at the expense of the Conservatives.  The leaders in the Duma knew precisely what they wanted, and how to present their demands with a clearness, a power, and a calm determination for which Russia,—­and indeed that greater audience, the world at large,—­was quite unprepared.  That this seriously alarmed the Imperial party was proved by an immediate strengthening of the defences about the throne by means of a change in what is called the Fundamental Laws.  These Fundamental Laws afford a rigid framework, an immovable foundation for the authority of the Emperor and his Cabinet Ministers.

Repairs in the Constitution of the United States have been usually in the direction of increased liberties for the people.  The Tsar, on the contrary, aided by his Cabinet and high Government officials, drafted a new edition of the Fundamental Laws suited to a new danger.

The changes made were all designed to build up new defences around the throne, and to intrench more firmly every threatened prerogative.  The Tsar was deliberately ranging himself with the bureaucratic party instead of the party of his people; and the hot indignation which followed found expression in bitter and powerful arraignment of the Government, even to the extent of demanding the resignation of the Ministry.  What was at first a rift, was becoming an impassable chasm.

If Count Witte had disappointed the Liberals by his lukewarmness and by what they considered an espousal of the conservative cause, he was even less acceptable to the Bureaucrats, to whom he had from the first been an object of aversion—­an aversion not abated by his masterly diplomacy at Portsmouth, for which he received only a grudging acknowledgment.  Whatever may be the verdict of the future, with its better historic perspective, whether justly or unjustly, Count Witte had lost his hold upon the situation; and the statesman who had been the one heroic figure in Russia was no longer the man of the hour.  At all events, his resignation of the head of the Ministry during this obnoxious attempt to nullify the gift of popular representation was significant; and the name of de Witte is not associated with this grave mistake made by the master he has tried to serve.

The reforms insistently demanded by the Duma were as follows:—­The responsibility of the Ministry to that body, as the representative of the people; the distribution to the working peasants of the lands held by the Crown and the clergy; a General Amnesty, with the release of all political prisoners; and the abolition of the death penalty.

This was virtually a sweeping demand for the surrender of the autocratic principle, the very principle the Fundamental Laws had just been revised to render more inviolable.  The issue was now narrowed down within definite limits.  It was a conflict for power, for administrative control, and it was a life-and-death struggle between the Tsar and his people.