilst the households composing a Commune farm independently, and pay into the common treasury only a certain fixed sum.

From these brief remarks the reader will at once perceive that a Russian village is something very different from a village in our sense of the term, and that the villagers are bound together by ties quite unknown to the English rural population.  A family living in an English village has little reason to take an interest in the affairs of its neighbours.  The isolation of the individual families is never quite perfect, for man, being a social animal, takes necessarily a certain interest in the affairs of those around him, and this social duty is sometimes fulfilled by the weaker sex with more zeal than is absolutely indispensable for the public welfare; but families may live for many years in the same village without ever becoming conscious of common interests.  So long as the Jones family do not commit any culpable breach of public order, such as putting obstructions on the highway or habitually setting their house on fire, their neighbour Brown takes probably no interest in their affairs, and has no ground for interfering with their perfect liberty of action.  Amongst the families composing a Russian village, such a state of isolation is impossible.  The Heads of Households must often meet together and consult in the Village Assembly, and their daily occupation must be influenced by the Communal decrees.  They cannot begin to mow the hay or plough the fallow field until the Village Assembly has passed a resolution on the subject.  If a peasant becomes a drunkard, or takes some equally efficient means to become insolvent, every family in the village has a right to complain, not merely in the interests of public morality, but from selfish motives, because all the families are collectively responsible for his taxes.* For the same reason no peasant can permanently leave the village without the consent of the Commune, and this consent will not be granted until the applicant gives satisfactory security for the fulfilment of his actual and future