The means by which this revolution was effected may be briefly described in a sentence.  The Crown purchased from the proprietors the land—­with the peasants attached to it, and then bestowed the land upon the peasants with the condition that for forty-five years they should pay to the Crown six per cent. interest upon the amount paid by it for the land.  It was the commune or mir which accepted the land and assumed the obligation and the duty of seeing that every individual paid his annual share of rental (or interest money) upon the land within his inclosure, which was supposed to be sufficient for his own maintenance and the payment of the government tax.

These simple people, who had been dreaming of emancipation for years, as a vague promise of relief from sorrow, heard with astonishment that now they were expected to pay for their land!  Had it not always belonged to them?  The Slavonic idea of ownership of land through labor was the only one of which they could conceive, and it had survived through all the centuries of serfdom, when they were accustomed to say:  “We are yours, but the land is ours.”  Instead of twenty-five million people rejoicing with grateful hearts, there was a ferment of discontent and in some places uprisings—­one peasant leader telling ten thousand who rose at his call that the Emancipation Law was a forgery, they were being deceived and not permitted to enjoy what the Tsar, their “Little Father,” had intended for their happiness.  But considering the intricate difficulties attending such a tremendous change in the social conditions, the emancipation was easily effected and the Russian peasants, by the survival of their old Patriarchal institutions, were at once provided with a complete system of local self-government in which the ancient Slavonic principle was unchanged.  At the head of the commune or mir was the elder, a group of communes formed a Volost, and the head of the Volost was responsible for the peace and order of the community.  To this was later added the Zemstvo a representative assembly of peasants, for the regulation of local matters.

Such a new reign of clemency awakened hope in Poland that it too might share these benefits.  First it was a Constitution such as had been given to Hungary for which they prayed.  Then, as Italy was emancipating herself, they grew bolder, and, incited by societies of Polish exiles, all over Europe, demanded more:  that they be given independence.  Again the hope of a Polo-Lithuanian alliance, and a recovery of the lost Polish provinces in the Ukraine, and the reestablishment of an independent kingdom of Poland, dared to assert itself, and to invite a more complete destruction.

The liberal Russians might have sympathized with the first moderate demand, but when by the last there was an attempt made upon the integrity of Russia, there was but one voice in the empire.  So cruel and so vindictive was the punishment of the Poles, by Liberals and Conservatives alike, that Europe at last in 1863 protested.  The Polish language and even alphabet were prohibited.  Every noble in the land had been involved in this last conspiracy.  They were ordered to sell their lands, and all Poles were forbidden to be its purchasers.  Nothing of Poland was left which could ever rise again.